Legal Terms: Chapter One, What is Law? Flashcards
Corrective Justice
Theory of Justice that claims
1. a person has moral responsibility for their actions.
2. the victim must be rectified, compensated or the act must be corrected.
*Most closely related to Deontological Approach where Justice is utilized as an end in itself.
Best suited for Private Law disputes
Critical Legal Studies
Theory which states that the law is necessarily intertwined with social issues, particularly stating that the law has inherent social biases.
Ex: Critical Race Theory, Feminist Juridprudence, etc.
Critical Race Theory
Law Theory that focuses on race-based inequities. Offshoot of Critical Legal Studies (CLS)
Deontological
Theories that focus on what is morally right or wrong.
Claims that there are certain moral rights that are universal because they are objectively good.
We have a duty to uphold these standards.
Distributive Justice
Theory of Justice concerned with the distribution of goods and entitlements amongst members of a society.
Distribution of a States’s bounty (wealth, property and honours) amongst those of merit.
All should be distributed equally unless one if of greater merit.
Best suited for Public Law matters
Domestic Law
The Law of a particular State or Society.
Ethics
Standards of right and wrong in human behaviour.
Applies to specific groups (professions)
Feminist Theories of Law
Theories concerning the legal, social and economic rights of and improving opportunities for women.
Instrumentalist
Theories that focus on something “Justice or Law as a means to an end”.
Justice as an instrument.
Focus on something such as “to end poverty” to create a “safer community”,
Jurisprudence
Philosophy of Law.
Theories that describe, criticize and explain law.
Normative Jurisprudence
Concerned with the rightness or wrongness of the law based on the conceptions of justice and morality.
Evaluative opposed to explanatory.
Focuses on what the law IS.
Example: restrictions on freedom, obligations to obey the law, and the grounds for punishment.
Analytic Jurisprudence
Philosophical approach to law that draws on the resources of modern analytical philosophy to try to understand the nature of what law IS not what it OUGHT to be.
Law and Society
Legal Study that looks at law from a social, interdisciplinary perspective.
Legal Positivism
Theory that the only valid source of law is the principles, rules and regulations expressly enacted by the institutions or persons within a society that have the power to enact them.
Man made-rules (commands) are positive law
All commands are valid and enforceable.
Legal Realism
View Law as human intervention. Laws can be flawed,
Encourages the study of other non-legal fields such as history and economics to better understand the legal system.
Law should be seen as an instrument to further desired social objectives.
Marxist Theories of Law
Based on writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and advocates of communist policies.
Concerned with the distribution of wealth and class structure in a society. (compatible with distributive theory)
Military Law
Constitutionally separate and self-contained system regulating Canadian Forces.
Governs armed forces during conflict and peace home and abroad.
Has public and private law aspects, as well as international public law.
Morality
System of values or principles concerning what is right or wrong in human behaviour.
Can be viewed in a normative or a descriptive light.