Vocabulary Notes:

accept the rules	принимать правила
application of the law	применение закона
break the law	нарушать закон
canon law	каноническое право, предписанный закон
Common law	Общее право
court decision	решение суда
customary law	обычное право
customary rules	обычные нормы
doctrine of precedent	доктрина прецедента
enforce law	принуждать выполнять закон
government in power	правительство, находящееся у власти
legal rights	законные права
Magistrates’ Court	магистратский, мировой суд
observe the rules	соблюдать нормы
pass a law	принимать закон
propose a bill	внести законопроект
reduce to writing	выразить в письменной форме
source of law	источник права
standard of proof	степень убедительности доказательств
the Crown Court	Cуд короны
the Lord Chancellor	Лорд-канцлер

Text A. Read and translate the text. Do the exercises given bellow.

You should Know Law

We live in a complicated world with new scientific and social developments which increase the tempo of our daily living activities and make them more difficult and involved. People are more than ever vitally concerned and actively interested in community life.

There is a very important field of knowledge that people should know. It refers to the Law, those rules and regulations which govern every social action.

A knowledge of law with its basic principles and applications is a necessity for any person. Nowadays all people are as a rule well-informed and it is desirable for them to be aware of their legal rights and duties. People should be able to recognize the problems which confront them and should have the intelligence and understanding to seek legal guidance when they need it. There is nothing mysterious, nothing awesome about the Law. It consists of the rules of community living and is based on the reasonable needs of the community.

There are many definitions of law .The law can be characterized as a set of rules, regulations and accumulated decisions of the courts.

The law is based upon the recorded experiences of society and community in their efforts to define and regulate the relationships between their members. By using the law it is intended to determine all disputes in society. The laws passed by the legislature result from a need to correct existing conditions. The decisions of the court, interpreting these statutes, protect the individual from injustice.

To avoid injustice through human error, the law has established a procedure of appeal to a higher court with the opportunity for reconsideration.

The word “law” is used to mean many things. Laws can be defined as a set of rules established by a governing power to maintain peace, secure justice for its members, define the legal rights of the individual and the community, and to punish offenders for legal wrongs.

Law essentially serves two functions in modern society. First, it serves to order and regulate the affairs of all individuals, corporations or governments. Secondly, law acts as standard of conduct and morality. Through both these functions law promotes and achieves a broad range of social objectives.

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 (for example, the law of gravity, the laws of economics). Other laws are prescriptive – they prescribe how people ought to behave (for example, traffic laws that prescribe how fast we should drive).

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 in 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 Tomas 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 the bad, but there are enough of the bad to make laws necessary in the interests of everyone. Even if we were all as good as we ought to be, laws would still be necessary.

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.

The English word law expresses two notions: the Law as the whole body of laws considered collectively, as a system; and a law as a rule made by authority for the proper regulation of a community or society, or correct conduct in life.

We can define the Law as a set of rules which form the pattern of behaviour of a given society. In a developed state the law embraces all spheres of production, distribution and exchange. The law lays down the measures for defending the state system and determines the legal statute, the rights and duties of citizens in any society.