Obligations In the Law. Every legal system contains obligation-imposing laws, but there is no decisive linguistic marker determining which these are. The term “obligation” need not be used, nor its near-synonym, “duty.” One rarely finds the imperative mood.
And thus, “Legal obligation is not, or not immediately, the behavior that ought to be. Only the coercive act, functioning as a sanction, ought to be” (Kelsen 1967, 119).
But political authority, of which legal authority is one species, is normally seen as a right to rule, with a correlative duty to obey. On this account law claims the right to obedience wherever it sets out obligations.
At a minimum, it does seem clear that whether or not all laws impose obligations, they can only be fully understood through their relations to those that do. Thus, a legal right is an interest that warrants holding others under an obligation to protect it, a legal power is the ability to create or modify obligations, and so forth.
Following Hobbes and Bentham, the English jurist John Austin says that to have a legal obligation is to be subject to a sovereign command to do or forbear, where a command requires an expression of will together with an attached risk, however small, of suffering an evil for non-compliance.
Ronald Dworkin, for instance, claims, “Political association, like family or friendship and other forms of association more local and intimate, is itself pregnant of obligation” (Dworkin 1986, 206). His obstetrical theory is parthenogenetic: politics is a form of association that in itself bears obligations.
Perhaps the most influential voluntarist argument grounds political obligation in neither performative nor expressive acts, but in a bare willingness to benefit from a system of mutual restraint. This is the territory of fairness, or fair play, as articulated by Hart (1955) and elaborated by Rawls (1964). The core idea is that those who accept the benefits of fair scheme of cooperation have a duty to do their allotted part under that scheme: if others obey the law to our benefit, we owe them a duty not to take a free-ride on their compliance.
Historically, most philosophers agreed that these include a moral obligation to obey, or what is usually called “political obligation.”. Voluntarists maintained that this requires something like a voluntary subjection to law's rule, for example, through consent.
Third, they offer an inadequate explanation of non-optionality. “You have an obligation not to murder” cannot merely mean “If you murder you will be punished,” for the law is not indifferent between people, on the one hand, murdering and being jailed, and on the other hand not murdering at all.
However we resolve the methodological question, there are two parallel normative questions: 1 The problem of obligation: What if anything justifies the duty to obey the law, and how far does that obedience properly extend? 2 The problem of legitimacy: What if anything justifies the coercive power of law, and how far may that power properly extend?
As Wolff puts it: “If the individual retains his autonomy by reserving to himself in each instance the final decision whether to co-operate, he thereby denies the authority of the state; if, on the other hand, he submits to the state and accepts is claim to authority then … he loses his autonomy” (Wolff 1970, 9).
1. Public law - the body of legal rules which regulates the rights and duties arising from the relationship of the state to the people; example, criminal law, includes international law - governs the relations among nations and states, and constitutional law -governs the relations between the state and its citizens. 2.
Moral law. ... the totality of the norms of good and right conduct growing out of the collective sense of right and wrong of every community. Physical law. ... the uniformities of actions and orders of sequence which are the physical phenomena that we sense and feel; example, law of gravitation. State law.
... the body of rules which deals with the nature and sources of obligations and the rights and duties arising from agreements and the particular contracts; found in Republic Act No. 386, otherwise known as the Civil Code of the Philippines. Book IV of the Civil Code deals with Obligations and Contracts.
**Actually, there are only 2 sources: law and contracts, because obligations arising from quasi-contracts, delicts, and quasi-delicts are really imposed by law. Contract.
4 Essential requisites of an obligation. 1. A passive subject (debtor or obligor) - person bound to the fulfillment of the obligation; he who has a duty.
State law. ... law that is promulgated and enforced by the state, with the aid of its physical force, if necessary. Concepts of State law. 1. General or Abstract sense - refers to all laws taken together; the mass of obligatory rules established for the purpose of governing the relations of persons in society; example, law of the land, ...
Law, in non-legal sense, which is not promulgated and enforced by the state; this includes divine law, natural law, moral law, and physical law. Click again to see term 👆. Tap again to see term 👆. Nice work!
Public law, consisting of constitutional law, administrative law, criminal law and procedure, and the law relating to sacred rites (jus sacrum). 2.The right, title, or dominion of public ownership; esp., the government's right to own real property in trust for the public benefit. S.
Substantive Law Def. General principles and detailed rules that define legal rights and duties. Defines duties, establishes rights, and prohibits wrongs.
Problem with the word "Primitive". Conveys a moral judgement being made about the societies which is not fair given the needs of a society that adopts a traditional legal system would be very different form that of a society adopting a modern legal system.
Roman & civil law. Private law, consisting of all the branches oflaw that regulate the relations of citizens to one another, including family law, property, obligations, and testate and intestate succession. 2. The right, title, or dominion of private.
Procedural Law. The procedures by which substantive law are administered.
Political. Emphasize the neutrality of law, and summarily dismiss the thesis that "an unjust law is not a law.". saying, in effect, "any enactment of the legislature is a law.". Any law that does not do so is by definition a bad law.