This document discusses several key aspects of law: 1. The purposes of law including maintaining order, protecting lives and property, and protecting freedom and society. 2. How morals and values influence lawmaking as reflected in statutes passed by legislatures. 3. The role of judges in developing common law and changing laws to fit society through precedent-setting decisions. 4. The organization of laws into legal codes and the ability of citizens to change laws through amendments and repeals.

1. David Ford Avon CT

2. Essential Questions
 Are laws necessary for our society to function?
 How do morals and values influence lawmaking?
 What role do judges play in changing the law?
 Why do we have separate criminal and civil justice
systems?

3. Purposes of Law:
 1. The need for order
 Tell people what they may or may not do
 EX: Gasoline pumps or Evidence in trials
 2. Protecting lives and property
 EX: Physical attacks (murder) or Ideas/Inventions
 3. Protecting freedom and society
 EX: Bill of Rights or Restaurant Standards
 *Criminal and Civil law also have a purpose*

4. Laws and Morals
 Morals: beliefs about what is fair and what is right or
wrong
 Civil disobedience: breaking the law in a nonviolent
way because it goes against personal morals
 How do these two definitions influence laws?

5. Laws Made by Legislature
 Statutes: written laws made by legislatures
(government bodies)
 Laws passed by Congress reflect basic values shared by
Americans
 Laws passed by state or local governments reflect the
basic values shared by a specific group of people
 EX: when people believed in witchcraft, there were laws
against casting spells that would cause harm.

6. Judges
 Common law: a body of law based on a judge’s
decisions
 Common law came from England.
 Used as precedent (do you remember this?)
 Changed to fit American society
 Ex: under English common law, it was illegal for a
landowner to interfere with the natural flow of a stream.
However, in America, water power was used to run
factories. American judges began to change the law to
fit this need.
 Can you think of other examples?

7. Organization of Laws
 There are so many laws, how do we keep them
straight?
 Legal code: a written collection of laws, often
organized by subject
 Ex: traffic laws = state motor vehicle code
 History of legal code
 The Code of Hammurabi carved into stone tablets (eye
for an eye)
 Draconian (most crimes punished by death)

8. Changing the Law
 In the U.S., citizens have final say on all laws
 Add, change or remove any law (amending the
Constitution, doing away with a local ordinance)
 Laws that last are seen as fair, reasonable, and
understandable by the majority of the people

9. Criminal Law
 Crime: any behavior that is illegal because the
government considers it harmful to society
 Each law must define a behavior and state how it may
be punished
 Criminal Law: the group of laws that tell which acts are
crimes, how accused persons should be tried in court,
and how crimes should be punished

10. Criminal Law
 Purpose: to protect society as a whole
 Criminal law must set fair and reasonable penalties.
 Many crimes have minimum and maximum penalties
 Allows for people guilty of the same crime to be
punished depending on the case
 What would be an example?

11. Criminal Law
 Two categories of crime:
 Felony: a serious crime for which the penalty can be
imprisonment for more than one year
 Ex: kidnapping and murder
 Misdemeanor: a less serious crime for which the penalty
is often a fine
 Ex: littering, driving without a license

12. Civil Law
 Civil law: a group of laws that help settle disputes
between people
 Purpose: provide rules for people to settle
disagreements in court if they cannot settle them
privately

13. Criminal and Civil Law
 Some situations involve both criminal and civil law
 Ex: drunk driver without car insurance hits a woman
on the street
 Criminal: punish the driver for drunk driving
 Civil: court forces the driver to pay the woman’s medical
bills
 Try on your own: illegally copied DVD’s
 Criminal?
 Civil?