Contract

• What is The balancing of competing interests?

  Looks at how the courts ensure that both parties are heard equally
• What is fault?


  This looks at the idea of blameworthiness and ensuring the wrongdoer takes legal responsibility
• What is society?


  A group of people that share territory, interaction and culture
• What did Lord Bingham say about law and society?

  There needs to be a clear set of rules that is backed up by strong enforcement and an independent judiciary

  Law should be accessible, clear and precise

  Everyone should be treated equally

  Courts need to be accessible and affordable
• What did Roscoe Pound say about law and society?

  There are formal and informal social control that governs our behaviour, thoughts and appearances

  Formal- Laws, criminal justice system

  Informal- Family, peers, community
• What three questions are linked to balancing of competing interests?

  what interests can be identified?

  what is the conflict between these interests?

  what is the legal mechanism by which the conflict is mediated?
• What are the two interests for balancing competing interests?

  Private interests - interests held by individuals

  Public interests - interests held by the state
• what is legal positivism?

  This is based on the idea that laws are valid where they are made by the recognised legislative power in the state and do not have to satisfy any higher authority
• What is natural law?

  This is a moral theory of jurisprudence, which maintains that law should be based on morality and ethics. The law is invalid without consulting morality
• What did Jeremy Bentham say about law and morality?

  Morality is irrelevant to the law
• What is personal morality?


  Values and beliefs you personally hold
• What is collective morality?

  Morals that wider society hold
• What is the difference between legal rules and moral rules?

  legal - the rule is formally enforceable in some way

  moral - we subject ourselves to the rule voluntarily
• What is justice?


  The idea of fairness and equality

  Justice is served through the way it seeks to punish wrongs and protect people’s rights
• What is distributive justice?

  The fair allocation of the benefits and responsibilities of life
• What is utilitarianism?


  Maximising happiness should be the object of justice
• What is social justice?

  Equal justice in all aspects of society