Law in Political ScienceEssay Preview: Law in Political ScienceReport this essay“The law, then, is a language that lawyers and judges use when they try to prevent or resolve problems-human conflicts- using official rules made by the state as their starting point” (Carter, 6). “Viewing individual autobiographies over a sweep of time reveals the variety of ways in which rights can become active or remain inactive” (Engel, 13). Reason in Law and Rights, Remembrance and the Reconciliation of Difference both examine the way that law affects daily life. They have a wide range of situations in which they have examined law and to some extent have both reached the same conclusions when it comes to the issue of law being uncertain and ambiguous. Furthermore, they have come to some opposing conclusions because of the groups of people each book or article focuses on. These include the approaches of law and life and officials and receptors.
Loren E. Lewis is writing a book on the law. I am talking to him for the third time about this project recently. I met him at St. Jude in a hospital on my way home from a weekend back in California where I work with the Law Department, which I know is in its fifth year and he worked there for 18 years. The book he is writing has been translated into 35 languages, plus English, and it is available as a free download for the first time. There are some of the highlights with the translation, such as the fact that it includes over 80 of the major statutes that the government has a role in, such as the criminal law, including the criminal laws of the United States of America and the laws of other countries in which I worked. The main argument is that most of the current laws are not designed to be applied with great regularity. The only things it has done is establish a legal standard that the person’s rights for what they are and say when they are not violated. It is very common to think of new laws in relation to a single law they’ve come up with or something like that, but for this author the idea is to have a legal standard that applies in a particular place and can relate the use of law or rules made by the government to one’s rights and rights as a citizen. When I said “it works” there is no question about the fact that law and rules apply in almost every country I’ve been involved in.
The reason I made this presentation is because I’ve always wanted to hear what makes citizens different in different contexts. It is a challenge that I believe should be very important to us. It’s not like the world is better if government has its way (e.g., the world is better if politicians are less powerful, or public sector workers are more powerful than their managers), but if the world is better while our citizen is less able to make important decisions that will affect others, then we have to think about both our own legal and societal needs as human beings. The purpose of this presentation is to provide a context for our own concerns and those of other citizens who are coming to study law.
LOREN PELLMEL writes a law-related website called Law & Rights with Daniel D. Giffbrecht as a member of the Faculty of Law in the University of Maryland Law School. He received his law degree from New York University in 1983 and joined the Law Dept in 1990. He is currently researching and developing a computerized algorithm that can analyze and correct the law and political process. I know of few law and political issues in which he disagrees with our system of law, yet I found him a very interesting and stimulating person to explore in ways we have not seen before.
Loren E. Lewis takes me and his colleagues on a journey to understand the laws in practice. We focus on the United States since the start of its history and how it has developed over the centuries to address the fundamental questions of state power and the political system that underpin its rule; i.e., why has this country, and the nation at large, been dominated by two parties without political parties for the last 60 years or 20 years? We look at the ways in which this political system (and state power) has changed over time to create a new form of governance that promotes a new kind of politics. The most important of these issues has been the rise of civil society. Civil society as a form of collective organization is an important force that has allowed our country to grow and become more independent. The growth of civil society has resulted in a new order that offers greater freedom and respect for the rights of individuals as well as
Loren E. Lewis is writing a book on the law. I am talking to him for the third time about this project recently. I met him at St. Jude in a hospital on my way home from a weekend back in California where I work with the Law Department, which I know is in its fifth year and he worked there for 18 years. The book he is writing has been translated into 35 languages, plus English, and it is available as a free download for the first time. There are some of the highlights with the translation, such as the fact that it includes over 80 of the major statutes that the government has a role in, such as the criminal law, including the criminal laws of the United States of America and the laws of other countries in which I worked. The main argument is that most of the current laws are not designed to be applied with great regularity. The only things it has done is establish a legal standard that the person’s rights for what they are and say when they are not violated. It is very common to think of new laws in relation to a single law they’ve come up with or something like that, but for this author the idea is to have a legal standard that applies in a particular place and can relate the use of law or rules made by the government to one’s rights and rights as a citizen. When I said “it works” there is no question about the fact that law and rules apply in almost every country I’ve been involved in. The reason I made this presentation is because I’ve always wanted to hear what makes citizens different in different contexts. It is a challenge that I believe should be very important to us. It’s not like the world is better if government has its way (e.g., the world is better if politicians are less powerful, or public sector workers are more powerful than their managers), but if the world is better while our citizen is less able to make important decisions that will affect others, then we have to think about both our own legal and societal needs as human beings. The purpose of this presentation is to provide a context for our own concerns and those of other citizens who are coming to study law.LOREN PELLMEL writes a law-related website called Law & Rights with Daniel D. Giffbrecht as a member of the Faculty of Law in the University of Maryland Law School. He received his law degree from New York University in 1983 and joined the Law Dept in 1990. He is currently researching and developing a computerized algorithm that can analyze and correct the law and political process. I know of few law and political issues in which he disagrees with our system of law, yet I found him a very interesting and stimulating person to explore in ways we have not seen before.Loren E. Lewis takes me and his colleagues on a journey to understand the laws in practice. We focus on the United States since the start of its history and how it has developed over the centuries to address the fundamental questions of state power and the political system that underpin its rule; i.e., why has this country, and the nation at large, been dominated by two parties without political parties for the last 60 years or 20 years? We look at the ways in which this political system (and state power) has changed over time to create a new form of governance that promotes a new kind of politics. The most important of these issues has been the rise of civil society. Civil society as a form of collective organization is an important force that has allowed our country to grow and become more independent. The growth of civil society has resulted in a new order that offers greater freedom and respect for the rights of individuals as well as
Loren E. Lewis is writing a book on the law. I am talking to him for the third time about this project recently. I met him at St. Jude in a hospital on my way home from a weekend back in California where I work with the Law Department, which I know is in its fifth year and he worked there for 18 years. The book he is writing has been translated into 35 languages, plus English, and it is available as a free download for the first time. There are some of the highlights with the translation, such as the fact that it includes over 80 of the major statutes that the government has a role in, such as the criminal law, including the criminal laws of the United States of America and the laws of other countries in which I worked. The main argument is that most of the current laws are not designed to be applied with great regularity. The only things it has done is establish a legal standard that the person’s rights for what they are and say when they are not violated. It is very common to think of new laws in relation to a single law they’ve come up with or something like that, but for this author the idea is to have a legal standard that applies in a particular place and can relate the use of law or rules made by the government to one’s rights and rights as a citizen. When I said “it works” there is no question about the fact that law and rules apply in almost every country I’ve been involved in. The reason I made this presentation is because I’ve always wanted to hear what makes citizens different in different contexts. It is a challenge that I believe should be very important to us. It’s not like the world is better if government has its way (e.g., the world is better if politicians are less powerful, or public sector workers are more powerful than their managers), but if the world is better while our citizen is less able to make important decisions that will affect others, then we have to think about both our own legal and societal needs as human beings. The purpose of this presentation is to provide a context for our own concerns and those of other citizens who are coming to study law.LOREN PELLMEL writes a law-related website called Law & Rights with Daniel D. Giffbrecht as a member of the Faculty of Law in the University of Maryland Law School. He received his law degree from New York University in 1983 and joined the Law Dept in 1990. He is currently researching and developing a computerized algorithm that can analyze and correct the law and political process. I know of few law and political issues in which he disagrees with our system of law, yet I found him a very interesting and stimulating person to explore in ways we have not seen before.Loren E. Lewis takes me and his colleagues on a journey to understand the laws in practice. We focus on the United States since the start of its history and how it has developed over the centuries to address the fundamental questions of state power and the political system that underpin its rule; i.e., why has this country, and the nation at large, been dominated by two parties without political parties for the last 60 years or 20 years? We look at the ways in which this political system (and state power) has changed over time to create a new form of governance that promotes a new kind of politics. The most important of these issues has been the rise of civil society. Civil society as a form of collective organization is an important force that has allowed our country to grow and become more independent. The growth of civil society has resulted in a new order that offers greater freedom and respect for the rights of individuals as well as
Law is an interpretation, a creation of strategy. Carter and Burke explain in their book the uncertainty and ambiguity that are associated with law. They explain that words create ambiguity and since the law is made up of words it therefore, is ambiguous. The entire book Reason in Law focuses on very few people; mainly on judges and court opinions. There is a focus on legal reasoning, a process by which judges make justifications for their decisions. Legal reasoning fosters a sense of justice. It helps us to understand how a judge came to a specific decision. Since this is done by the judge in writing it helps us to understand the laws even if we dont agree with them. Another function of legal reasoning is that the information becomes a source of communication in the broader political community. Legal reasoning gives a common ground for people to argue and either come together or apart. Without legal reasoning the people cant tell if a judge is impartial. Legal reasoning helps us to understand the way that a judge interpreted the vagueness of words in constitutional law.
The effects that law has on people outside of the courts is the position that Engel and Munger take in trying to explain where law gets meaning and fits into our daily lives. Rights, Remembrance, and the Reconciliation of Difference focuses on how law is intertwined into our daily lives. Engel and Munger want to know if the law does what it is supposed to do. An emphasis is placed on the life story in order to move away from the analytical center from which we try to see things from. They dont want to explain how something should affect your life but rather they want to examine the direct impacts. Engel and Munger want to learn how receptors react to laws made by judges.
Law is full of uncertain choice and is seldom definitive. This is a common theme in Carter and Burke and Engel and Munger. Carter and Burke describe how judges make decisions when two competing equal values have a problem. Engel and Munger discuss how Sara Lanes life is full of uncertainty. When she tries to establish herself as similar she is emphasizing her differences due to the means that she needs to feel similar. Sara is constantly having to think about what is going to come next. In Saras life it seems as though there is always a positive side and a negative side. With a judges decision someone is always going to feel like they have the negative side of the situation. Sara is constantly giving reason for her actions but they arent in the same legal capacity as a judge. Both sets of authors also see the law in reference to structured improvisation. They both refer to it in the sense that we do what is best for ourselves but that what we have to choose from is structured. For example, Sara Lane improvises a lot of the activities in her life but she is structured by her family and her work life. Carter and Burke and Engel and Munger seem to agree when it comes to uncertainty and structured improvisation but when it comes to law and life and explanations of law they have results.
To begin with, Carter and Burke are constantly looking at the analytical center of law. They seek to explain how the laws that they make should affect our daily lives. Engel and Munger want to study how law really does affect peoples daily lives. They do this through the study of life stories. These ideas differ because from the judges point of view it is a top-down theory when they state how the laws that they regulate should affect your life. From Engel and Mungers point of view it is a bottom-up theory that starts with how law affects peoples lives and eventually leads back to how the judges make their decisions in the first place. Although both sets of authors agree that the decision making process comes from experience they differ on their opinion of what level of experience the decisions are made from. Engel and Munger make it clear that what the law says is not always what creates the best situation for the person at hand. For example, what the law says that Sara Lane is entitled to is not always what creates a good working environment for her. We see this through the example of her needing a restroom and having to wait a few years for it. Carter and Burke agree that judges makes decisions on an experience related level but those experiences are from other people. What Engel and Munger are studying is the way that people receive these laws and incorporate them into their daily lives. Carter and Burke want to learn how people make laws while Engel and Munger want to see how people react to judges and the legal reasoning that they are trying to incorporate into society.
“The judicial process and legal reasoning therefore play a major part in preserving the confidence that the community can reconcile rules, facts of disputes, social conditions and ethics” (Carter, 129). Carter and Burke describe for us how we get the rules that we do and help us to understand that judges do have to use a method and be impartial. On the other hand, Engel and Munger show us through the experiences of Sara Lane and Jill Golding how law incorporates itself into society, how people do and do not choose to use it and why the impartiality of a judges decisions are so important to us.
Works CitedCarter, Lief H., Burke, Thomas F. Reason in Law. Sixth Edition. Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 2002.Engel, David M., Munger, Frank W. Rights, Remembrance, and the Reconciliation ofDifference. Law and Society Review , Volume 30, Number 1, 1996.“The