Basics Legal Concepts

• Law is a set of rules imposed on all the public within a community, which are consistently reinforced by organisations in society, such as police and courts.
• Just laws aim to achieve fairness, equality, and impartiality.
• Procedural fairness and the rule of law are kept relevant by investigating their role in maintaining justice.
• Ethics are the set of principles and values that define what a society views as right or wrong, and are formed off on personal beliefs and traditions.
• Values are the ideas, feelings and principles someone or a society holds as important, and are formed off on personal beliefs and traditions.
• Customs are a collective behaviour or tradition that has been developed in a community over a long period of time, and not all customs are rules but they have the foundation to form rules.
• Rules are formal regulations of individual behaviour governing and controlling conduct, and are generally set out in writing and subjected to enforcement if broken.
• Laws are a set of rules imposed on all the public within a community, which are consistently reinforced by organisations in society, such as police and courts.
• Laws are made to be impartial and unbiased.
• The relationship between customs, rules, laws, ethics and values is a step-by-step formula for creating not only formalised laws but a civilised society as each concept is formed based on one another.
• Values are a set of morals and principles one creates on personal beliefs, and are used to build the basis of ethics which is what a society views as right and wrong.
• To maintain these specific ethics within a society customs are made to establish behaviours and traditions to live out these ethics.
• When people live together in groups they develop rules based on customs to govern their behaviour.
• The difference between laws and rules is that laws are to be obeyed by all citizens of a society, are made by a law-making body (court or government), are enforced through the courts, and a breach results in a prescribed sanction imposed by the courts.
• Justice in law is the concept that everyone should be subject to the same laws and punishments which should be proportionate to the crime committed.
• Fairness in law means the law is implied without bias and impartial to everyone.
• Access in law means the law should be financially, physically and psychologically accessible to everyone.
• In the court room, each side has the right to be heard and give their arguments.
• Procedural Fairness is a fundamental principle underpinning the Australian legal system, requiring the courts to follow fair and proper procedures in order to follow judicial decisions.
• Courts must treat everyone equally, equity before the law, jury cannot be bias.
• Nicholas Cowdery created the 6 features of rule of law: the government must be bound by the same laws as individuals, the laws must be certain, general, and equal, the law must conform to social values, there must be an independent judiciary, laws must conform to procedural fairness, and the public must favour the application of rule of law.
• Having police and courts to regularly enforce laws is crucial for the effectiveness of laws.
• Evidence should be used to support decisions.
• The rule of law states that everybody is the subject to the law, and nobody is above the law (except God).
• Courts must inquire into matters in dispute.
• Just laws have to be accepted by society's values and ethics to be effective, emphasising the relation between ethics forming laws.
• The law must not discriminate based on physical appearance or biased opinions.
• These laws should be current, acceptable with society values and ethics, known, enforceable, and applied to everyone equally.
• People should only be subject to laws they know about, meaning if a law is not clearly stated on a government website they cannot be faced with consequences for breaking it.
• Rules are to be obeyed by specific individuals or groups, are made by individuals or groups, are enforced by leaders of a group, and a breach results in consequences at the discretion of the group leader.
• Equality in law means everyone has access to the law and it should not discriminate on personal and/or bias opinions.
• Just laws cannot apply retrospectively, meaning they cannot apply to stuff that happened before they were created.
• What is the definition of the term 'Law'


  Laws are a set of legal rules imposed/bonded in a community and are enforceable by government organisations, such as police and courts.