Positivism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Positivism - Essay ExampleLegal systems are not static, immutable structures plainly rather mutable, and ever-changing organisms. The fact that they are constantly changing agency that some constancy as regards to the need to obey the rules of a legal system is needed. Otherwise on that point is chaos.The apparent paradox within the idea that the mere fact that a rule is secure or reasonable will not make it a justice and also, nor does the injustice of a rule wrangle that it is not a law is in fact satisfied by an understanding that laws are, by their nature, throttle in scope. Laws cover a finite number of situations whereas the experience of life for the series of individual military man beings that make up a society is infinite. Thus it might well be just and/or reasonable to have a rule that bulk should be kind to one another, but this will not make such a law feasible. Conversely, a rule that says that people of diametrical races cannot marry (as occurred in the US South) is not made invalid as a law just because it is unjust. The morality (or otherwise) of a rule is, within the positivist sense, irrelevant to whether or not it is a law. It is a law because it is held within a complex legal structure that defines it as law.If laws are fundamentally arbitrary in nature, why should citizens of ... The citizen gives up his freedom to do whatever he wants, and thus to check out certain laws, in exchange for the governments promise to protect his/her safety. Thus a citizen stops at a red light - thus giving up his innate freedom to pass through it - in exchange for the government enforcing red light laws that will enable him to safely drive down the route when the light turns green. This is a very modern theory of obedience to rules and laws, based as it is upon the idea that the government and its people have essentially mutual interests. Within Rousseaus vision, the State clearly exists to serve the People. Some earlier theories of principle r elied upon more authoritarian principles of law obedience that, despite their age, still have relevance today. John Austin, with his The land of Jurisprudence Determined (1832) suggested the idea of habitual obedience, that is obedience given to a sovereign (or maybe elected government) based upon a fear of sanctions. Crudely, people obey the law because they fear the consequences if they do not. On a superficial level Austins ideas seem self-evident people do avoid breaking the law because of the consequences if they do on an individual level. However, if a whole system of laws is based solely (or nearly completely) on habitual obedience then it is by nature fragile and ripe for change. A frightened people has no loyalty to the system of laws other than that which is forced upon them. If they get the chance to successfully rise up, or if another member of the ruling class sees a chance at taking over, then it is likely to occur. Habitual obedience occurs within totalitarian stat es and dictatorships, but these are often short-lived, while superficially