Ruthie Kelly

LES 501, Jordan

Sept. 5, 2013
What is law?

As with most simple questions, the dictionary definition of the term law the system of rules
that a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and may enforce
by the imposition of penalties
1
fails to capture the nuances of the term as it is understood, used and
practiced today, both by plebeians and professionals. Law is more than a mere system of rules, or else any
system of rules would be considered laws, from the guidelines for soccer tournaments, to every parents
edict that You must finish your dinner before you get dessert, to the Ten Commandments (which, while
they may bear some similarity to certain of our current laws, such as Thou shalt not murder, they are by no
means considered actual enforceable law, as evidenced by Americas collective and unpunished penchant
for adultery, coveting, and unholy Sabbaths). Capturing the aforementioned nuances, even when afforded
additional space beyond the dictionarys truncated clauses and brief flare of illuminated understanding, is
like dividing a number in half and attempting to reach zero: additional effort brings more precision and
clarity, but the destination can never be fully reached from the infinite loops contained within each division.
A more precise definition of law would include the distinction that laws are understood by the
general public to be rules created and enforced by state actors
2
(as opposed to rules created in communities
and cultures that are not authorized by or enforced by the state, such as religious groups, families,
companies, etc.). This distinction is particularly important in the United States, because here, only
authorized state actors are granted a mandate for the use of force to enforce the law (and not all state actors
are authorized...for example, a member of Congress is not authorized to pursue and subdue a
noncompliant citizen with a police baton or punish a convicted murderer through lethal injection). Non-
state groups are generally confined to non-force related penalties (and their authority is limited by the scope
of their group), such as withholding of privileges and benefits, emotional and relational penalties, or
ejecting noncompliant members from the group. (These penalties, by and large, are available to state actors
as well.) Further, distinction must be made between formal rules that have been enacted via the states
established rulemaking process and rulemaking agent or body (in the U.S., federal laws are established by
Congress via its legislative process, for example) and informal rules that amount to unenforceable customs
and collective culture, no matter how widespread the understanding of and conformity to such rules may
be. Enforcement, too, is key to the definition of law, as rules that lack established penalties for violation
are essentially guidelines and suggestions that anyone may disregard with no consequence for doing
so, thus producing no motivation for compliance, which results in a failure to modify behavior beyond
what an individual was inclined to do on their own anyway. Also key to the common understanding of
law in the U.S. is the idea of justice an even more amorphous and widely-debated term that, for the
purposes of this paper, boils down to equal application of the law and its penalties, which should be
proportionate to the seriousness of the law itself and considerate of the potential damages to the rest of the
citizens and community if the law is ignored.
Arguably the most important element of law is belief. Belief that the law exists is required, because
belief leads to the collective understanding that individual actors will be caught if the law is disobeyed and
consequences and penalties will be imposed to modify behavior to compliance (by force if needed and
appropriate). That understanding is what results in individuals modifying their behavior to comply with the

1
New Oxford American Dictionary, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press (2010)
2
For the purposes of this paper, a state actor is understood to refer to an individual or group who has been granted their authority to act on behalf
of the entire state or sub-state (generally considered a government, whose position or department should fall into either the legislative, judicial or
executive branches, with the state not being literal states as in states of the Unites States, but rather could be as small as a city or as large as the
entire nation) through the accepted process for their position (usually election, or via the nomination-approval-appointment process, though there are
myriad exceptions, additions and hybrids to these two general categories). A state actor could be a single individual, such as a mayor, or a group
that acts as a collective, such as Congress. Note, of course, that in countries that do not separate church and state, religious groups can be state actors.
Ruthie Kelly
LES 501, Jordan
Sept. 5, 2013
law. Without a belief in the laws existence, in the laws checking for compliance, and in the laws enforcement
through penalties for noncompliance, the law is nothing but a collection of wishful words on paper.