Well, I just fell in love with Edgar Rice Burroughs all over again.
I downloaded Harry's excellent Omnibus collections of Barsoom and Venus and started reading Princes of Mars (the first Mars book) and what should I come across in the early pages of chapter 9 but the following:
"The men are trained in the higher branches of the art of war; in strategy and the maneuvering of large bodies of troops. They make the laws as they are needed; a new law for each emergency. They are unfettered by precedent in the administration of justice. Customs have been handed down by ages of repetition, but the punishment for ignoring a custom is a matter for individual treatment by a jury of the culprit's peers, and I may say that justice seldom misses fire, but seems rather to rule in inverse ratio to the ascendency of law. In one respect at least the Martians are a happy people; they have no lawyers."
I almost dropped my reader rolling on the floor laughing!
