Law is simply described as any rule that if broken subjects an individual to criminal punishment or civil liability. Laws are rules that bind all people living in a community and protect people’s general safety and rights against abuse by other people, organizations, or the government. Law serves many purposes and functions in the society, which include maintaining order, solving disputes, protecting people’s rights and establishing standards. It acts as a guide for minimum accepted behavior in the society. Most nations worldwide follow either of the two major legal traditions which are: common law or civil law.
Common laws are generally uncodified, meaning that there is no comprehensive compilation of legal rules and statutes. Common law does not depend on scattered statutes but is mainly dependent on precedent or the judicial judgments that have been passed already in similar cases. The records are kept over time in courts and historical documents in a collection of case law called yearbooks and reports. In this legal system, the choice of precedent to be applied in each case is determined by the presiding judge hence judges have a big role in shaping the law. With this system, common laws of a country serve as an adversarial system. Facts of a case are determined by a jury of ordinary people who have no legal training and a judge determines a sentence based on the decision of the jury ( Casas & Leany, 2017).
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In contrast to common laws, civil laws are codified meaning governments with civil law systems have comprehensive and continuously updated legal codes that specify all matters that can be brought to court, applicable procedure and appropriate punishment for each offense. These codes differentiate between different categories of law as follows: a substantive law that determines which acts are subjects of criminal prosecution, a procedural law that establishes how to determine whether an action constitutes a criminal act or not, and penal law which establishes appropriate penalty. In this legal system, the judge establishes the facts of the case and applies the provisions of the applicable code. He/she brings formal charges leading to an investigation, and works within the structures of established wide-ranging and codified set of laws to make a ruling. The ruling is consequently less important in shaping civil law than the decisions of legislators who drafts and interprets the legal codes ( Casas & Leany, 2017).
International law is a system of treaties and agreements between nations that govern how nations interact with each other, with foreign citizens, organizations, and businesses of other nations. It falls into two categories: the first is private international law that deals with controversies between private entities like people or corporations with a significant relationship to more than one nation (Kelsen, 1952). The second is p ublic international law, which deals with relationships between nations that include the laws of the sea, economic law, diplomatic law, environmental law, human rights, humanitarian law, and standards of international behavior. This law has some codified principles in a series of treaties while others are not recorded anywhere and are hence known as Customary laws. International laws are governed by treaties thus it's usually the responsibility of individual nations to enforce them. There, however, exist a few international organizations like the United Nations that enforce certain international treaties (Kelsen, H. 1952).
In conclusion, the aforementioned laws illustrate that the main aim of law is to ensure order. Since conflict between humans in unavoidable due to inherent personal differences, wants and needs, then there also needs to be a system in place to keep conflicts in check; this system is the law.
References
Casas, J., & Leany, B. D. (2017). Tools for Restoring Legal Competency with Latinos. In Toolkit for Counseling Spanish-Speaking Clients (pp. 511-531). Springer, Cham.
Kelsen, H. (1952). Principles of international law . The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
