Sprocket 10: Laws
Laws are one of those most curious of affairs. There so man different kinds of law, and way or pitches of lawering. Begin them all is rather a simply myth. Laws codify a rule which is then followed. The word originated in state practice (and religion) , and the spread across theories of natural, fashioned science, and then flowed back again In all these incarnations the same basic creed was asserts. The laws set the parameters, pitched between many individual elements, and independent for from. The laws then guide or possible force the actions of has individuals, requiring them, as an external power to act in one way rather than the other. Laws were therefore what bound gods and humans to the same system of morality. The battle being fought from the medieval period onwards to ensure that rules and laws applied to king and commoner alike. Law therefore define he rules, the principle in which we all live.
And yet of course this rather straight laced approach is hardly the whole story. There is in the law a clear conjunction of two very different types of law. On the and there are natural laws, which are observed after the event, and yet once observed give their thinker the ability to pattern or understand what is to come. On the other their are human laws, which are created and known in minds, and enforced not by natural power, but human will. These two elements are greatly naturally rather distinct, and the philosophical genius of Kant to work out a away o make then say the same kind of thing. And yet the minute of course laws are invented by hams and their understanding three factors kick in, and change the very pattern or essence of law.
Firstly, and most obviously, laws as the invention of humans, will reflect the societies that created it. Or better it reflects the understanding o one part of society, the law makers for the rest of that society. Laws become then rather angled affairs. They radiate out is sphere of understanding and concern. More complicatedly it a democracy the laws are actually reflect what a group of people media, lawyer and MP’s matter to the rest of society, or a least the dominant part of that society. Las will not just reflect the law makers, but also are caught up in what concerns those law makers attribute to all the rest of society.
This attribution is of course highly problematic. Certain staged ;concerns; end up with endless, laws attached to then. They become other regulated, and over policed (schools, violent crime immigration), while other element in society (while collar crime) are rather under regulated or merely left alone. Laws then codify attributed prejudices. This point then create as it were a deep unease in the public (and quite probably the lawmakers), and unease that the laws are not what thy claim to be. hat I they are not simply fair, but rather enforced upon a people by a semi-corrupt system. And yet this corruption I hard to fathom. There is something wrong somewhere; the system is at fault (or the elite or the…) and we all endless find new elements to fill in those dot (Mp, Bankers, journalist, take your pick.)
This concern is picked up of course by that second problem I law Laws are to degree at least consensual. Thatis we know of their existence and the fact that thy are enforced, and behave accordingly. We are law abiding, and do not wish to break then rules. Laws become the off the peg guides which fashion a mind. This fact then makes them is as one rather more tricky to police, as individual are called upon to take an attitude towards the less that regulate them (or a east some o those laws0.They are then called to accept and live inside them, or else think of ways or look to ways to break for rues.
The firs of these two options, might appear to make laws easy to police, and this is certainly in part true. I perhaps it is actually better to say that if laws were not internalized and did not become the stuff of human minds then one could not enforce them. he true power of the law then lies in humans ability to take it p, and use it as the principle within which to make a live. And yet this places a double burden of the law maker. On the one hand thus laws they pass had better reflect this internal position, for if they do not then the nature thing will collapse. Take the dug laws., the entire issue of cannabis is muddle head as enforce laws simply cannot be enforced in any meaningful way (well short of locking up one in four of the population). On the other hand then enforcement of law becomes caught up with the enforcing of individual will. The transgressor of a law breaks not only conventions, but also the rules by which individuals constitute their own minds. They are then punished not only with the will of the state but also the outrage of individuals, and outrage or out pouring that might we run counter to the law makers themselves. Laws might in internalized, and yet that internality makes vindictive.
But then is law is internalized a second factor kicks in. I becomes of course something to avoid or to define oneself partially against or at least to elude (if one can). A personalized law, is not merely then a rule kit which is forced upon minds, it is also something they are able o define themselves against. It become caught up then in little assertion of individual resistance, little act of rebellion, and various sorts. He rebellion might merely be an assertion of greed (as with corporate greed); or might be the assertion of quasi divinity (law is for the little people); or personality (speeding) or collective resistance (cannabis), or finally actual rebellion.. The law comes with some many way to resist it. It creates indeed identities of resistance, battles that pitch rafts or coalitions of resistance against states and pitches technology in the middle, and new technologies breed new ways to resist and to enforce.
Laws then serve in a sense to define the rules of conflict a society they are almost more important in their breaking than in their enforcing (or at least same rule, some laws some of the time are). And yet here there are clearly gossamer lines of quasi tolerance. Mass law breaking, warps the nature of a rule, and turns it into way to define conflict within society (one breaks the law to proof one I different; it might then be tolerated to a degree, or perhaps better, it might b caught up a fairly routine chess game where each know the others moves. And yet if the mood light moves only a little then what was de facto tolerate can very easily become persecuted, and the gossamer lines become real hardened the spider web to trap individuals within.
Laws therefore become a player within the ship practices and wheeler dealing of everyday live. It then binds shady activity within a state. Thus wheeler dealing becomes a minor act of rebellion, and yet in been that get a localized glamour, and yet is also contained. I is defined in relation to policing, but also caught in a constellation of criminality. Small scale crime is some how glamorous, as long as it says just the wrong side of the law becomes something rather different on the other side. So called ‘failed states’ that is states characterized by personal relations and mafia type rules, are then everywhere. The difference in these west is merely that we understand this local corruption as sill contained within rules that is known laws, enforced form elsewhere) We understand then that the corruption is not just wrong, but also is always p against a possibility of the law being enforced. Shady practice is then contained, in away in other paces(or times) which lack the state apparatus it cannot be.
Finally and running across all these element is the deep problem of practice and legal spectrums. Laws, such as the terrorist act are passed in order to stigmatize one group of people. They create then a certain offence and apply it to certain group. This is never what we are promised will happen. And yet of course it cannot. Law does not work (quite) like that. The claim of universality is worth so very much more. Laws therefore need to find a way to be universally applied, and the scary things about so much modern legislation is that this universality is not wired into the regulation. Law is then made of the back of individual stigma (we are actually trying to get one group of society), and they is then applied to us all.
Here a second feature kicks in. There is tendency in this application of legal principle to create a s system of justice based around a spectrum of offences. This spectrum exists both in the mind of the juries and the minds of the lawyers. Individual in the juries eyes might be a ‘little bit’ guilt or partially responsible for an act, and yet this partiality is officially not recognised by laws as such. He result is of course that the jury register the only way hey can, if odd verdict which reflect a real ambivalence in there attitude to the change or the constellation of guilt.
But probably more importantly laws that were defined to eradicate one problem cope with one group of individuals, say a plead of intensity, slip easily into many different situation, and applied to differing individuals. Any one might then in mitigation be a little bit mad or sad. They might then not be wholly responsible for their action, and the law our at leas that judgement ought to reflect that fact. That is what has been legislated gains was a legal fiction. A type a madness, which is never (or almost never) encountered, What is judged I the individuals, and their action. The only easy way these two differences are reconciled is if it is substantially, in practice is scintillated into little transgression, or point of engagement. Individuals reflect a ‘type’ without actually being one of it, and a spectrum of guilt or madness is created.
In the same manner of course all laws are necessarily really rather sloppy affair. One passes a laws designated to watch terrorises, and then it is uses against M’s or to enforce parking fines. The real problem her is not that these sideways moves, these hollow out of principles are not just so much as they actually are. That is the very point of law its power lies in its ability to create principles that necessarily move beyond the scope of individuals o even types. Law is therefore necessarily pitched into universal applications, and used where it was initially intended to be used, and this fact by itself is well and good.
And yet of course it runs counter to two deep prejudices of the modern age. Firstly there is an assumption be lazy politicians looking for an easy agenda that laws ought to be clear and transparent. More than that that was not only ought to be just, but ought to reflect themed of a modern state, and form then a fixed body or quasi institution for that state. There is a demand then that the laws is not merely justice, but also that it is rational. There is the attempt to enforce ‘strict; regulation upon that laws. Or else to ridicule it when it appease at least not to be the case. He law become then a political football where easy political rationalist meets the actual difficulties of individual situations.
This battle is then complicated by the fact that most law makers are not thinking about the spectrums crated in law enforcement. On the contrary they are all too often thinking about nice juicy, sexy laws, guaranteed to give a cheap vanquish solution to a galaxy of problems really or imagined by the media. Aw is then defined by those who make it in terms of rather specific issues. It is meant o be an answer, a one size fit all solution, to a possibility made up problem. And exactly how that law once passed is enforced appear to slip rather to easily from modern politicians minds. The result is that the nation as whole is aught in the unintended consequences of laws that naturally transform into spectrums and degrees, where what had been legislated for was stereotypes and images.
The law conjoins then a very complex series of rather different conflict, which animate politics. Conflicts that involve individual and state, legislator and people, and law maker and law enforcer. All of these conflicts that these places or at other times are real an irreconcilable become caught up on our faith in the rule of law, and the quasi divine principles that animate that faith. Laws then matter not really because they are just, so much as they form a single cipher, a wrote within which many conflicts are held, and violence contained.
