THE NATURE, CLASSIFICATION AND SOURCES OF LAW IN TANZANIA
THE NATURE, CLASSIFICATION AND SOURCES OF LAW IN TANZANIA
1. What is law
Law is a rule prescribed for human action/conduct. It concerns human beings, group of people or society and not individual.
It is a rule prescribed for human action by a determinate authority. Otherwise, it is defined as a system of rules of social behaviour.
These rules must be general and not specific
2. Characteristics of Law
(a) Social control mechanism
• It is a means to persuade its members to think and act in compliance with the norms which make up its culture
(b) The most important feature of law is that, it is normative.
By normative it means that certain norms characteristic of human social life and indicative of what is done by the majority in a given situation have taken on the quality of what ought to be done.
What is the case is transformed into what ought to be the case
The word Norm-originate from the word square or norma, that is used by carpenters and masons to make right angles, which afforded them a ready means of achieving standardization.
The rules of law may be prohibitive; they tell what not to do.
There will be rules which are directive. They direct what to do. Not all the rules are prohibitive or directive laws.
(c) Law is of a uniform and general nature. It also entails elements of official authority and regulated coercion as opposed to unpredicted of sanction associated with positive morality conventions and etiquette.
Conclusion
Law is generally similar to social custom, positive morality and convention since it shares with them the characteristics of a normative system. In short all the laws of states around the world will evidence the following features:-
(i) Letter of the Law
A law is a written order -- a set of instructions, or software -- that provides directions for human behavior. The entire written content of a law is the "letter of the law," and it is nothing more or less than the fixed arrangement of its words and punctuation. The letter of the law conveys the spirit of the law.
(ii) Spirit of the Law
Contained within the letter of the law is the purpose, or intent, which is termed the "spirit of the law." For any given law, the spirit of the law is the hoped-for change, or benefit, that the law will produce, as predicted by the designers of the law. In other words, laws are tools that are intended to be useful. Since the spirit of the law is the reason for its existence, the letter of the law is subordinate to the problem-solving intent of the law.
(iii) Sanctions
Laws are the forcible means by which a government achieves its goals; they are coercions, restrictions, prohibitions, or commands for action that attempt to regulate or change the behavior or status of those individuals and institutions that are subject to the law.
(iv) Authority
To encourage individuals and institutions to comply with the law, each law has a mechanism of enforcement, or authorized sanction (the "carrot or stick"), that is applied to accomplish the intent of the law. Subsidies, fines, and imprisonment are examples of mechanisms that may be used as the forcible sanction of a law
In short, the term LAW indicates both the concrete and abstract connotation. Law should be taken to represent a form of language, which language is designed to convey amongst other things, the idea that certain rules of conduct are obligatory.
Law Techniques
Law always use certain techniques for enforcement or may appear in many forms, and these are:-
(i) Penal
(ii) Grievance-remedial
(iii) Private-arranging
(iv) Constitutive
(v) Administrative-regulatory
(vi) Fiscal
(vii) Conferment of social benefits
1. What is law
Law is a rule prescribed for human action/conduct. It concerns human beings, group of people or society and not individual.
It is a rule prescribed for human action by a determinate authority. Otherwise, it is defined as a system of rules of social behaviour.
These rules must be general and not specific
2. Characteristics of Law
(a) Social control mechanism
• It is a means to persuade its members to think and act in compliance with the norms which make up its culture
(b) The most important feature of law is that, it is normative.
By normative it means that certain norms characteristic of human social life and indicative of what is done by the majority in a given situation have taken on the quality of what ought to be done.
What is the case is transformed into what ought to be the case
The word Norm-originate from the word square or norma, that is used by carpenters and masons to make right angles, which afforded them a ready means of achieving standardization.
The rules of law may be prohibitive; they tell what not to do.
There will be rules which are directive. They direct what to do. Not all the rules are prohibitive or directive laws.
(c) Law is of a uniform and general nature. It also entails elements of official authority and regulated coercion as opposed to unpredicted of sanction associated with positive morality conventions and etiquette.
Conclusion
Law is generally similar to social custom, positive morality and convention since it shares with them the characteristics of a normative system. In short all the laws of states around the world will evidence the following features:-
(i) Letter of the Law
A law is a written order -- a set of instructions, or software -- that provides directions for human behavior. The entire written content of a law is the "letter of the law," and it is nothing more or less than the fixed arrangement of its words and punctuation. The letter of the law conveys the spirit of the law.
(ii) Spirit of the Law
Contained within the letter of the law is the purpose, or intent, which is termed the "spirit of the law." For any given law, the spirit of the law is the hoped-for change, or benefit, that the law will produce, as predicted by the designers of the law. In other words, laws are tools that are intended to be useful. Since the spirit of the law is the reason for its existence, the letter of the law is subordinate to the problem-solving intent of the law.
(iii) Sanctions
Laws are the forcible means by which a government achieves its goals; they are coercions, restrictions, prohibitions, or commands for action that attempt to regulate or change the behavior or status of those individuals and institutions that are subject to the law.
(iv) Authority
To encourage individuals and institutions to comply with the law, each law has a mechanism of enforcement, or authorized sanction (the "carrot or stick"), that is applied to accomplish the intent of the law. Subsidies, fines, and imprisonment are examples of mechanisms that may be used as the forcible sanction of a law
In short, the term LAW indicates both the concrete and abstract connotation. Law should be taken to represent a form of language, which language is designed to convey amongst other things, the idea that certain rules of conduct are obligatory.
Law Techniques
Law always use certain techniques for enforcement or may appear in many forms, and these are:-
(i) Penal
(ii) Grievance-remedial
(iii) Private-arranging
(iv) Constitutive
(v) Administrative-regulatory
(vi) Fiscal
(vii) Conferment of social benefits
No comments: