Attempts To Understand Law’s Value In Society

Karthika Ellangovan, O.P Jindal Global University

“Attempts to understand law’s value in society are weekend by the tendency to treat it as a single entity when in reality different kinds of laws shape and form contribute to different social goods”

Introduction

Law as an entity must exist for the whole of society to avoid contentions such as selective discrimination, partiality and prejudices. Laws either legitimize or criminalize actions in a civic community. In order to pursue a collective betterment of a population, laws must exist and be accessible to all shades and hues of society. Moreover, the tendency to treat law as a single entity gives rise to problems such as neglecting other forms of texts, either cultural or religious which may prescribe rules to certain groups in society. Hence, it is vital that law is perceived as a multi-dimensional figure, which is available to all and serves the purposes of all without compromising on the amelioration of the population.

The central purpose of law is to ensure that communities are able to achieve different social goods which are pursuable by all members. A social good may be anything that is beneficial to the largest number of people at hand, however, this definition does not limit itself to the majoritarian desires, it usually involves largely accessible social goods like the right to live in a clean environment or the right to legal aid. Whilst the drafting of any bill, legislators conceive an image on what kind of social good or benefit will result from the law and thereby enabling society to pursue that social good once the law is executed (Strang 2005). Across the globe, societies are divided and graded one on top of the other on the basis of either class, caste, gender, religion or all alongside each other. Indian society is especially stratified on the vicious parameter of caste which is unique to the country and claims a divine religious backing. This stratification is wide reaching in Indian society which leaves no common front of the masses. Pre-independent India was struggling to assimilate a general common front of Indian society simply because apart from caste, class became a basis to divide people. Hence the emergence of the educated middle class amongst the peasant community and the elitist groups. This evolved to produce a divisive mindset in Indian society which further made it convenient for the British empire to divide and rule and thereby create privileges to just some.