Understanding the Nature of Law in the English Legal System

in the previous lesson we introduced the concept of the English legal system and what we're going to do in this lesson is

talk about the nature of law more generally because we can't understand the structure and the processes of the

English legal system without trying to understand what it actually is to call something law now

we're going to try and just take an overview to that question uh being very reticent of the fact that we are going

to be covering this in far more detail when we look at the philosophical dimensions of law in our series on

jurisprudence because essentially the the the questions that we're asking in the series on jurisprudence relates to

this kind of topic what is law what does it mean to call something law this lesson is just going to try and give us

a bit more of a working definition of the kind of things that we're talking about the idea of law the nature of law

the nature of enforcement of legal principles so we're gonna examine and look at the

nature of law and the idea that law can be representative of a collection of rules and in doing so we're going to try

and come to some kind of definition of law making it very clear that we are talking about the way in which law is

operationalized within Society to reflect often morality or some kind of societal condition and to try and

generally understand what the purpose of law is within the broader construct of society itself

now according to Robertson from 2006 um they describe law as a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by

social or governmental institutions to regulate Behavior that is considered to be a generalized

uh often quite uncontroversial definition of what law is it's a set of rules and that we create these rules to

be enforceable they are enforceable by some way through societal or governmental institutions I.E a

Judiciary or a court and the purpose of them is to regulate Behavior to regulate societal behavior and what this

essentially does is Define law as a special kind of rule a collection of rules

um and if we were to talk about um the kind of rules that they are they have certain special characteristics and

features attached to them so they're what are rules well if we understand then we try and understand

law through the lens of rules and the idea that law is just considered and can be just considered to be a collection of

rules we suggest that rules are therefore are general principles which are said to be enforceable in some way

so they are enforceable through Society in the case of a sort of general rule of society or they are more enforceable

through the specific Institution that that said rules are supposed to govern so for example

um the offside rule in football is a rule that is applicable to the sport of football the offside rule is not

something that is operationalized and something that is enforceable to broader Society it is something that is

enforceable specifically and it only makes sense to be enforceable specifically within the context of

football if you're American soccer and so as a result of which these are ideas of rules which are regulated

internally within the sport itself and then so when we take this a level higher we talk about the level of

society as a whole we represent the rules that governs Ed society and we Define that as law and we Define laws as

the kind of collection of rules which govern Society in the same way that rules in football govern the sport of

football itself so for example every day societal issues such as buying a house getting married

or divorced purchasing from a shop business and commerce regulating crime they are all done through and under the

auspices of a certain collection of societal rules and we call these rules law and that is how we understand law to

to what it means in this context however Robertson also makes a reference to this idea of enforceability through a

government institutions well what do we mean when we talk about the enforcement of rules and the enforcement of law so

how is it the case that law is enforced well the enforcement of law is actually one of the main things that you study as

a law student or or as a future lawyer and there is often abrupt violation of law or there may be a dispute arising

out of legal principles and so the enforcement of your personal rights or the enforcement of a state right to

prosecute for example might be what is Constitution of the enforcement of law the enforcement of rules and given that

we can describe law potentially as a mechanism for social control a little bit like what Robinson said uh Robertson

sorry said in 2006 the formal mechanism for enforcement of such rules will also exist so law can be enforced in a number

of different ways depending on the type of law that we are talking about now in the next lesson what we're going to do

is examine the distinction and the delineation between the civil and the criminal law but there is a certain

differentiation in terms of enforceability between those two areas for the most part you'll be studying the

enforcement and interpretation of law through the structure of Courts the Judiciary and this is sort of the

government institution that represents an enforcement mechanism for that for laws which are alleged to have been

broken to be violated or disputes between individuals as are their private rights within within a legal system

now like I said just then courts represent part of the state Judiciary a branch of the government which is tasked

with the job of enforcing and interpreting laws which are passed and so

um they also represent a mechanism by Way by which new law is created through the common law through the fact that a a

court decision on a particular fact may be influential for future decisions uh on similar facts for example

and so as a result of this we can see that the enforcement of rules um relates to this idea of a Judicial

enforcement of rules the the sort of mechanizing of enforcement through Judiciary and through the establishment

of the common law and also through other kinds of judicial functions like tribunals and you also have things like

alternative dispute resolution for example foreign so when we talk about the

difference between rules in the say in the context of sports and laws in the context of the states rules have an

obligation to be followed there is obviously an obligation if you're playing football to follow the rules

within the confines of the sport of football um but if you do not follow those rules

then the consequences of that are limited to your playing of football they're not limited to the state as a

whole because if you break the law you will be penalized there will be penalties including fines there may be

injunctions and there may even be prison time and so there is also an obligation to follow the law

um by everyone everybody has to follow the law compare this of course to the context of sport where only those who

are playing the game have an obligation to follow the rules of said game it's almost like the rules of society are the

laws that everybody has to follow so this is how we understand a basic principle of the rule of law in fact the

idea that nobody is above the law there is a quality before the law these are things that we're going to talk about in

a future lesson uh in both this series on the English legal system and also in the series on public law