Law Society

• Values

  Core beliefs that people hold about what is moral/immoral
• Examples of values


  • Treat people how you want to be treated
  • Value hard work/work ethic
  • Honesty/not lying
  • Justice
  • Equality
  • Sanctity of human life
• Norms


  The action aspect of values - how you act on and live out your values - BEHAVIORS
• Norms


  • Guide daily behaviors
  • Held unconsciously
• Examples of norms


  • Sanctity of human life - not murder someone
  • Washing hands → value cleanliness, respect
  • Holding door for people
• Types of norms


  • Folkways - guide daily behavior, tend to be less serious when broken
  • Mores - norms surrounding deeply held beliefs about what is right/wrong, violation is met with strong societal condemnation
• Mores differentiate between right and wrong, while folkways differentiate between right and rude
• How people express beliefs through norms is not always the same
• Examples of values and norms

  • Value - sanctity of human life, Pro-life interpret as abortion violating human agency of fetus, Pro-choice interpret as violating human agency of mother
  • Value - patriotism, Pro - flag burning is legitimate freedom of expression, Anti - violation of more norm
• Laws


  External controls on people in society
• Values


  • Norms
  • Laws
• Violations of mores (more serious norms) tend to be against the law as felonies, while violations of folkways (less serious norms) tend to be against the law as misdemeanors, civil ordinances, fines, or nothing
• Not all violations of mores and folkways are illegal
• Whether a violation of a more or folkway is perceived depends on the person interpreting the event
• Not all norm violations are criminalized
• Norms


  Primary regulator of human behavior
• Laws


  Secondary regulator of human behavior
• Norm violations come first, then possible law violations
• Norms drive lawmaking


  If law strays too far from norms, the public won't respect it and the law loses deterrent value
• There are some situations where the assumption of a negative correlation between the severity of criminal law and the tolerance for rule breaking is false
• Examples where tougher laws lead to more tolerance for breaking the law

  • Prohibition - at first people supported it, but differential enforcement and targeting of urban areas led to contempt for the law
  • Abortion - split between norms, people on two sides and unsure people, when law is not on your side in a moral issue you can highlight the downsides
• Legal victory can lead to political defeat
• Law


  Governmental social control over the normative life of citizens (Donald Black)
• Law


  A body of binding obligation kept in force by the structure of society (consensus perspective)
• For something to be considered law, it must be regularly enforced and enforced by official authority (government)
• Some argue that for something to be a law, it must be just and moral
• Justice


  The constant and perpetual wish to give everyone what they deserve
• Examples of justice concepts

  • Comparative justice - individuals in similar situations are treated similarly
  • Discriminatory justice - law selectively enforced against an individual based on a characteristic
  • Procedural justice - government reaching decisions through fair procedures
  • Restorative justice - individuals who are harmed are compensated for their injuries
• Common law


  Judgments provide precedents, use precedents for future cases, promotes predictability and uniformity in legal decisions
• Civil law


  Legal tradition where statutes are passed by legislatures and are the only recognized source of law, primary assumption is that statutes have no other meaning than the words on the page
• The US uses a mix of common law and civil law
• Socialist legal tradition


  Criminality stems from human imperfections, which stem from societal imperfections, role of law is to support political and economic domination
• Religious-based law


  Establish obligations of citizens to reach human salvation, law and morality are intrinsically linked, tend to focus on substance rather than procedure
• Purposes of law


  • Social control
  • Dispute resolution
  • Social change
  • Record keeping
  • Dysfunction
• Divisions of legal doctrine

  • Public law - relationship between citizen and state
  • Private law - relationship between individuals in society
• Laws


  Glue that holds society together
• Study of Law


  • Legal doctrine - study of rules to be applied when following law
  • Jurisprudence - consideration of philosophical questions underlying law
  • Law and society - study of how external events can impact law
• Primary divisions of law

  • Public law - relationship between citizen and state
  • Private law - relationship between individuals in society
• Subsets of public law

  • Criminal law and criminal procedure - definitions of crimes, how to properly investigate
  • Constitutional law - structure of government, relationship between branches, limits of government power
  • Administrative law - regulates ability of government to weigh in on various activities
• People who study legal doctrine are likely to argue that law is easy to be uniformly applied