The law is important for a society for it serves as a norm of conduct for citizens.

It was also made

to provide for proper guidelines and order upon the behaviour for all citizens and to sustain the
equity on the three branches of the government. It keeps the society running. Without law there
would be chaos and it would be survival of the fittest and everyman for himself. Not an ideal
lifestyle for most part.

The law is important because it acts as a guideline as to what is accepted in society. Without it
there would be conflicts between social groups and communities. It is pivotal that we follow them.
The law allows for easy adoption to changes that occur in the society.

The importance of laws are paramount to the survival of our society as we know it. Without laws,
the society in which we live in today would be far different as we struggle to remain in control of
our future. The bullying few, would decimate our society into either of two forms, an anarchical
society where people do as they please, or a society on the brink of extension due to the lack of
civil order. What I will explain to you in this article will, I hope, make you see sense in the
importance of our laws in the society we live in. To be against the importance of laws in our
society would show one to be ignorant and nave. I will without a doubt, prove that statement I
have made to be correct.

Protection against violence is something that most of us take for granted. We have a strong legal
system that is put in place to protect us from people intent on physically harming us. Physical
violence can often lead to murder, rape, torture and other life-threatening situations. The safety of
society is key to the continued success of a particular race. Laws are there to protect people, it
wont actually stop a person with no moral compass, but will in general stop an aggravated person
from committing potential life-threatening violence as the consequences alone, deter them from
carrying through what their mind wants them to. One cannot dispute this as protection laws have
been successfully implemented in most continents around the world. The international homicide
rate for Europe in the year 2004 was at five point four percent. In Africa however, where
protection laws are either non-existent or not widely regarded, their international homicide rate
was at twenty percent. There are many different tribes and traditions in the African continent
which means that people in different areas will adhere to different laws. The problem with that is,
the African continent is a lot less connected with each other in comparison to Europe and some
laws will conflict another which would be disputed rather than resolved therefore not providing a
strong legal system that protects its people. This statistic shows the importance of laws in our
society as it helps to protect the us against people with immoral intentions.

What would you do if you walked into a supermarket in your local area and saw dozens of young
children under the age of fourteen mopping floors and carrying heavy goods around the place?
After the horrific scene fizzles in your mind, the spark will ignite in your head to get those
children help. Here in our society of four and half million people, the Irish state is completely and
utterly against the exploitation of our rights. That is why we have stringent laws in place, both
nationally and internationally to protect our human rights. As a whole we respect those laws,
although there are a small minority that disregard peoples human rights like for example in the
Britain where four travellers were arrested for slavery offences. The importance of the law here
shows that these people will be punished as a result of their actions. In other countries though
where human rights laws are on paper only, not in practice, evidently show the importance of law
as states like China disrespect human rights and subject children to child labour. A popular case
regarding this issue was brought up in February of 2010. As reported by The Daily Mail and
other international newspapers, it had been discovered that technology giant Apple had children
working in buildings that supply Apple products. A report carried out by the Associated Press
stated that at least eleven under age children were working at factories, many of them in China,
which produce Apple components in the last year. Without mincing words here, China dont
follow laws when regarding child labour. It is a fact that has been proven time and time again. The
Chinese government dont even publish statistics on the extent of child labour within the country.
Independent organisations must dig up the atrocities themselves. Their complete abandon of child
protection laws are evident as The International Labor Organization (ILO) has estimated that of
the 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work in developing countries,
sixty-one percent are in Asia. It is internationally recognised, although cannot be proven because
of Chinese secrecy, that most of the sixty-one percent of child labourers are in fact working in
Chinese sweatshops. The fact of the matter is that nobody wants to be subjected to inhumane
activities such as slavery. There was a time in Europe when international law was broken and
peoples rights smashed. As a result of that, nearly one hundred million people died. Nobody wants
another World War two, thats why the importance of law in our society must be respected and
adhered to.

Respecting human rights promotes the common good within people. People who respect law,
understand its significance, and abide by it, generally have better and more fulfilled lives. Those
who respect law can move freely around whereas those who break it are punished in most cases
with their freedom being taken away. The Buddha made a speech in which he said that set your
heart on doing good. Do it over and over again, and you will be filled with joy. He shares the
same idea that the common good often results in a better healthy lifestyle for people. Laws help to
promote the common good by setting out a line of laws that prohibits persons from infringing on
those that may cause harm or offence. No one would like to live in a society where people only
have self interest at heart. That has been proven with the fall of our last government.

The laws of the land are there to protect not only us but our property too. It is upsetting for me
when I hear about frail elderly women and men being robbed at gun point and families being kept
hostage in their own house while criminals, thiefs, degenerates steal the things that they worked
hard to get. The law is there to keep peoples conscious at a level where they understand the
repercussions of their actions. That is why here in Ireland, where the law of the land is generally
respected and followed, it is expected that with the advancement in technology and the rising of
prices that there will be a rise in petty crime and robberies. But here in the Emerald Isle, crime
was at a relatively low seventy six thousand, eight hundred and forty only last year as stated by the
Central Statistics Office of Ireland. To put that into perspective for you, the level of criminality
in neighbouring Scotland was estimated to be at one hundred and four thousand. I think its fair to
say that our justice system is doing pretty well. The peoples revolution in Libya had brought
international attention. As believers of democracy, we waved them on in their pursuit of a
democratic state. Well, as expected the western media is going to be pro-rebels which I completely
understand, but the level of criminality that has occurred during their pursuit of democracy has
been appalling. Houses of innocent people have been raided, people have been robbed on the
streets, others shot dead and then stolen from. This is a prime example of lawlessness which
strengthens my argument about the importance of law in our society.

Laws in society lead to the progression of society. Laws allow for the comfort of education to be
taught. It enables technology to grow through the distribution of patents and regulations. Without
laws protecting these vital services and advancements, peoples right to learn would not exist
leading to social default within society. The health service operates under strict laws which
helps both the patient and nurse. It provides the nurses and doctors with safe knowledge over the
use of certain medical equipment. Lawless states would not have these rules and regulations
therefore putting society at risk because doctors, nurses, teachers and many more professionals
would be giving out their own dosages which they felt would be appropriate which is why laws
are important to have in society.

Having laws within our community keeps society ordered. The wide range of laws keep people
from dumping wastes that could be deathly like toxic waste into our water systems. If no law
prevented this, many people would die as a result of toxic water. Laws help to prevent the spread
of disease as informed people would not risk putting themselves or others into trouble. In America
alone, the National Centre for Health Statistics reported that in the 1990s, degenerative
diseases accounted for more than 60 percent of all deaths. The lack of laws that were in place to
help these people, many died without the support of the government. The implementation of laws
in accordance with other states prevents total and utter destruction of our society. The so called
Mad Dogs of our society are prevented by law from committing atrocities like firing a nuclear
missile. These set of laws help to keep our society ordered which is important for our world.

The importance of laws in our society are absolutely key to the safety of our lives. They are there
to protect our rights as human beings, to promote the goodness within ourselves. To deter
criminality with the punishment of imprisonment or worse. Laws are important to the progression
of society where education and technology are protected so that they can flourish. The laws within
our community help to keep our society ordered without turning us into Stepford wives. It is
unfortunate that we take laws in our society for granted whether or not we intend to break them. It
is important that I stress that laws dont limit us, but empowers us to lead a life of justification. As
I said earlier, to be against the importance of laws in our society would show one to be ignorant
and nave. Through my comprehensive answer, I have proved that statement correct. More
importantly however, I hope that I have convinced you, that laws within society are paramount to
the survival of our race.

(Luke Mac an Bhird)

onclusion
One cannot finish a day without hearing about a crime. Each and every day a murder or an attack
has been carried out or a group of houses or buildings have been broken into. Policemen and
women return to work everyday and put their lives on the line in order to protect ours, but each
day they get abused or mocked because certain people have lost faith in their legal system.
Children are now being brought up to believe that the police are nothing but 'pigs'. The abusage of
the law is at an all time high and unfortunately the people abusing the law fail to believe that they
are forcing the need for it to be increased, quite literally, daily. If offenders would just realise that
laws are necessary for the progression and production of a country then the need for the protection
and sense of security obtained from the legal system would significantly decrease. I also find it
quite ironic that the independence and way of living that so many people died for during, and for
many centuries after, the Irish Revolution, is now being detested and rejected. It doesn't seem fair,
does it? ...read more.

The above preview is unformatted text

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Law section.

Most definitely the so-called civil law or, depending on you location, the common law.

The law is a set of rules designed to regulate relations (a) between humans and (b) between
humans and objects. What exactly those rules are, and how they operate, varies.

Typically, when people think of the law, they think of circumstances when the law becomes
visible, i.e. in exceptional circumstances that are potentially life-changing, i.e. criminal law,or
when the state makes its presence known, by demanding you pay taxes.

However, daily life is usually regulated by a much larger degree by the so-called zivilrecht, for
lack of a better word, a law of interpersonal relationships.

You get up in the morning, out of bed? Chances are you bought that bed someplace, so the law of
contracts, which governs sales, has something to do with it. The bed is standing in a flat or house,
which is either rented law on lease agreements, or owned property law. You take a shower
you have a service agreement with your utilities provider, who ensures that there is water in the
pipe leading to your domicile.

You get dressed law of contracts concerning how you bought the clothes you wear, property
law concerning youre allowed to do with them as you please.

You leave house and walk down the street traffic laws are designed dot make that a safe and
convenient experience: and enter a coffee shop. There, you buy a cup of coffee, a bagel, and an
newspaper for your breakfast depending on where in the world you are, you just entered into,
and executed, anything between one and nine contracts governing the passage of ownership of
coffee, bagel and newspaper to you, reciprocal obligations (stuff for money) concerning the
quality, payment of the items you purchased, and them now belonging to you, and not to the
coffee shop, any more.

If the coffee shop is part of a chain, chances are you will not be contracting with the guy behind
the counter, but with a company (f.e, Starbucks?), so laws on representation and agency also
apply. In 90% of the cases, if your coffee is cold, you will complain to whoever sold you your
coffee if the coffee is too cold Implied terms, coffee is suitable for human consumption and of
a typically to be expected quality and temperature.

All of this happens more or less in plain sight, but out of mind. It is supposed to happen that
way. The law is there, more or less invisible to non-lawyers, but it only becomes visible when
things go wrong. y Our everyday lives are typically enmeshed by legal rules, most of them
concerning commercial transactions in the widest sense. That is the area of law that most of us
will find prevalent in our everyday lives. Everything else, Taxes, criminal law, etc., is not nearly as
prevalent.

Side note: A lot of areas are also explicitly NOT regulated by the law. Social interations, for
example: If you invite someone for dinner, and then let them stand outside in the rain,you will
typically not suffer legal consequences (i.e. you will not have breeched a contract), but you will
suffer purely social consequences (chances are, whoever you invited will not want to see you
again).

The Importance of Law

Chapter 1 of the third edition of Letters to a Law Student deals with the question of why anyone
would want to study Law, and in the course of so doing defends the importance of law, and by
extension the work that lawyers do. The object of this section is to provide a gateway through
which you can explore on the Internet in greater detail exactly why law is such an importance
force in our civilisation.
The functions of law
Law can be said to perform four different functions, each of which is of huge importance to our
welfare.
(1) Defending us from evil

The first and most basic function of law is to defend us from evil that is, those who would seek
to harm us for no good reason. This function of law underlies 20th century developments in
International Law such as the Nuremberg Trials and the creation of the International Criminal
Court.
(2) Promoting the common good

Law is not just concerned with bringing evil people to account for their actions. A community
made up of people who bear no ill-will to anyone else and are simply concerned to pursue their
own self-interest needs law because there are situations where if everyone pursues their own self-
interest, everyone will be worse off than they would have been if they acted differently. (This is
the reverse of the invisible hand phenomenon where if everyone pursues their own self-interest,
everyone in the community is made better off, as if everyones actions were guided by an
invisible hand to achieve that end.) So a community of self-interested actors needs law: (i) to
solve Prisoners dilemma situations; (ii) to distribute into private hands property that would
otherwise be exploited by everyone, thereby avoiding a tragedy of the commons situation
arising; (iii) to prevent people acting on their natural desire to extract an eye for an eye in
revenge for actual or perceived wrongs that they have suffered at other peoples hands.
(3) Resolving disputes over limited resources

As every family knows, in any community there will always be disputes over who should have
what of a limited number of resources. Law is needed to resolve these disputes, as exemplified by
the famous story of the Judgment of Solomon.
(4) Encouraging people to do the right thing

It was thought even from classical times that law performed a fourth function that of
encouraging and helping people to do the right thing. For example, Aristotle (384 BC 322 BC)
argued that people needed the discipline of law to habituate them into doing the right thing, from
which standpoint they could then appreciate why doing the right thing was the right thing to do.
Up until the 20th century, this view of law was accepted by law makers, with the result that the
UK legal system contained a large number of morals laws that is, laws that were designed
purely and simply to stop people acting immorally, according to the lights of Christian teaching on
what counted as immoral behaviour. However, in the 20th century, the harm principle
propounded by John Stuart Mill in his book On Liberty, according to which the law should not
sanction people for acting immorally unless their conduct involved some harm to others, gained
more and more popularity, and resulted in the abolition of large numbers of morals laws. These
trends triggered what is now known as the Hart-Devlin debate over the extent to which it is
legitimate for the law to enforce morality. Lord Devlin at the time, a judge in the House of
Lords, the highest court in the land argued that law should enforce morality so as to preserve the
cohesiveness of society. Professor H.L.A. Hart at the time, the most famous legal philosopher in
the world based his position squarely on Mills harm principle, though subject to the caveats that
the law might legitimately prevent someone acting immorally if doing so involved harm to himself
or would cause offence to others. Harts views are set out in his widely read book Law, Liberty
and Morality. Hart is thought to have won the debate but his concessions that it might be
legitimate to make it illegal for someone to engage in immoral behaviour that will (i) harm himself
or (ii) offend others, seem to make little sense. The same point can be made about those morals
laws that survived the 20th century cull: if law does not have a role to play in encouraging us to
do the right thing, why is it illegal to have sex in public, or to have sex with animals, or to dig up
dead bodies, or to take hallucinogenic drugs, or to help someone kill themselves?
The rule of law

Whether or not law has a role to play in encouraging us to do the right thing, no one doubts the
continuing importance of law in performing the first three functions set out above. As a result,
there is a widespread acceptance that the health and wealth of nations is crucially dependent on
how far the rule of law is maintained and observed in those nations. See for example, this World
Bank website, or this United Nations website, or this website maintained by the American Bar
Association, or this essay on the importance of observance of property rights and the rule of law to
a countrys development. As a result, a lot of attention is paid to indexes that attempt to chart how
far countries around the world respect such things as the rule of law and private property rights.
For examples of such indexes, see World Justice Project and International Property Rights.
Critics of the law

Having said all that, it should be acknowledged that numerous criticisms are made of the benefits
that are supposed to flow from the existence of law, and the observance of the rule of law.
For example, some point out that the fact that a society respects the importance of the rule of law
and private property rights is no guarantee that that society will be particularly just (or even that
wealthy). The rule of law, it is argued, is compatible with great oppression, inequality and poverty;
a point summed up by Anatole Frances famous observation that The law, in its majestic equality,
forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.
Others take this point further and argue that in the wrong hands, law can become an instrument of
evil, a means by which a countrys rulers can rob people of their property and oppress minorities.
It is also argued that even if law is not actually used as an instrument of evil, it can become its
accomplice by doing such things as:
(i) hamstringing public officials (such as the fictional Jack Bauer of the American TV series 24)
from doing what is necessary to prevent terrorist atrocities; and
(ii) granting people rights and encouraging them to exercise them, thereby fostering a damaging
culture of complaint and compensation culture that alienates people from each other, and
discourages people from helping other people for fear that doing so might result in their being
sued.
Conclusion

All legal systems do harm of one kind or another. Some of that harm is intended: in order to
achieve its goals, a legal system always has to limit peoples freedom. Some of that harm is an
unintended side effect of the legal systems attempting to achieve its goals: for example, harms (i)
and (ii), above. What is important is: (1) that our legal system do more good than harm; and (2)
that our legal system not do any unnecessary harm. I dont have any doubt that (1) is true of our
legal system; at the same time, I dont have any doubt that (2) is not true. So the verdict on our
legal system must be Good, but could be better. How our legal system could be improved is a
matter of debate. A good starting point for students interested in joining that debate would be
Michael Sandels Harvard lectures on Justice, which are available here.