Many people regard the law as something that doesn’t really affect them. They may have a curiosity about some of the more salacious cases in the press, but otherwise, they don’t see it as of any real relevance to their everyday lives. I’m sure that there will be some reading this who will think that as a lawyer I’m inevitably going to say law matters because my job depends on it. In fact every day, every one of us is involved with legal matters, it’s just that unless something goes wrong, the legal aspects tend to go unnoticed.
From the birth of mankind there has been a desire to impose laws. What’s sometimes called ‘natural law’ were basic rules to allow people to coexist. If you live within a group, you need to know that you can go to sleep without being attacked and so a law was put in place that would protect you from being killed or assaulted. As society developed so did law. People began to accumulate possessions and so there was a law preventing others from taking your possessions. As people started trading and offering services, the laws again developed to have a system of contracts to try and prevent people being cheated. With the introduction of cars came the introduction of laws about how people would be allowed to drive. Laws were introduced to regulate family relationships: who can marry, the circumstances in which divorce is allowed. A legal framework was put in place to allow separated parents to make arrangements for how their children divide their time between them. Laws made to protect children allow for the state to step in and remove children from their parents in cases where the children had suffered or were likely to suffer significant harm. Laws have been introduced to change birth relationships through the introduction of adoption and special guardianship orders. Laws to protect other vulnerable members of society who are not able to manage their affairs have also been introduced. Society became more sophisticated and so did the laws, with laws dealing with matters such as libel and intellectual property. Principles which many regard as fundamental such as sex equality and protection from discrimination have only relatively recent become law. Some laws make perfect sense, some are just relics of a bygone age.
Whether it’s going out to work, arranging a new mobile phone contract or just buying a coffee, we are all involved in legal dealings every day. As a lawyer I see what happens when things have gone wrong. When the framework of expectations that have been set in place through our laws have been breached and the court is asked to adjudicate on the problem. It can be frustrating seeing people’s lives unravelling knowing that if only they had stopped to think or taken advice many of the problems could have been averted.
So does law matter? Of course it does. It matters to me as a lawyer, but it also matters to every single person in the country.
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