Why was law established in the first place?
Before we start our discussion on how to establish law, let us consider why a system of laws established in the first place? Although we cannot provide a definite answer for this questions, a good approach would be to imagine a society without any laws. As previously mentioned, we believe that humans are incapable of maintaining order without guidance; chaos of would arise. People would only act in self-interest, so, take for example, even if one has a surplus of food, he would let it rot instead of giving it to another. Then what constitutes chaos? The following is Mozi’s quote that attempts to define this norm.
“People have different moralities (yi).” Thus for one person, there was one morality; for two people, two moralities; for ten people, ten moralities — the more people, the more things they called “moral.” Thus people deemed their own morality right and on that basis deemed others’ morality wrong, and so in interaction they deemed each other wrong.” (Book 11, “Conforming Upward”)*M
Fortunately for us, the Canadian society has already manifested a unified framework of morality. A system of law provides us with a sense of security, and our incentives to fall out of line are put to a minimum. However, we cannot deny the fact that crimes still do occur, as the law only protects us to a ‘larger extent’.
Our ‘Law Passing Methodology’
This fact lead us to sought the need of laws that advocate on a more individual level; something similar to increase the standard of living overall. However, the establishment of laws pertaining to this nature would require the approval of the majority. This is where we have decided that there is a two-step process for a law to be passed to be passed.
1 A conference is held to discuss the pros and cons of the law, and a voting is held among ministry members.
2 If the majority votes for the law, it is revised for the minister for approval
The two-step process is intended to serve as a efficient, yet effective methodology to establish parameters of behavior. We will keep this methodology open to debate. Now, let us discuss the functionality of law for the government.
The Purpose of Law and the Government
With the law being defined as standards that are enforced by punishments, the establishment of Ministry of Law is correlated with the government, as it sets the parameters on what it encouraged, and what it prohibited. The law constitutes the framework on which the government runs on, and with this, we can state the following
“If a system of government is to be sustainable over time, it must be stable enough to withstand the occasional bad ruler, and self-supporting enough to be maintained by the numerous mediocre ones.”
If standards are fully formulated, the ruler simply has to compare one’s act with the wording of law, and respond with the reward and punishment laid down for it. This omits the risk of a ruler being swayed by benevolent or selfish considerations. As a summary, for a system of law to be effective, it must function not only as a parameter of morality that prevents people from doing wrong, but more so a margin that clears a ruler’s decisions from his personal preferences