It's obviously a complicated topic, but I think you're on the right track. The democratic rule of law provides not only for the authority to regulate specific activities, but also the placement of limitations on the arbitrary exercise of that authority. An additional feature is that the authority to regulate is exclusive to the State (or its delegate). As well, a legal system normally would include a system of penalties and an enforcement body.

I think that laws are fictions like a lot of social ideas. I think people act towards law in the manner of "Bad faith" as described in Sartre.

It is easy to ignore a law but people will obey laws often completely unskeptically. I think that in order to make a law happen you have to join in a game and play a role (based on whatever societies current narrative is).

I believe that the idea that laws are to regulate society is far to benevolent an interpretation. I don't think that we have utopian societies in which laws simply regulate it for everyone's benefits. So I suppose I would personally describe a law as a linguistic tool that can be utilised in many different ways.

I don't think laws need to want to control people. A lot of them are simply pragmatic such as the traffic lights, to avoid chaos. Laws or rules can be like a framework for functioning. I think that when laws are reified (made as though concrete) then they become coercive and irrational.

I think that laws are rules set by people in power as an effort to control an aspect of the population. Is that not a reasonable definition? — MonfortS26

No, I don't think that's reasonable. Laws are put in place to protect the defined rights and freedom of individuals. Therefore they are not intended to control the population, but to ensure that each member of the population is best able to exercise one's own freedom.

No, I don't think that's reasonable. Laws are put in place to protect the defined rights and freedom of individuals. Therefore they are not intended to control the population, but to ensure that each member of the population is best able to exercise one's own freedom. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think law often functions in both ways. There's certainly a power / freedom limiting side of many laws. On the other hand, many laws do also help to ensure the exercise of freedom. I guess laws can be a double edged sword.

At some point I read that there is no way to define law, or at least that is an opinion that is held. I disagree though. I think that laws are rules set by people in power as an effort to control an aspect of the population. Is that not a reasonable definition? — MonfortS26

Have you ever read Hans Kelsen? He basically boils the idea of a law to that of a norm backed by coercive threat. In other words, a law amounts to something like, "You ought to do X because if you do not do X you will receive Y negative consequence."

Which seems to play right into your opinion that laws are rules (norms) set by people in power as an effort to control an aspect of the population, although Kelsen's emphasis is not on control of the population so much as how law functions in holding a society together. He's more of an optimist.

For the opposite, more pessimistic view that you espouse, Foucault, I think, is all over that in his writings on power.

I think that laws are rules set by people in power as an effort to control an aspect of the population. — MonfortS26

I agree.

Law is a set of rules and guidelines which are created, interpreted, and enforced by a legal system having legal institutions. As such, law is a type of formal social control, hence; implemented in stratified (as opposed to egalitarian) societies. Types include Human Positive Law and Religious Law.

It is easy to ignore a law but people will obey laws often completely unskeptically. I think that in order to make a law happen you have to join in a game and play a role (based on whatever societies current narrative is).

I believe that the idea that laws are to regulate society is far to benevolent an interpretation. I don't think that we have utopian societies in which laws simply regulate it for everyone's benefits. So I suppose I would personally describe a law as a linguistic tool that can be utilised in many different ways.

I don't think laws need to want to control people. A lot of them are simply pragmatic such as the traffic lights, to avoid chaos. Laws or rules can be like a framework for functioning. I think that when laws are reified (made as though concrete) then they become coercive and irrational. — Andrew4Handel

You are free to disregard any particular law if you think that obedience to it is a voluntary game, and you are prepared to live with the consequences. A more nuanced view would be to accept that some laws are more deserving of our obedience than others. In a constitutional democracy, at least, there are some implications for this. For example, a law that is unconstitutional is invalid, and should be struck down by the judiciary. Alternatively, a law that is validly enacted might nevertheless be unjust to such an extent that disobedience would be morally justified. In this latter example, it may take persons who are willing to suffer punishment and indignity to demonstrate the injustice of a law.

No doubt, some laws are arbitrary conventions in the way you describe. Some highway traffic laws are a good example (e.g. it hardly matters which side of the highway we drive on, left or right, as long as we can all agree to follow the same convention).

Another purpose of the law that has not yet been mentioned is to resolve conflict between competing interests. Much of the civil law is devoted to this function.

Sorry for oversimplifying this, but it is something I've thought about quite a bit and have distilled it to this law anent laws: Rules can be broken, laws can't. Humans play "God," and they delude themselves every step of the way. There are plenty of things happen you don't like or you do like...but likes and dislikes, or agreements and disagreements are usually based on point of view more than law (similar to cultural relativity). Unless you tried to say you have psychal laws within, and that your feelings on a matter are derivative of psychal laws. Then you discover that there are laws of feelings and emotions and laws anterior to what is fathomable and fathomless. What is possible or impossible to enter into your head is perhaps a subject of metaphysical law. So this illustrates that if it is against the law, then it is impossible. If it is is possible, then it isn't against the law even though you may not like it. Perhaps your feelings for what is possible and impossible is also part of the law.

One thing is for sure: human jurisprudence isn't law, but rules. If it were law, it would be impossible to break the same as it is impossible to jump on top of your house. Traffic laws can't prevent car wrecks because they aren't actually laws: the deranged metal of the cars involved and the broken bones of the drivers are derived from law. When enough people agree to a rule and then all believe it is a law is the contagion of mass hysteria or crowd psychology, that is, unconsciousness. There may be some law of consciousness which transfers agency away from the individual's responsibility to think freely and consciously, autonomously and independently. Laws aren't created by any one species, though there may be species specific laws. Man can use laws, or mix laws into an emergent reaction or pour one into another, but can never create them.

This is a good topic as I feel the confusion of rule and law has long been a central reason man is born free but grows up into hard shelled pseudo structures that are basically imaginary agreements which lead to the en mass delusions and socially patterned defects which are maelstrom to the health of our species. There are a lot of bifurcations on this topic of import to its phenomenological domain. Humans are great at giving away their agency which makes the individual incapable of ascertaining the starting point or ending point of many ontological questions. There are classes of unities anent what is possible and impossible. Epistemological arrogance comes into play with our species, especially when we site our involvement with technology, such as when it fails or works as it was planned, as an excuse for our failures or success respectively. Somewhere in between the exteriorization of agency and whatever it is that catches our projections there is something like a phantom we mistake for a law, but is actually a false belief, not justifiable, not true. Superegos are suggestive of mass bundles of make believe or rules and not laws, a projection of omniscience into abstract human organizations, which of course are never the truly unknowable domain of cosmic abstraction, but only anthropolatry. How to subjectively handle the limits of what is know/knowable and unknown/unknowable plays a big role in what we adhere to and the selective mechanisms of what we give our attention. What is unknown and unknowable is truly abstract, but what is knowable/unknowable from the perspective of anthropolatry is pseudo abstract.

So we have law, psychal law, metaphysical law, law of consciousness, species-specific law, and we know that "human jurisprudence isn't law, but rules." And the question remains: what is law?

Rules can be broken, laws can't. — Anthony

Juridical law and physical law are obviously two completely different and unrelated topics. I understood this thread to be directed to questions about the former. Law in its original meaning referred to the human activity of behavioral regulation by an authoritative power, and was later applied by analogy to certain physical or other constraints found in nature. The metaphor makes sense if you view the physical constraints in nature as promulgated by God, but otherwise the comparison is rather weak.

Also, the (juridical) law is more than merely rules and the interpretation of those rules. A more modern approach to the law is based on broad principles and the judicial or administrative elaboration and application of those principles to particular fact scenarios.

Behaviorism? Behavioral regulation? That the system of rules of the game (for the ruling elite) still relies on animal conditioning/operant conditioning for it to "work" (does it work?) says enough to why it is lame I'd hope. Or you could say puerile behaviorism and psychoneurotic hysteria of jurisprudence resembles a second set of parents, with little to no internal consistency in its "laws."

Because statutes and precedent can't possibly keep up with the domain of life and its novelty, life is dragged down to a necrophilic land when it is based on rules instead of living law; and the system of legislation is so internally inconsistent it breaches itself anterior to any need for human interpretation. An individual can facultatively create a system of law for himself far more internally consistent and inherently virtuous than any rule system meant for everyone; there should be a law for him to do so, but maybe this is a law that only informs and organizes the thinking natures of autonomous people (as for them, it is impossible not to be autonomous).

Usually it's the parasitic authority in one's own schema (interiorized autocracy; behavior without knowing any of the reasons why you are behaving or simply to fit in or acquire arbitrary gain) that, like a brood parasite (you think you are raising your own young, but it's more like a changeling in you), sits in lieu of a spirited self processing and self organizing system of agency (function, organization, and structure are all organic and part of a changing vital equilibrium in self sufficient, good people) that becomes anti social; internalized authority with it's lack of virtue is largely to blame in failing to liberate the species, as it is afraid of punishment or desirous of reward (virtue does or doesn't do or not do things based on punishment or reward, but on understanding of what is more or less inviolable and in keeping with organismic terminuses and setpoints); authoritarians are often antisocial; judges and attorneys are more often psychopaths than the laity. But, if the drift of discussion ignores this and all that is antithesis to monkey behaviorism, I won't understand any of it so... Sorry if I misinterpreted it though, didn't mean to misdirect the thread or to be an imp of the perverse.

You lost me on the remark about judges being psychopaths.

No doubt the law relies on deterrence, but I don't think that is quite the same thing as operant conditioning. Autonomous regulation would be socially optimal, but unfortunately humans do not have a great track record with self-regulation. We are particularly bad at restraining our aggression and subordinating our desire for power and resources (not unlike monkeys).

It does seem like a lot of people identify with the aggressor anymore. Does society reward aggression? The military psychology is getting too close to mainstream.

Some people self-regulate very well (introverted monk types for example), others are power hungry and more aggressive (exploit or be exploited; kill or be killed: capitalist and soldier aggression respectively). One can't really say "we" in describing who and who doesn't have self-recollection as they navigate their lives in an even keel. I'm more passive, but in a hyperactive market society, don't make the mistake of calling me passive-aggressive: I've heard people are afraid of being alone these days: clearly this is an index of something gone severely wrong in the social character. Being alone requires slowing down to a stop and facing oneself and one's demons while taking no actions whatever, sitting still. To a hyperactive and aggressive market society social milieu, no doubt this seems too passive, but I think it's the norm of society that has become too extremely active and aggressive. It takes all kinds, there's no "we" in terms of an entity that is the same. And it is bizarre that the law (rules) are expected to apply to everyone equally as though everyone were the same person, which is impossible (against the Law, with capital "L"). From the perspective of the true Law, indeed it does apply to everyone equally, but also differently in the interior domain of mental imagery, imagination, reckoning, idealisms, and eidolons.

Anti social lawyers and judges are commonplace (this is part of the grand irony of the legal system); they set aside warm, forgiving human relationships and connections, and individual lives at large (personal histories, whole beings; treating perception as though it were demon possession), while believing they're being objective (basically, it's impossible for anyone to be without emotion or observational interpretation or truly objective; judges aren't insensate objects as much as they may want to be). In this regard, those in law are behaviorists and attempting to minimize human intuition, trying to leave nothing undefined and nothing to chance or fate. Any living human has selective mechanisms of attention based on his personal experience, personal history, and style of introspection: he has several (separate) cognitions, unlike any other's cognitions; no two people alike learn a fact or make an observation as though they had no perception. Law (and I don't mean rules of anthropocentric teleology) is never cookie-cutter, we see its infinite variety in countenances, and in varied styles of consciousness and modes of being trying to make a unity of the multiplicity of life. To do this, some need rules that apply to everyone (as though they didn't trust themselves or their own agency/autonomy/self-law), but to more autonomous people, the same rules act as a hindrance to the internal consistency of their unique sui generis of self-law. One could be a much better person than what is allowed by the rules of anthropocentric teleology if he created a closed system of information and organization. There can be no argument human society has become over informed and over organized to the uppermost: and it isn't hard to argue this will play a role in social decay.

You are free to disregard any particular law if you think that obedience to it is a voluntary game, and you are prepared to live with the consequences. — geospiza

I think obeying a law is acting a part even if you think the law is very rational.

Some laws you don't break not because you are obeying them but because they address an inclination you don't have. I am not obeying the law by not committing murder because I am not restraining or altering my behaviour deliberately.

There are a huge number of laws most of which most people are unaware of so it is only in certain specific situations where you have to obey a law. Then when confronted with a law you need to obey you are usually resigned to do so. For example it says on some mutlipacks of chocolate bars "Do not resell seperately " It is not a major issue but like a lot of other small laws you just found yourself obeying.

There are even laws against suicide which are a bit futile after someone has killed themselves. I think law gets taken seriously because of the number of laws and sophistication of the system. When you have a huge law library it's going to sway some people into assuming laws legitimacy. But I think laws are often tools for manipulation, inequality or over-regulation and propagating norms etc and they are not benign or pragmatic.

So it is like a very complex game whose bureaucracy is its greatest weapon. It is hard to disentangle yourself from it but it is easy to argue that the whole edifice is based on illegitimate foundations. And if people support the law it can be very self serving because the law may be helping them prosper.

At some point I read that there is no way to define law, or at least that is an opinion that is held. I disagree though. I think that laws are rules set by people in power as an effort to control an aspect of the population. Is that not a reasonable definition?
--MonfortS26

I think it goes along the line of "he who has the gold makes the rules", even if they are merely making up the rules as they go along in order to suit their own needs. If this wasn't true, then we would call it every time a government collected 'taxes' as racketeering, just as we call it any other time a group tried to collected money from us in the name of protection/services regardless if anything is really being done for us.

Other than trying maintaining the status quo the law is about "We do what we do, because that is the way that we do it."

Law is a word if human language that refers to multiple different things. Now if you want a definition of law, you first have to give a definition. That would be absurd of course, but let's say a bad definition that lets us know which meaning you mean at least.

If we assume that you mean law as in related to court system, I'd like to give the trivial answer and try to end your interesting philosophical debate (not that that'd be my intention, just that it's a very likey cause). A law is a rule of society set by authority responsible for making laws, when that authority proclaims that rule to be a law.

There are a huge number of laws most of which most people are unaware of so it is only in certain specific situations where you have to obey a law. — Andrew4Handel

Quite right. This is one of the observations what compels me to focus on the definition of "rule" (anthropocentric ruling class) vs "law" (non anthropocentric ruling "class"). It must be fatuous to a significant extent to respect human rules very much when there is no autonomic nervous system or instinct backing up rule with law; perhaps goodness is a kind of law of instinct and antisocial people have no instinct. Perhaps it isn't necessary to know what one respects in order to respect it, however, I am inclined to respect pre eminent powers more than subservient ones. I respect the plenitude, gradation, and continuity of the empyrean more than the delimitation of any one species, even though the heavens and the earth contain endless unknown and unpredictable phenomenon: there has to be "species" of time and space for there to be worlds, saying nothing that comes after in this hierarchic chain of being. In mistaking rule for law, humans have done nothing less than made themselves time and space, worlds, and all that transpires on worlds. As though instead of walking on a beautifully abstract planet, we were walking on a monumental human head that was feigning to bark out natural laws and processes.

Re the legislative sense, what's supposed to be wrong with this?

"the system of rules that a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and may enforce by the imposition of penalties."