Unit 1. WHAT IS LAW?
Text 1
The definition of Law
Exercise 1.Read the text and answer the following questions:
1. Are laws for ordinary people or for lawyers?
2. Do you always observe the law?
3. Do you think laws change in the course of time?
4. What does the English word 'law' refer to?
5. What laws regulate relations between people?
6. Are customs written down?
7. Why have members of every community made laws?
8. What is the main function of the law?
The English word 'law' refers to limits upon various forms of behavior. Some laws are descriptive: they simply describe how people, or even natural phenomena, usually behave. An example is the rather consistent law of gravity; another is the less consistent laws of economics. Other laws are prescriptive - they prescribe how people ought to behave. For example, the speed limits imposed upon drivers that prescribe how fast we should drive. They rarely describe how fast we actually do drive, of course.
In all societies, relations between people are regulated by prescriptive laws. Some of them are customs - that is, informal rules of social and moral behavior. Some are rules we accept if we belong to particular social institutions, such as religious, educational and cultural groups. And some are precise laws made by nations and enforced against all citizens within their power.
Customs need not to be made by governments, and they need not be written down. We learn how we are expected to behave in society through the instruction of family and teachers, the advice of friends, and our experiences in dealing with strangers. Sometimes, we can break these rules without suffering any penalty. But if we continually break the rules, or break a very important one, other members of society may ridicule us, act violently toward us or refuse to have anything to do with us. The ways in which people talk, eat and drink, work, and relax together are usually called customs.
Order is rich with meaning. Let's start with "law and order". Maintaining order in this sense means establishing the rule of law to preserve life and to protect property. To the seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588—1679), preserving life was the most important function of law. He described life without law as life in a 'state of nature'. Without rules, people would live like predators, stealing and killing for personal benefit.
Members of every community have made laws for themselves in self-protection. If it were not for the law, you could not go out in daylight without the fear of being kidnapped, robbed or murdered. There are far more good people in the world than bad, but there are enough of the bad to make law necessary in the interests of everyone. Even if we were all as good as we ought to be, laws would still be necessary. How is one good man in a motorcar to pass another good man also in a motorcar coming in an opposite direction, unless there is some rule of the road?
Suppose you went to a greengrocery — and bought some potatoes and found on your return home that they were mouldy or even that some of them were stones, what could you do if there were no laws on the subject? In the absence of law you could only rely upon the law of the jungle.
Every country tries, therefore, to provide laws, which will help its people to live safely and comfortably. This is not at all an easy thing to do. No country has been successful in producing laws, which are entirely satisfactory. But the imperfect laws are better than none.
Exercise 2. Give the English equivalents for the following:
• закон джунглей
• предписывать что-то
• описывать что-то
• обычаи / традиции страны
• без наказания
• критиковать кого-либо
• защищать собственность
• жить подобно хищникам
• страх быть похищенным, убитым, ограбленным
• сделать закон необходимым
• жить в безопасности
• члены сообщества
• рассчитывать на что-то
• несовершенные законы
Text 2
Legal Systems
Exercise 1.Read the text and answer the following questions:
1. How many legal systems are there in the United Kingdom?
2. What is usual for separate legal systems?
3. What branch of law governs the dealings of all countries one with another?
4. Give the definition of international law.
5. What can be done by courts administering international law?
Law always operates within a legal system. There is no universal law. Within the United Kingdom there are three legal systems, one for England and Wales, one for Northern Ireland and one for Scotland.
What this means is that each jurisdiction has its own laws and courts. Although the House of Lords is the highest court for each of these jurisdictions it is regarded as a different court when hearing appeals from Scotland and Wales. It is usual for separate legal systems to have a separate source of law but Parliament is the source of legislation for each of three areas in the United Kingdom. There is even a legal system which governs the dealings of all countries one with another - this is referred to as "international law", and although it has some application to individuals (the war criminals convicted at Nurenberg and Tokyo in 1946 were tried under international law), it governs generally the liability of entire countries. There is little that can be done by courts administering international law to compela country to behave in accordance with the law, the only sanction in international law arises from disapproval from other countries.
Exercise 2. Give the English equivalents for the following:
· палата лордов
· преступники
· осуждать
· взаимоотношения
· обязательство
· заставлять
· неодобрение
Text 3
Disobedience to Law
Exercise 1.Read the text and answer the following questions:
1. What is called an act of conscientious refusal?
2. Give the examples of civil disobedience.
3. What does violent disobedience mean?
In the normal course of events one may assume that there is an obligation to obey the law. But one should consider that there is a right or, even a duty, to disobey. Let us consider the position of a concentration camp guard making people go into gas chambers.
If he disobeyed, he broke the military law to which he was subject. But wouldn't you have wanted him to disobey that terrifying law?
It is sometimes said that we should evaluate the law against our own morality and decide whether or not to obey or enforce it. There may be such a law that the people are prepared to be punished rather than obey it. This is called an act of conscientious refusal. A pacifist who refuses to take part in war at all, or the Americans who refused to join the army when called up for the Vietnam war, were engaged in conscientious refusal. Conscientious refusal is generally directed at the particular law of which the person disapproves. In contrast to this there are occasions on which people disobey one law in order to draw attention to what they regard as iniquity. This is civil disobedience. Typically, demonstrators against nuclear weapons may obstruct a highway in order to draw attention to what they regard as the error made by those who possess them. There are degrees of disobedience — some people will only engage in passive disobedience, while others believe that in some cases it is permissible to use violent disobedience. Such a case may have been that of South Africa, where one may have accepted that the whole system of apartheid is part of the legal system but regard that system as so terrible that violence is permissible to overthrow it and believe that the sort of blame which we normally give to lawbreakers should not be given to persons violently engaged in the overthrow of an unjust system.
Exercise 2. Give the English equivalents for the following:
· подчиняться
· газовые камеры
· оценивать
· осознанный отказ
· случаи, события
· несправедливость
· гражданское неповиновение
· привлечь внимание
· активное неповиновение
· свергнуть
· вина
· несправедливая система