Preserved Topic: what is law in your mind? (Page 1 of 1)

I post this to discuss the concept "law" .

Where did it came from?

How do you define it ?

what role does the law play in your country?

Wellcome to tell me



i love beatles

Well, for me, anarchy is a concept i would like to try but i´m sure society would screw up (more! )

Law definetly was created for people to follow it and stablish an order in the way people interact. The problem is some people think laws ware made to break them.

Certainly, that law topic is extensive and complicated, thats why I´ll never be a lawyer!!! (no ofensse)

Most, but not all, laws (in my opinion anyways) are just simple common sense revised. You can't kill someone over beef jerky. You can't eat babies. You can't hurl a brick at cars from an overpass.

Of course there are laws that make no sense whatsoever, like making a plant illegal, or not being able to punish a child for wrongdoing by spanking...

njuice42
icq 957255

Law is a restriction. Its a way of maintaining control over the population. Keeping order in potential chaos. Keeping the poor poor, and the rich rich. Its good and bad depending on your perspective. It has consequences and sets a generic standard of societical behaviour. Its a guideline to which one is judged.

wow, that was boring

ummm.. I might be ignorant to some laws, but in my virgin mind I tend to think that it kind of makes some sense in classifying some plants as illegal and banning spanking of children.

All however must be set in context and thats where many laws fail.

Laws are society's attempt to deal with those nit-pickers and malcontents who want to have their societal cake and eat it too. i.e., those that want to be a part of a society but don't always want to abide by the social contract of that society. So the laws are meant to help force those people to comply or to help justify isolating them from those who will comply.

Unfortunately, like with children breaking the rules that parents set forth, the laws have a tendancy to get more and more complex to deal with the argumentative nature of malcontents. Such to the point that they begin to take on a life of their own.

It'd be nice if we could all just get along under the umbrella of the "Common Sense" credo, but I doubt we'll ever get to that point.

Witherin

*rubs hands, rolls up sleeves, feeling a debate brewin'*

As for the plant thing, I have a stance on the subject that would quite literally equal up to novella lengths, and therefore will not burden you and others with posting it. Unless you really want to have an intellectual, mature debate about it, in which case I'm total game.

Moving on to the child spankings... I was spanked numerous times as a child and I think it's a totally normal, healthy way of punishing a child for his actions. There has to be fear in your life, and a fear of getting in trouble for doing something bad is a good fear for a child to have. If all you do is set the child in his/her room and tell it that it's done bad and that it's now time out, c'mon, that's like getting suspended from school for skipping.

I grew up healthy, albeit a few problems here and there, but everyone has problems to speak of.

But then as the great Dennis Miller always said, "It's just my opinion, I could be wrong."

njuice42
icq 957255

You clearly can't make a plant illegal but you can make the processing of it and the possesion of the plant and its products illegal. and in some cases that must be a good thing - opium poppies for example.

Emps

law is what lawmakers make

Hey, vanvanta, only WebShaman is allowed to ask people to define basic terms! I thought you knew that!

But it's a good question. Let's see....

The basic trend in the post so far is that law maintains order and keeps chaos at bay. njuice42 makes an interesting point by reminding us that law plays a role in molding the superego.

Law, I believe is designed to control basic human impulses so that human beings can live together in society. Which is pretty much what everyone else has already said. Law in reality, though, is not perfect--which has also been pointed out here. Law should simply serve to keep order, but there a lot of fuzzy lines in this picture. For example, how does law relate to morality? And who decides which standards law is supposed to uphold? Is law an ideal form (in the sense of Plato's eidos; ie, is there a universal order that must be preserved), or is it solely a human creation?

I think you need to have at least an idea of what your answers are to these questions if you want to formulate a coherent theory of law.

True, true.

And if ever there were a law for laws, is that every one of them has an exception.



njuice42
icq 957255

Addendum:

For those outside of North America, this may have little reference. But for the rest of you..

I've been watching Jay Leno's 10th Anniversary special tonight. If anyone ever asks why we need laws, all you have to do is point them towards any single segment of the Tonight Show's Jay Walking and you'll see why. With people like that roaming around we, and they, need all the protection laws can make available.

Witherin

Witherin, I can't agree with you more. The U.S. military channel shows Leno over here, and I've sometimes watched those "Jay Walking" segments with my wife. The first time she saw one she turned to me and asked, "Are Americans really that stupid?" To which I replied: "Just the ones in California."

Seriously, though, those segments are hilarious because they are so frightening. I think we laugh because we don't know what else to do. Personally, I think we should take them all and lock them up in a big padded cell here at the Asylum, just to see how long it would take before they started consuming their own excrement.

I say we put them in Arthemis' wing!





What does it mean?

I second the motion.

Something wrong with my computer now ,i can not see what is jay walking...

As for myself,Law is quite a big concept.

In china history,the character "fa" which means "law" had been used to refer to a way that handle the country affairs.Sometimes,it is also means criminals law which deals with the criminal case.
There was no a real "civil law " concept in china feudal history.The life and business confict was solved by the officers.They handle these kind of cases by theory of "ru"(which was founded by the theorist Kongzi) ."ru" is not
law ,it is only a kind of traditional thinking ,every body should obey it ,it is the most powerful strength in china ,even the empiror should obey it .It cover every area of life including politics ,family etc.

Now,china has establish quite a big law system .Most of the law concept came from Germany and Japan

especially in the civil law area .But "Law " in china still very different from that in other country .Sometimes,the
"policy" and sb's words play an even more important role in the society.

In my mind,

Law should be a part of the superstructure of a country machine .

It should be a way to distribute the rights and duties.

A contract which made by all the classes.

A game regulation that every player accept and obey after a long time practice.

sometimes,
it is the powerful weapon of the leader class

Sometimes,
It is just a decoration of democracy.


i love beatles

[This message has been edited by vanvanta (edited 05-01-2002).]

Vanvanta

quote:

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Something wrong with my computer now ,i can not see what is jay walking...

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Sorry you can't link to the site vanvanta.

Here's the concept so you can understand what I was discussing. A late night entertainer, named Jay Leno, would go out on the streets and pick people at random to ask them basic questions from history, science, geography, etc.. The funny, and sad, part of the segment was the complete stupidity of the responses. A question like, "In what country was the Vietnam war fought?" would garner an answer like, "Korea?". Or, "How was Mount Rushmore made?" would garner the answer, "Erosion?". (Mount Rushmore is a famous mountain in South Dakota where Gutzon Borglum and 400 workers sculpted the 60-foot busts of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln to represent the first 150 years of American history.)

Witherin



[This message has been edited by Witherin (edited 05-01-2002).]

Yes, on land that was promised to native american indians, and then 'taken' back, after gold was found in the region....hardly a good place for a national monument, don't you think?

OK, I guess I was a bit unclear about the illegal plant thing.
My meaning was along the lines of what Emps said.

quote:

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you can make the processing of it and the possesion of the plant and its products illegal

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But I strongly disagree with the spanking. Kids should not get spanked as part of their upbringing. I do not think that it is the way to go, since it means that they won't do this or that cause of the fear of physical punishment rather than understanding why.

Of course -as I stated earlier- everything should be in context.

It's utterly ridiculus that kids are sueing their parents for a slap on the fingers, but kids have to have sufficient legal protection when it comes to physical punishment, and that legal line has to be "no spanking".

Who should set the limit for what's accepted?

I might think it's ok with a slap on the fingers, some may think a slap in the face or a spanked bottom, some may go further.

If you look at it from a holistic view the spanking/non-spanking of children is the childrens world of law and justice. If you sign a law that allows you to spank your kids as part of their upbringing, then that law have to have set scales for what breach in behaviour that results in what amount of physichal pain. Otherwise it would not be equal to all.

But then again, since most countries have abolished physichal punishment of criminals, why would we allow it towards our kids....