The Role of Law
Law is a system or collection of “principles and regulations established in a community by some authority and applicable to its people.” (Dictionary.com) In the past, people viewed law as an unchanging factor that was a part of the natural order of life. Today, most lawmakers view law as a flexible instrument that can be used to accomplish a chosen purpose. “One strength of this instrumentalist attitude is its willingness to adapt the law to further the social good. A weakness, however, is the legal instability and uncertainty those adaptations often produce.” (Mallor, 2007) A few of the most important functions and roles of laws are to peaceably settle disputes, check government power, serve the economy and society, and protect the environment.
Law plays a basic and important role in keeping the peace through civil and criminal laws. “Criminal law is the law under which the government prosecutes someone for committing a crime. It creates duties that are owed to the public as a whole.” (Mallor, 2007) A major function of civil law is the “obligations that private parties owe to each other. It is the law applied when one private party sues another.” (Mallor, 2007) However, a government body can be party to a civil suit if it sues or is sued by an individual or business.
The constitution is a great example of the restrictions or checking of government power. It promotes personal and corporate freedoms and prevents the government from taking certain actions that would restrict those freedoms. The principle of the separation of powers gives Congress, the president, and the federal courts certain powers to keep the interest of the people and businesses in mind. A system of checks and balances was set up to create a...
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Statutory law – this body of law is crucial to the safety of the public. How our different bodies of government function and many of the laws within them are based on the above law. The outline used for today’s society and how justice is maintained comes from this law. (Demand Media, 2011) Mainly these laws are written and set by governing authorities in response to the needs of the public or civil order. (Statutory law - Definition, 2010)
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In every society around the world, the law is affecting everyone since it shapes the behavior and sense of right and wrong for every citizen in society. Laws are meant to control a society’s behavior by outlining the accepted forms of conduct. The law is designed as a neutral aspect existent to solve society’s problems, a system specially designed to provide people with peace and order. The legal system runs more efficiently when people understand the laws they are intended to follow along with their legal rights and responsibilities.
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According to Reference.com (2007), law is defined as: "rules of conduct of any organized society, however simple or small, that are enforced by threat of punishment if they are violated. Modern law has a wide sweep and regulates many branches of conduct." Essentially law is the rules and regulations that aid in governing conduct, handling disputes, and dealing with criminal actions.
There simply is no alternate system of laws that can maintain the calm and peaceful environment for people of the world besides “law”. One can easily see the need for each and every nation to enforce its own set of rules. While all of the countries of the world have their own individuality – they all have one considerable feature which is a system of law. It has no significance what type of government is the command, the rules are all appropriate to the people in their community.
The Rule of Law means that the state should govern its citizens, in a way which works with the rules that have been agreed on. The Rule of Law is simply a fundamental principle of our constitution. Britain and other Western democracies are different in that Britain has an unwritten constitution, meaning that our constitution is not found in a certain document but that we actually have a constitution from the rules about who governs it, and about the powers they entail and how that power can be passed or even transferred. The Constitution includes; Acts of Parliament, Judicial decisions and Conventions.There are three main principles around the Rule of Law being the separation of powers, the supremacy of Parliament and the Rule of Law. The
Law is a tool in society as it helps to maintain social control, promoting social justice. The way law functions in society and its social institution provide a mechanism for solutions. There are many different theories of the function of law in relation to society in considering the insight they bring to different socio-legal and criminological problems. In the discussion of law’s role in social theory, Leon Petrażycki and Eugen Ehrlich share similar beliefs in the jurisprudence of society. They focused their work on the experience of individuals in establishing meaning in their legal relations with others based on the question of what it means to be a participant in law. Jürgen Habermas presents a relationship between law and morality. From a certain standpoint, law is a key steering mechanism in society as it plays an educational role in promoting conducts, a mean of communication and it
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