The Importance of Law
Chapter 1 of the cond edition of Letters to a Law Student deals with the question of why anyone would want to study Law, and in the cour of so doing defends the importance of law, and by extension the work that lawyers do. The object of this ction is to provide a gateway through which you can explore on the Internet in greater detail exactly why law is such an importance force in our civilisation.
The functions of law
Law can be said to perform four different functions, each of which is of huge importance to our welfare.
合作经营(1) Defending us from evil
红绿灯鱼怎么繁殖感恩学校的作文The first and most basic function of law is to defend us from evil – that is, tho who would ek to harm us for no good reason. This function of law underlies 20th century developments in International Law such as the Nuremberg Trials and the creation of the Int意欲捕鸣蝉全诗
ernational Criminal Court.
(2) Promoting the common good
Law is not just concerned with bringing evil people to account for their actions. A community made up of people who bear no ill-will to anyone el and are simply concerned to pursue their own lf-interest needs law becau there are situations where if everyone pursues their own lf-interest, everyone will be wor off than they would have been if they acted differently. (This is the rever of the ‘invisible hand’ phenomenon where if everyone pursues their own lf-interest, everyone in the community is made better off, as if everyone’s actions were guided by an ‘invisible hand’ to achieve that end.) So a community of lf-interested actors needs law: (i) to solve ‘Prisoner’s dilemma’ situations; (ii) to distribute into private hands property that would otherwi be exploited by everyone, thereby avoiding a ‘tragedy of the commons’ situation arising; (iii) to prevent people acting on their natural desire to extract ‘an eye for an eye’ in revenge for actual or perceived wrongs that they have suffered at other people’s hands.
(3) Resolving disputes over limited resources
led广告牌
投币洗衣机As every family knows, in any community there will always be disputes over who should have what of a limited number of resources. Law is needed to resolve the disputes, as exemplified by the famous story of the Judgment of Solomon.
(4) Encouraging people to do the right thing
It was thought even from classical times that law performed a fourth function – that of encouraging and helping people to do the right thing. For example, Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) argued that people needed the discipline of law to habituate them into doing the right thing, from which standpoint they could then appreciate why doing the right thing was the right thing to do. Up until the 20th century, this view of law was accepted by law makers, with the result that the UK legal system contained a large number of ‘morals laws’ – that is, laws that were designed purely and simply to stop people acting immorally, according to the lights of Christian teaching on what counted as immoral behaviour. However, in the 20th century, the ‘harm principle’ propounded by John Stuart Mill in his b
ook ‘On Liberty’, according to which the law should not sanction people for acting immorally unless their conduct involved some harm to others, gained more and more popularity, and resulted in the abolition of large numbers of ‘morals laws’. The trends triggered what is now known as the Hart-Devlin debate over the extent to which it is legitimate for the law to enforce morality. Lord Devlin – at the time, a judge in the Hou of Lords, the highest court in the land – argued that law should enforce morality so as to prerve the cohesiveness of society. Professor H.L.A. Hart – at the time, the most famous legal philosopher in the world – bad his position squarely on Mill’s harm principle, though subject to the caveats that the law might legitimately prevent someone acting immorally if doing so involved harm to himlf or would cau offence to others. Hart’s views are t out in his widely read book ‘Law, Liberty and Morality’. Hart is thought to have won the debate – but his concessions that it might be legitimate to make it illegal for someone to engage in immoral behaviour that will (i) harm himlf or (ii) offend others, em to make little n. The same point can be made about tho ‘morals laws’ that survived the 20th century cull: if law does not have a role to play in enc
ouraging us to do the right thing, why is it illegal to have x in public, or to have x with animals, or to dig up dead bodies, or to take hallucinogenic drugs, or to help someone kill themlves?
The rule of law
美女墙纸Whether or not law has a role to play in encouraging us to do the right thing, no one doubts the continuing importance of law in performing the first three functions t out above. As a result, there is a widespread acceptance that the health and wealth of nations is crucially dependent on how far the rule of law is maintained and obrved in tho nations. See for example, this World Bank website, or this United Nations website, or this website maintained by the American Bar Association, or this essay on the importance of obrvance of property rights and the rule of law to a country’s development. As a result, a lot of attention is paid to indexes that attempt to chart how far countries around the world respect such things as the rule of law and private property rights. For examples of such indexes, e World Justice Project and International Property Rights.
Critics of the law
培优Having said all that, it should be acknowledged that numerous criticisms are made of the benefits that are suppod to flow from the existence of law, and the obrvance of the rule of law.
For example, some point out that the fact that a society respects the importance of the rule of law and private property rights is no guarantee that that society will be particularly just (or even that wealthy). The rule of law, it is argued, is compatible with great oppression, inequality and poverty; a point summed up by Anatole France’s famous obrvation that ‘The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.’
Others take this point further and argue that in the wrong hands, law can become an instrument of evil, a means by which a country’s rulers can rob people of their property and oppress minorities.
