Laws as such vanished more or less alltogether with the enforced govenrment many generations ago. After the smoking wars the attorney ones came, which looked like wars even less, just more like a rhetoric competition, where all were rapidly losing attention and patience. Whoever spoke in a roundabout and extended way, was soon removed from the stand, or the audience scattered. The whole world was listening, everyone disputed with everyone else, it took fifty years. The last ten made it obvious that the lawyers are becoming scarce, the worst students were chosing law schools, various parliaments have revoked thousands of laws... and living was more relaxed.
Of course, it didn't go that easy. Several centuries the lawyers' main job was to revoke themselves - the preceding centuries' legacy required that first all the laws which were in effect but made no sense anymore be revoked: all the naval regulations on desert worlds, which were regularly copied over from the League's laws. Someone calculated that this operation would cost a ten years income of a medium planet, but that such a cost would occur every three days for just empty litigation.
Ever since only local regulations apply. They may be local to a planet, three habitats, or several planets in some cases. Several basic things hold throughout the League. Not too many of them, and knowing them is the easier part of the selfawareness exam. The selfawareness exam is what actually ended the laws and became a base of the unwritten one. The better side of the unwritten law is that it applies all by itself.
The examination committee for this exam is a strange thing;
half of the members are volunteers, elected by quick
vote. Some members are picked at random, from those who
never volunteer. The membership in the committee is shortlasting -
as soon as a dozen candidates are examined, a third of the
committee is replaced. Care is taken that everybody comes to
be a member sometimes, and that nobody should examine more than
about fifteen. The purpose of the exam is to assess one's ability
to live in a society, which also assumes the acceptance of the unwritten laws.