Ch. 1 Law: Its Function and Purpose Discussion and Vocab

I think laws were created to benefit the survival of a culture and to uphold the societal norms and morals. Not all morals have laws to enforce them and not all laws deal in morality. As society evolved so did their understanding of law and justice. Sometimes law was created by the powerful and the wealthy and other times it was created by the common folk. Law is not simple to explain and sometimes difficult to enforce.

Ch. 1 Vocab
Law: a written body of general rules of conduct applicable to all members of defined community, society, or culture, which emanate from a governing authority and which are enforced by its agents by the imposition of penalties for their violation.
Beliefs: ideas wh have about what how the world operates and what is true and false.
Values: normative standards shared by the culture about what is good and bad, correct and incorrect, moral and immoral, normal and deviant.
Norm: the action componet of a value or a belief that prescribes and proscribes behavior as acceptable or unacceptable.
Symbol: a concrete physical manifestation that "stands for" an abstraction.
Technology: the totality of the knowledge and techniques a people employ to create the material object of their sustenance and comfort.
Language: a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventional signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings.
Risk Society: a society organized in response to internally manufactured risks.
Mores: the fixed morally binding customs of a particular group.
Folkways: a mode of thinking, feeling, or acting common to a group of people.
Positive law: human-made law arising from social norms; contrasted with natural law
Natural law: a theory or philosophy of law often contrasted with positive law. It maintains that law is either God-given or one that flows from the evolved nature of Homo-sapiens.
Forms: refers to Plato's belief that the objects and ideas in the world are imperfect representations of the archetypal objects and ideas in the real world.
Social Contract: hypothetical contract between individuals creating a state that could protect them from predation and exploitation.
Mechanical Solidarity: According to Durkheim, the form of social solidarity found in premodern societies.
Organic Solidarity: According to Durkheim, the form of social solidarity found in modern societies.
Collective Conscience: Defined by Émile Durkheim as ‘the body of beliefs and sentiments common to the average of members of a society, it comprised a form and content which varied according to whether society was characterized by mechanical or organic solidarity.
Consensus Perspective: a perspective emphasizing that consensus mostly characterizes society, where being part of a shared culture contributes to social stability.
Conflict Perspective: a perspective emphasizing that conflict mostly characterizes society, in which resources are limited and people seek to maximize their interests.
Formal irrationality: legal decisions based on formal rules but not based on reason or logic.
Formal rationality: legal decisions based on rules and on reason and logic.
Substantive irrationality: legal decisions on a case-by-case basis without a set of legal principles
Substantive rationality: legal decisions on a case-by-case basis with a set of rules.