Text 1 (D) Parliament of Great Britain

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READING MATERIAL

Text I (A) Law

The English word 'law' refers to limits upon various forms of behavior. Some laws are descriptive: they simply describe how people, or even natu­ral phenomena, usually behave. An example is the rather consistent law of gravity; another is the less consistent laws of economics. Other laws are prescriptive — they prescribe how people ought to behave. For example, the speed limits imposed upon drivers that prescribe how fast we should drive. They rarely describe how fast we actually do drive, of course.

In all societies, relations between people are regulated by prescriptive laws. Some of them are customs — that is, informal rules of social and moral behavior. Some are rules we accept if we belong to particular social insti­tutions, such as religious, educational and cultural groups. And some are precise laws made by nations and enforced against all citizens within their power.

Customs need not to be made by governments, and they need not be written down. We learn how we are expected to behave in society through the instruction of family and teachers, the advice of friends, and our expe­riences in dealing with strangers. Sometimes, we can break these rules with­out suffering any penalty. But if we continually break the rules, or break a very important one, other members of society may ridicule us, act violently toward us or refuse to have anything to do with us. The ways in which people talk, eat and drink, work, and relax together are usually called cus­toms.

Text 1 (В) Order

Order is rich with meaning. Let's start with "law and order". Maintain­ing order in this sense means establishing the rule of law to preserve life and to protect property. To the seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588—1679), preserving life was the most important function of law. He described life without law as life in a 'state of nature'. Without rules, people would live like predators, stealing and killing for personal benefit.

Members of every community have made laws for themselves in self-pro­tection. If it were not for the law, you could not go out in daylight without the fear of being kidnapped, robbed or murdered. There are far more good people in the world than bad, but there are enough of the bad to make law necessary in the interests of everyone. Even if we were all as good as we ought to be, laws would still be necessary. How is one good man in a mo­torcar to pass another good man also in a motorcar coming in an opposite direction, unless there is some rule of the road?

Suppose you went to a greengrocery — and bought some potatoes and found on your return home that they were mouldy or even that some of them were stones, what could you do if there were no laws on the subject? In the absence of law you could only rely upon the law of the jungle.

Every country tries, therefore, to provide laws, which will help its peo­ple to live safely and comfortably. This is not at all an easy thing to do. No country has been successful in producing laws, which are entirely satisfac­tory. But the imperfect laws are better than none.

Text 1 (C) Legal systems

In order to understand why a particular country has a particular legal system, it is necessary to look at its history, political structure and social values. When there is political and social upheaval, one of the main con­cerns of a new government is to revise the legal system. Britain has had an unusual degree of political continuity. Despite civil wars in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries and enormous social changes associated with industrialization, England and Wales have retained many laws and legal principles that originated eight centuries ago. On the other hand, most of the law of Japan, which experienced the rapid upheaval of the Meiji Res­toration and foreign occupation after the Second World War, was developed within the last century.

Each country in the world, even each state of the United States, has its own system of law. However it is generally true to say that there are two main traditions of law in the world. One is based on English Common law, and has been adopted by many Commonwealth countries and most of the United States. The other tradition, sometimes known as Continental, or Roman law, has developed in most of continental Europe, Latin America and many countries in Asia and Africa, which have been strongly influenced by Europe. Continental law has also influenced Japan and several socialist countries.

Text 1 (D) Parliament of Great Britain

Officially the head of the state is the monarch. The power of the monarch is not absolute but constitutional. Parliament restricts it (the power of the monarch).

Parliament in Britain exists since 1265. It is the oldest Parliament in the world.

The functions of Parliament are: making laws; providing money for the government through taxation; examining government policy, administration and spending; debating political questions.

Every year Parliament passes about a hundred laws directly, by making Acts of Parliament. Because this can be a long process, Parliament sometimes passes a very general law and leaves a minister to fill in the details. In this way, it indirectly passes about 2,000 additional rules and regulations.

No new law can be passed unless it has completed a number of stages in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The monarch also has to give a Bill the Royal Assent, which is now just a formality. Since 1707 no sovereign has refused a Bill. Whilst a law is still going through Parliament it is called a Bill. There are two main types of Bills - Public Bills which deal with matters of public importance and Private Bills which deal with local matters and individuals.

Public and Private Bills are passed through Parliament in much the same way. When a Bill is introduced in the House of Commons, it receives a formal first reading. It is then printed and read a second time, when it is debated but not amended. After the second reading the Bill is referred to a committee, either a special committee made up of certain members of the House, or to the House itself as a committee. Here it is discussed in detail and amended, if necessary. The Bill is then presented for a third reading and is debated. If the Bill is passed by the Commons it goes to the Lords, and provided it is not rejected by them, it goes through the same procedure as in the Commons. After receiving the Royal Assent the Bill becomes an Act of Parliament. In order to be enforced, it must be published in Statute form, becoming a part of Statute Law. The power of the Lords to reject a Bill has been severely curtailed. A money Bill must be passed by the Lords without amendment within a month of being presented in the House. The Act of 1949 provides that any Public Bill passed by the Commons in two successive parliamentary sessions and rejected both times by the Lords, may be presented for the Royal Assent, even though it has not been passed by the Lords. The Lords, therefore, can only delay the passage of a Public Bill, they cannot reject it.