The Concepts of Law, Authority and Justice

The Concepts of Law, Authority and Justice

Laws in this sense mean prescriptive legal rules, as opposed to

descriptive patterns of cause and effect in nature. They are the laws

of society’s making, rather than the laws of science. There are

certain characteristics of these laws; they are designed and

implicated by society for society, they reflect the conventions of the

society which generates them, they are prescriptive which means that

their members of that society must or must not do certain things. They

can be violated, however sanctions are applied to those who do violate

them, and sanctions are the prerogative and responsibility of the

official government present in that society. The official government

has the right and duty to monitor and modify the laws of the state,

and citizens have to assimilate the laws and obey them, they cannot be

excused on the basis of ignorance or personal preference.

Whenever a group of individuals live in a social group or society,

they make rules which stipulate what behaviour is acceptable, and what

behaviour is unacceptable and punishments for breaking the rules.

These rules are what make up the laws within that society, this

suggests that the rules and laws vary from society to society, and

even within the same society over time. This is the case because the

laws reflect the values of that society which change over time. This

in turn suggests that there is no absolute law; an action is only

legal or illegal on the authority of the state.

We, as people who live in a society have an obligation to live by the

rules of that society; this obligation arises simply because we exist

in a soci...

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...heir assault and robbery, and

the unemployed shoplifter is trained in a skill and given a job.

Therefore, this approach actually holds punishment as only part of the

process of rehabilitation. The idea included in this theory is that

the unpleasant aspects of punishment will teach/train/condition the

offender not to offend again.

Finally, the deterrent/utilitarian theory of punishment, which Jeremy

Bentham was an advocate. Bentham said that ‘all punishment in itself

is evil…it ought only to be admitted in as far as it promises to

exclude some greater evil.’ He also believed that punishment was only

good if it achieved the greatest welfare for the greatest number.

Those rules which prohibit anti-social behaviour have to be enforced,

from a utilitarian perspective, to prevent community life from being

uncivilised.