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Disobedience to Law
Exercise 1.Read the text and answer the following questions:
1. What is called an act of conscientious refusal?
2. Give the examples of civil disobedience.
3. What does violent disobedience mean?
In the normal course of events one may assume that there is an obligation to obey the law. But one should consider that there is a right or, even a duty, to disobey. Let us consider the position of a concentration camp guard making people go into gas chambers.
If he disobeyed, he broke the military law to which he was subject. But wouldn't you have wanted him to disobey that terrifying law?
It is sometimes said that we should evaluate the law against our own morality and decide whether or not to obey or enforce it. There may be such a law that the people are prepared to be punished rather than obey it. This is called an act of conscientious refusal. A pacifist who refuses to take part in war at all, or the Americans who refused to join the army when called up for the Vietnam war, were engaged in conscientious refusal. Conscientious refusal is generally directed at the particular law of which the person disapproves. In contrast to this there are occasions on which people disobey one law in order to draw attention to what they regard as iniquity. This is civil disobedience. Typically, demonstrators against nuclear weapons may obstruct a highway in order to draw attention to what they regard as the error made by those who possess them. There are degrees of disobedience — some people will only engage in passive disobedience, while others believe that in some cases it is permissible to use violent disobedience. Such a case may have been that of South Africa, where one may have accepted that the whole system of apartheid is part of the legal system but regard that system as so terrible that violence is permissible to overthrow it and believe that the sort of blame which we normally give to lawbreakers should not be given to persons violently engaged in the overthrow of an unjust system.
Exercise 2. Give the English equivalents for the following:
– подчиняться;
– газовые камеры;
– оценивать;
– осознанный отказ;
– случаи, события;
– несправедливость;
– гражданское неповиновение;
– привлечь внимание;
– активное неповиновение;
– свергнуть;
– вина;
– несправедливая система.
TOPIC 2. HISTORY OF ENGLISH LAW
Text 1
Common Law
Exercise 1.Read the text and answer the following questions:
1. What is the historical background of common law?
2. Why was the new system of laws called «common law»?
3. What did the common law support?
4. What was feudalism concerned with?
5. Who had strict control over law and the courts?
6. What led to great rigidity in the common law?
7. What were the drawbacks of Common Law in old times?
Before the Norman conquest there was no strong government capable of doing systematic development of law throughout the whole country. Laws varied from one place to another according to the laws and customs of various tribes which had conquered different areas of the country. Then with the Normans in 1066 came strong centralised system based in London but administering the same law in the whole country. The new system of laws was known as the «common law» because the same legal rules were common to the whole country.
Disputes involving the common law held in royal courts and the supervision of the King and the whole system supported the new social order of «feudalism». Feudalism was concerned with an order of society based on land-holding (only the king could own land). The more land a person held, the more powerful he was. Each person held land in return for service or other. One person might hold his land in return for supplying soldiers to his landlord, another in return for corn. At the top of the whole feudal system was the king. The king and his chief ministers were sure that the law should help them keep their power. As a result they had strict control over law and the courts and used it to prevent «the watering down» of feudalism by not allowing people to leave their land in wills or make gifts of land. This led to great rigidity in the common law which often resulted in injustice. The main defects in early common law were:
a) it was inflexible;
b) it would only recognize money compensation as a penalty;
c) witnesses could not be compelled to come and give evidence by common-law courts;
d) no one could leave land in a will or make a gift of land;
e) it was slow and expensive.
Exercise 2. Give the English equivalents for the following:
– общее право;
– обычаи;
– племена;
– завоевали;
– землепользование;
– наказание; штраф;
– предотвратить;
– давать свидетельские показания;
– свидетели.
Text 2