What is Law?




By Andrea Garcia Costa


The word “law” refers to limits upon various forms of behavior. Some laws are descriptive: they simply describe how people, or even, natural phenomena, usually behave. Other laws are prescriptive,describe how people should behave.

The relations between people are regulated by prescriptive law, in all societies. But, most of them are reigned by the customs, that is, informal rules of social and moral behavior. But some of these rules, we just accept if we take part of the particular groups where these laws are inserted, such as religion, educational groups. And some of them are precise laws done by nations and enforced to be accepted by all the citizens upon their power.

Customs aren’t made by the governments, and they don’t need to be written down.These laws are taught by the instructions of family, school, the advice of friends and the experiences we acquire during our lives, learning, in this way, how to behave in society. Of course, sometimes, we break these rules, but even then, we don’t suffer any penalty. But if we continually break these rules, I mean, an important one , other members of society can ridicule us, criticize us, or even refuse to have anything with us. The ways people act, talk, drink, eat, work or relax are usually are guide by informal rules.These ones, having nothing to do with the ones done by the gorvernment.

The rules of social institutions tend to be more formal than the customs, carrying precise penalties for those who break them. However, they’re not enforced by the political authority. Sport clubs, for instance, often have detailed rules to be followed by their members. But if a member break these rules, the sport club may have no power of punishment over this member, than ask this member to leave the club.

When government make laws for the citizens, they use a system of courts backed by the power of the police to enforce these laws.

Government-made laws are nevertheless often patterned upon the informal rules of conduct already existing in society and relations between people are regulated by a combination of all these rules.

What motives do governments have in making and enforcing laws? Social control is one of the answers. Public laws establish the authority of the government itself, and civil laws provide a framework of interaction among citizens. Without laws, it is argued, there would be anarchy in society.

Another reason is the implementation of justice. Justice is a concept that most people feel is very important but few are able to define. Sometimes a just decision is simply a decision that most people feel is fair. What should the court decide, for example, whena a man kills his wife because she has a painful illness and begs him to help her die? It seems unjust to find him guilty of a crime, yet if we do not, isn’t there a danger that such mercy-killing will become so widespread that abuses will occur?

Laws, are, sometimes, simply an attempt to implement common sense. It’s obvious to most people that dangerous driving should be punished; that fathers should provide financial support for their children if they desert their families; that a person should be compensated for losses when someone else breaks an agreement with him or her. But, in order to be enforced, common sense needs to be defined in law, and when the definitions are being written, it becomes clear that common sense is not such a simple matter. Instead, it’s a complex skill based upon long observation of many different people in many different situations. Laws based on common sense don’t necessarily look much like common sense when they have to be put into words.

In practice, governments are neither institutions just interested in retaining power. They combine many purposes and inherit many traditions. The laws that they make and enforce reflect this confusion.

The laws made by a goverment for its country are often very different from the laws done by the other countries, of course, because of their different life situations. So it’s very difficult to someone write an introductory book to law, since the practices in this area are different varying from country to country, an important characterist of the modern world.
The England and Wales legal systems are the oldest still opering in the modern world. English law has influenced the law of the former English colonies as Australia, India, Canada and United States, where the law plays an important part in everyday life.