What Is Legal

Jurimetrics is the formal application of quantitative methods, especially probability and statistics, to legal issues. The use of statistical methods in court proceedings and legal review articles has become extremely important in recent decades. [122] [123] Hegel believed that civil society and the state were polar opposites in the scheme of his dialectical theory of history. The modern civil society of the dipole state has been reproduced in the theories of Alexis de Tocqueville and Karl Marx. [165] [166] In postmodern theory, civil society is necessarily a source of law by being the basis from which people form opinions and lobby for what they believe to be right. As Australian lawyer and author Geoffrey Robertson QC wrote about international law: «One of its most important modern sources is found in the reactions of ordinary men and women and non-governmental organizations who support many of them to the human rights violations they see on the television screen in their living rooms.» [167] The details of property rights vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, perhaps more than those of almost any other type of right. In addition, many jurisdictions have different rules regarding property rights to land (and its furniture) compared to all other types of businesses. For these details, reference should be made to the reference works of case law. (Cf.

Hume 1740, Book III, Section III, in which he discusses the concepts which, in his opinion, underlie the rules of occupancy, prescription, accession, and succession by which property may be acquired. He points out that it is not uncommon to reasonably claim that a rule of a certain content is better than a rule with slightly different content. Rather, it is important that there be legal regulation in this regard.) The powers also illustrate a general problem in the analysis of legal claims and arguably rights in general. Namely, whether an element is to be regarded as forming part of the essence of the concept of right or whether it is merely an element of what its content is (conditionally), that is to say, what a right exists or is to be obtained. On the other hand, it is quite possible to talk coherently about ownership in a way that does not necessarily correspond to the legal situation. For example, a parent may tell a young child that a certain toy belongs to them, even if it legally belongs to the parent. Similarly, it may be plausible to argue that the concepts of property and possession, even if less solidly protected, may exist in societies that have nothing that we normally recognize as a legal system in its own right. Some may take such examples as an indication that the notion of ownership is not essentially legal, while others tend to think that they are merely metaphorical extensions of a concept that is legally based.

The law only gave you the right to sue him for pecuniary damages for legal damages. Other rights may be conferred by ordinary law or by customary law (i.e. the tradition of judicial law). An interesting point is that many legal rights are arguably not conferred by a positive law, but simply stem from the absence of a contrary law. That said, it is probably necessary in practice for every legal system to have an unwritten «closing rule» stating that anything that is not prohibited is allowed. If certain types of rights are essentially permissions, then many of those rights appear that way. In most jurisdictions, for example, my right to cross the street is like that. Probably no positive law will say that I can do it, and perhaps no more general law will imply it.

There have been several attempts to create «a generally acceptable definition of the law.» In 1972, Baron Hampstead proposed that such a definition could not be made. [30] McCoubrey and White said that the question «What is the law?» has no simple answer. [31] Glanville Williams stated that the meaning of the word «law» depends on the context in which it is used. He said, for example, that «primitive customary law» and «common law» are contexts in which the word «law» has two different and irreconcilable meanings. [32] Thurman Arnold said that it is obvious that it is impossible to define the word «law» and that it is equally obvious that the struggle for the definition of this word should never be abandoned. [33] Presumably, it is not necessary to define the term «law» (e.g.