Departamento de Derecho y Ciencias Políticas

Programa Bilingüismo
Primer Semestre
Espacio Académico: Fundamentos de Derecho

THE IMPORTANCE OF LAW IN OUR SOCIETY

These writing to Law Students deals with the question of why anyone would want
to study Law, and in the course of so doing defends the importance of law, and by
extension the work that lawyers do. The object of this section is to provide a
gateway through which you can explore by yourself or even by Internet in greater
detail exactly why law is such an importance force in our civilization.

Kate Finnin (1), ask ¿What is the importance of law today? In order to establish
this we must first establish what the point of law is. Law and order are essential in
all communities. In an orderly law-abiding community people can plan ahead, work
in safety and do business in trust. In most modern societies order means stability.
The guarantees of this order take place in the form of laws. Laws are rules and
customs that the citizens of a community regard as binding upon them and can be
enforced by the courts. Laws provide boundaries so that people realize where they
are committing an offence.

One of the principal objects of the law is to safeguard the rights of citizens, us. Our
basic rights are what give us our freedom in daily life: the freedom of speech, the
right to a fair trial, personal freedom etc. Try to imagine the limitations we would
have if we were stripped of these rights. I might not be allowed stand here in front
of you if I did not have the freedom of speech, you might not be allowed here today
if you did not have personal freedom. Just this aspect of the law alone provides us
with so much that we take for granted. We also take justice for granted we fail to
realize, between our complaining, that we can receive closure when the law and
the courts do their job. We have all experienced the loss of a loved one. Try to
remember that grief. Now try to add the anger one would feel if that person was
brutally murdered.

¿Can society exists without laws?

Naturally, there cannot be a society without laws. In any society, everyone has to
adhere to the laws made. The reason being that laws exist only for the society.
According to former judge C. Upendra: if there is no law then there is no society.
Hence, the legal philosophy of Savigny stated that a law grows with the growth of
the society itself and finally withers away as the nation loses its nationality. Most
importantly, the law serves as the backbone of organized societies and
tends to keep the society bounds.

Everyone must do as the law says, or else he/she will face the punishments which
will be handed out in the case of him/her ending up being law-breakers. Hence, the

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law major role is to act as a deterrent to control the evil and treacherous behavior
of human beings to maintain discipline and progression within the society.

Additionally, the role that law plays in the society is to guarantee the rights of those
who are weaker either physically or socially in any given social structure. It is
clearly impossible for everybody in any society to have absolute freedom: as one
person may want to exercise that freedom, it would trample upon somebody else's
freedom. So, the laws put limits on each person's freedom in order to protect other
person's freedom. For example: we are free to drive a car on the road, but only if
we possess a valid driving license and even then, we must keep to one side of the
road, and also obey to the speed limits and road signs. In this way, although our
freedom to drive is restricted, we are protected from other people's careless or
unskilled driving.

Today laws are therefore enacted by elected representatives of the social group
with political power to protect the rights of life and substance from those in a
society who would use their prestige, wealth and manipulation of arms to restrict
the rights of others. Laws are written to be followed and applied equally to all
people in a given society to ensure that no one feels abused by his fellow
countrymen and to protect members of society from each other.

According to Luke Mac an Bháird (2): Protection against violence is something that
most of us take for granted. We have a legal system that is put in place to protect
us from people intent on physically harming us. Physical violence can often lead to
murder, rape, torture and other life-threatening situations. The safety of society is
key to the continued success of a particular race. Laws are there to protect people,
it won’t actually stop a person with no moral compass, but will in general stop an
aggravated person from committing potential life-threatening violence as the
consequences alone, deter them from carrying through what their mind wants them
to.

The laws of the land are there to protect not only us but our property too. It is
upsetting to hear about frail elderly women and men being robbed at gun point and
families being kept hostage in their own house while thief’s steal the things that
they worked hard to get. The law is there to keep peoples conscious at a level
where they understand the repercussions of their actions.

Respecting human rights promotes the common good within people. People who
respect law, understand its significance, and abide by it, generally have better and
more fulfilled lives. Those who respect law can move freely around, whereas those
who break it are punished in most cases with their freedom being taken away.
Laws help to promote the common good by setting out a line of laws that prohibits
persons from infringing on those that may cause harm or offence. No one would
like to live in a society where people only have self-interest at heart.

Having laws within our community keeps society ordered. The wide range of laws
keep people from dumping wastes that could be deathly like toxic waste into our
water systems. If no law prevented this, many people would die as a result of toxic
water. Laws help to prevent the spread of disease as informed people would not
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risk putting themselves or others into trouble. In America alone, the “National
Centre for Health Statistics” reported that in the “1990’s, degenerative diseases
accounted for more than 60 percent of all deaths”. The lack of laws that were in
place to help these people, many died without the support of the government. The
implementation of laws in accordance with other states prevents total and utter
destruction of our society.

THE FUNCTIONS OF LAW

According to Pearson (3), law can be said to perform four different functions, each
of which is of huge importance to our welfare.

1) Defending us from evil

The first and most basic function of law is to defend us from evil – that is, those
who would seek to harm us for no good reason. This function of law underlies 20th
century developments in International Law such as the creation of the International
Criminal Court.

2) Promoting the common good

Law is not just concerned with bringing evil conducts of people to account for their
actions. A community made up of people who bear no ill-will to anyone else and
are simply concerned to pursue their own self-interest needs law because there
are situations where if everyone pursues their own self-interest, everyone will be
worse off than they would have been if they acted differently. (This is the reverse of
the ‘invisible hand’ phenomenon where if everyone pursues their own self-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 self-interested actors
needs law: (i) to solve ‘Prisoner’s dilemma’ situations; (ii) to distribute into private
hands property; (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

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 these
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.

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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 book ‘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’.
These 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 House of Lords, – argued that law should enforce morality so
as to preserve the cohesiveness of society. Professor H.L.A. Hart – at the time, the
most famous legal philosopher in the world – based 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 himself or would
cause offence to others. Hart’s views are set 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 himself or (ii) offend others, seem to make little sense.
The same point can be made about those ‘morals laws’ that survived the 20th
century cull: if law does not have a role to play in encouraging us to do the right
thing, why is it illegal to have sex in public, or to have sex with animals, or to dig up
dead bodies, or to take hallucinogenic drugs, or to help someone kill themselves?

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
set 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 observed in those nations.

Critics of the law

Having said all that, it should be acknowledged that numerous criticisms are made
of the benefits that are supposed to flow from the existence of law, and the
observance 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 observation 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.

It is also argued that even if law is not actually used as an instrument of evil, it can
become its accomplice by doing such things as:

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(i) hamstringing public officials from doing what is necessary to prevent terrorist
atrocities; and
(ii) granting people rights and encouraging them to exercise them, thereby
fostering a damaging culture of complaint and compensation culture that alienates
people from each other, and discourages people from helping other people for fear
that doing so might result in their being sued.

Conclusion

All legal systems do harm of one kind or another. Some of that harm is intended: in
order to achieve its goals, a legal system always has to limit people’s freedom.
Some of that harm is an unintended side effect of the legal system’s attempting to
achieve its goals: for example, harms (i) and (ii), above. What is important is: 1)
that our legal system do more good than harm; and 2) that our legal system not do
any unnecessary harm. I don’t have any doubt that (1) is true of our legal system;
at the same time, I don’t have any doubt that (2) is not true. So the verdict on our
legal system must be ‘good, but could be better’. How our legal system could be
improved is a matter of debate. A good starting point for students interested in
joining that debate would be Michael Sandel’s Harvard lectures on ‘Justice’, which
are available in Internet.

(1) Ver http://www.markedbyteachers.com/gcse/law/the-importance-of-law-in-our-

society.html
(2) Ver http://lukemac.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/the-importance-of-laws-in-our-
society/
(3)
http://wps.pearsoned.co.uk/ema_uk_he_mcbride_letters_2/142/36409/9320853.cw
/content/index.html

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 Departamento de Derecho y Ciencias Políticas
Programa Bilingüismo
Primer Semestre
Vocabulario: Fundamentos de Derecho

Absolute freedom Human rights

Accomplice Inequality
Achieve its goals International criminal court
Alienates people International law
Backbone Into trouble
Being law-breakers It is upsetting
Being sued Jude
Binding Judgment
Boundaries Kill
Business Law
Cause harm or offence Law makers
Caveats Law-abiding community
Citizens Lawyers
Cohesiveness Life-threatening situations
Complaining Morals laws
Courts Murder
Deaths Murdered
Defend us from evil Offence
Deterrent Oppression
Dig up dead bodies People who bear no ill-will to anyone
Driving license Personal freedom
Drugs Physically harming us
Dumping wastes Poverty
Elected representatives Property
Enacted Punishments
Everyone purses Rape
Fostering a damaging Right to a fair trial
Freedom Rights of citizens
Freedom of speech Road sings
Gateway Rules
Grief Safeguard
Guarantee the rights Safety
Guarantees Society bounds
Hamstringing public official Stability
Have won the debate Standpoint
Hostage
Take for granted
The common good
The lack of law
The verdict
These trends triggered
To beg
To engage
To ensure
To limit people´s freedom
To steal
Torture
Treacherous behavior
Trust
Unskilled driving
Utter
Weaker
Whereas
Widespread acceptance
Withers away