Law, Force, and Community Standards

[jennythe_reader]

The law does not force people to behave in a particular way. The law codifies what a community already believes about how people should behave and lays out consequences for people who choose to go against this consensus

Comments

[lawchicky]

Some people may argue that there are devine laws, meaning laws that exist whether or not we recognize them (ie laws of physics or laws of nature). I know that's not wheat you're talking about here, but thought I should mention it.

As far as codified laws, I agree that in our country they are rules that developed by legislature, presumably based upon the prevailing opinions of the masses. Once a law is created, it can still be deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, so it is possible for the majority of the population to FEEL one way and the law not to reflect it. Additionally, laws are generally a good decade behind the times. There are MANY poorly drafted laws created, but it can take years and years for those laws to be reversed.

So yeah, laws will changed with the times, but political viewpoints change much more quickly than laws do. Also, since we have a complicated legislature wherein most laws are voted by representation rather than by populous, you can easily have 60% of the population feel one way about a law, but still get it voted against and never passed by Congress.

[jennythe_reader]

And that was the part of my thought process that got left out when I tried to put it into words. :/ It always happens. Something always gets forgotten or badly translated.

Insert, in between the part on civil disobedence and the part on the four camps, this:
In this country, that consensus is filtered through the lens of our complex governmental system, with its multiple administrative levels and division of duties between multiple branches of government at each level. This results in new societal consenses becoming new laws extremely slowly.