Harry was sitting on his bed reading a book Madam Pince had recommended to him about the old magic and the days when simple laws were all a man needed to live his life right. The book covered the customs of the time to explain why the Old Laws existed. In those days, most magical people didn't carry a wand or even use a staff to wield their magic. It was understood that if you had magic, and you desired to do something bad enough you could do it if magic allowed you to. It was a simple concept but very telling in it's simplicity.
To the people back then, Magic wasn't seen as something man controlled. Rather it was a gift you'd been granted access to just like your hair or eye color. You could wield if your intent was clear and your reason was sound. The magic people did was no better or worse than the magic being done today. But people back then didn't think like the people of today did. They used both dark and light magic equally and not all harmful things were done solely with dark magic spells just as not all helping magic was done with light spells. People seemed to have had the thought that magic was magic. Plain and simple. It was the intent of the wielder that determined if the spell was good or bad. Not the spell itself.
Some people could do what is now termed dark magic spells much easier than they could the so-called light spells. Other people were the opposite but they did the same magic no matter which group of spell casting came to them easiest. Nor did it make one group of people good people while the others were bad. People were people and no one is all good or all bad. Everyone has some of both the good and the bad within them. It was the choices a person makes that determines how the world will see them.
The law only got invoked when someone crossed the line and hurt someone else who took offense. And judgement magic, such as the spell Harry had invoked against the Trio of Misfortune, was never questioned. People had accepted it as fact that if the accused wasn't guilty they'd walk away unharmed. And if the accuser was only accusing to try and harm the accused, the accuser would pay the price for it. If they were guilty, magic would take her payment for their abuse of her gift. People back then had never questioned whether or not Magic was sentient enough to do things like that. They just believed it could.
Much like Harry believed there was no one he wanted to send a letter to that Hedwig couldn't find for him. He knew so long as that person was alive, she could. Even if he didn't know their name or direction. Such as when he wanted to find an alternative for Hagrid to get his wand rights and Owls. He'd written to the Headmaster or Headmistress of Beauxbatons Academy and Madam Maxim had answered his inquiry with directions on what he needed to do. She'd also given him the name of someone in the French Ministry of Magic to contact and written a Cover Letter of Introduction for him so Hagrid could regain his wand rights in France. As a result, Hagrid now held a Mastery in Care of Magical Creatures. In France. He was also applying for some kind of a degree having something to do with his supplying Potion Ingredients to people but Harry didn't really understand that one as it wasn't a Mastery in Potions. Nor did he truly care so long as it was what Hagrid wanted for himself.
But in the old days people had seemed to understand using magic's gift meant being responsible with it or paying the price for misusing it. What payment Magic would demand depended on the crime of the accused really but statistics showed age of the accused might also be a factor. Children were rarely punished as harshly or as permanently as adults. Usually children received some kind of a behavior or teaching rune to help them learn how not to misuse their gift. Much as his three tormentors had. And sometimes guilty people did walk away relatively unharmed but that was usually because they truly didn't believe what they'd done was the wrong thing. They believed they'd had just cause to do what they did and so while they might be punished to an extent, it wasn't all that severe.
The old laws had been so simple and straightforward even children could understand them. In those days the Ministry, while technically the governing body for the magical people, hadn't really had anything to do with their lives. It'd existed solely for the purpose of making sure the non-magical world didn't discover the magical one. And that was only because many of magic's children were clearly not human. Goblins, gnomes, centaurs, elves, trolls, dragons, unicorns, sphinx and Mermaids all needed to be protected and hidden from the non-magical populations. Their job had been to keep non-magical people from seeing all the other races of magical people. Nothing else. Fairies and leprechauns made their jobs a lot harder than it should've been but that was all the Ministry was meant to do for the magical world. It was never meant to be the center of a government.
There hadn't been a Wizengamot in those days. It wasn't needed. When a grievance needed to be heard and judgement rendered that magic couldn't handle - not that there had been many of those - the people involved would convene a tribunal to hear the case. The tribunal would consist of three people. Hence why it was called a 'Tri'bunal. One member of each blood class (the accused and the accuser) and the third to be an impartial party. Usually all three would be from the home district where the trouble began though the impartial person would be someone who didn't know either the accused or the accuser by name, sight or reputation. It was often this third person who'd determine the outcome of a tribunal case simply because they were unknown to either party. It had been fair and no one had claimed otherwise as far as Harry could tell.
But somewhere along the line someone in the Ministry decided to change things. Either they were power hungry or just greedy. Either that or they had an axe to grind against the tribunal way of settling disputes. Whichever the reason, the Ministry proposed a bill that allowed for the formation of the Wizengamot to be a court system for people who broke the laws. A little footnote on the bill that had allowed the formation, allowed the new Wizengamot to create, draft and vote on new laws for magical Britain for which they included both Scotland and Wales under the British Ministry. Up to that point in time, both magical Wales and magical Scotland considered themselves to be separate from magical Britain. But when that little footnote went unchallenged in the Ministry, both countries lost their right to set the rules for their people.