Lecture notes
What is Law
- Module
- Foundation Year
- Institution
- City University (City)
This note answered the question of what is Law according the book of English Legal System
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What is Law?There are plenty of definitions for law, which are from different
sociologist. For example, the German sociologist, Max weber (1979)
argues that the primary role of law is to maintain order in society. Law
makes individuals accept the legitimacy of their rules, and gives them
the power to make law and coerce individuals into obeying it. Without
this coercive power, argues Weber, order could not be maintained.
What is order?
• Law and public order-boundaries of acceptable behaviours
• Law and political order: Constitutional function of law
• Law and social order-seek to converse established social
arrangement
• Law and economic order-market capitalism
• Law and international order-international bodies/UN
Professor Hart argues that the main function of law is simply to
allow human beings to survive in a community. He suggests that there
are certain truths about human existence, which, without rules guiding
our behaviour, would make life excessively dangerous.
What functions/purposes do you believe are fulfilled by the law?
• Provide ‘solutions’ to social problems
• Shape peoples attitudes and behaviours
• Preserve the power structure of society
• Bring out justice in society
There are many types of rules, which are not law: rules of
etiquette, school or club rules and moral rules. One way to
understand more about what law is, is to look at what
distinguishes legal rules from other types of rules.
Legal Rules:
It guides and directs our main activities in much of day-to-
day life. The purchases we make in a shop, our contact at work, our
relationship with the state. They are all built upon the foundation of legal
rules.
Social Rules:
Any society is governed by a mass of other rules, which are
not laws in the formal sense, but merely social convention-perception of
proper behaviours.
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