THE NATURE AND SOURCES OF LAW
THE NATURE, CLASSIFICATION AND SOURCES OF LAW 1. What is law Law is a rule prescribed for human action/conduct. It concerns human beings It is a rule prescribed for human action by a determinate authority 2. Characteristics of Law (a) Social control mechanism • It is a means to persuade its members to think and act in compliance with the norms which make up its culture • The most important feature of law is that, it is normative. • By normative it means that certain norms characteristic of human social life and indicative of what is done by the majority in a given situation have taken on the quality of what ought to be done. • What is the case is transformed into what ought to be the case • The word Norm-originate from the word square or norma, that is used by carpenters and masons to make right angles, which afforded them a ready means of achieving standardization. Conclusion Law is generally similar to social custom, positive morality and convention since it shares with them the c...