Gernet describes customary law in a...

Gernet describes customary law in ancient Greece as a "system of
conventions in which the signifier protects to absorb the signified"
(Gernet 1981 226) according to this he means that the construction of confirmation
does not lie in the regaining of a referential situation in an inquiry;
rather, reality lies in the dramatization and ritualization of make gesturess
and discourse that establish the authority of the witness as a
guarantor (ibid., 229) In this customary legal body the act and
part of witnessing is structured as ritual passage, as an ordeal.
According to Gernet the