Role of the law commision and the role played by pressure groups Essay Example

Role of the law commision and the role played by pressure groups Essay In this essay I will explain the role of the law commission and discuss the role played by pressure groups and judges with regard to law reform. The law commission is made up of five people from the judiciary, the legal profession and legal academies. Generally the chairman is a high court judge and the other four include a QC experienced in criminal law, a solicitor with experience in land law and equity and two legal academics. They are assisted by legally qualified civil servants. It was set up in 1965 with its main task to be codification. In 1965 it was announced that it would begin codifying family law, contract, landlord and tenant and evidence. This wasnt its only task though, under the law commissions act 1965 the law commission was also meant to remove anomalies from the law, repeal obsolete and unnecessary legislation, consolidate the law and finally simplify and modernize the law. It operates on projects referred to it by the Lord Chancellor or government department, at times it may also work on projects itself feels necessary for consideration. Normally a project will begin with a study of the area of law in question and attempt to identify its defects. Foreign legal systems may be looked at to see how they deal with similar issues. Then it publishes a consultation paper inviting comments, it describes present law and sets out possible options for reform. The commissions final recommendations are in a report containing a draft bill where legislation is proposed. The government then decides if it accepts the recommendations of the law commission. If it does it is down to them to introduce any necessary bills in parliament. We will write a custom essay sample on Role of the law commision and the role played by pressure groups specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Role of the law commision and the role played by pressure groups specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Role of the law commision and the role played by pressure groups specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Personally I think the law commission was weak in some areas and stronger in others. For example they didnt do very well with codification, although they were set a list of laws to codify attempts for the first few were abandoned and the last one never even begun. It is thought that the reason for this is that they realized it wasnt going to work and it didnt fit in with law making in our country. Zander suggests it was down to a mixture of conservatism and realisation on part of the draftsman, legislators and even judges that it simply didnt fit the English style of lawmaking. Although they did better with contract law, they have radically changed it by recommending control of exclusion clauses which led to the unfair contract terms act 1977, they helped in many other situations as well. A pressure group is an organized group that seeks to influence government policy or legislation. Although the term pressure groups implies they use force not all of them do, different groups have different methods. Their aim is to influence people who have the power to make decisions. Some choose to lobby MPs gaining as much publicity as possible for their cause; others may organize petitions or encourage people to write to their own MP and/or minister. Some groups tend to be more effective than others, size or persistence may be the reason for some groups success. Examples include justice a group concerned with promoting law reform in general and charities such as help the aged and shelter. As well as pressure groups and other organizations the public generally make their opinions known to MPs, ministers and to newspapers. This can lead to reform; another thing that has a great impact on reform is the media as it claims to reflect what the public think in general. Although much law reform happens as a response to pressure from one or more sources agencies such as the law commission are set up to deal with area of law referred to them by the government. The majority of law reform is carried out by parliament and is done in four ways. The first one is repeal, then creation, consolidation and finally codification.

Free Essays on Oppression

The Limits to Freedom What is oppression? The word oppression can relate to a wide myriad of situations, as it did in the 1960’s. Oppression is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as the act of oppressing; arbitrary exercise of power or a feeling of being heavily weighed down in mind or body. In the 1960’s it was not just one entity that experienced this need to obtain freedom, but it was many groups. According to Miller, â€Å"Something of value did happen in the sixties. New Voices were heard, new forms of beauty appeared. And most of the large questions raised by that moment of chaotic openness- political questions about the limits of freedom, and cultural questions, too, about the authority of the past and the anarchy of the new- are with us still† (Miller, 8). These â€Å"limits of freedom† explained by Miller are the oppressive standards that were evident in the 1960’s by not only college students, but also by African-Americans, women, the people of Vie tnam, and many other Americans who were exposed to technocracy, this era of oppression and its consequences is one of the major themes of this course. Technocracy triggered many of the social movements of the 1960’s that were lead by young adults of this time. Their beliefs arose from their opposition toward the violence of the Vietnam War, which unionized them. They felt that they were being oppressed, because people’s lives were in danger. The students were against society’s intentions of maintaining a status quo, these individuals tried to break the barriers of society and develop their own minds to change themselves and the world around them from being exploited. According to Roszak, â€Å"When any system of politics devours the surrounding culture, we have totalitarianism, the attempt to bring the whole of life under authoritarian control. We are bitterly familiar with totalitarian politics the from of brutal regimes which achieve their integration b... Free Essays on Oppression Free Essays on Oppression The Limits to Freedom What is oppression? The word oppression can relate to a wide myriad of situations, as it did in the 1960’s. Oppression is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as the act of oppressing; arbitrary exercise of power or a feeling of being heavily weighed down in mind or body. In the 1960’s it was not just one entity that experienced this need to obtain freedom, but it was many groups. According to Miller, â€Å"Something of value did happen in the sixties. New Voices were heard, new forms of beauty appeared. And most of the large questions raised by that moment of chaotic openness- political questions about the limits of freedom, and cultural questions, too, about the authority of the past and the anarchy of the new- are with us still† (Miller, 8). These â€Å"limits of freedom† explained by Miller are the oppressive standards that were evident in the 1960’s by not only college students, but also by African-Americans, women, the people of Vie tnam, and many other Americans who were exposed to technocracy, this era of oppression and its consequences is one of the major themes of this course. Technocracy triggered many of the social movements of the 1960’s that were lead by young adults of this time. Their beliefs arose from their opposition toward the violence of the Vietnam War, which unionized them. They felt that they were being oppressed, because people’s lives were in danger. The students were against society’s intentions of maintaining a status quo, these individuals tried to break the barriers of society and develop their own minds to change themselves and the world around them from being exploited. According to Roszak, â€Å"When any system of politics devours the surrounding culture, we have totalitarianism, the attempt to bring the whole of life under authoritarian control. We are bitterly familiar with totalitarian politics the from of brutal regimes which achieve their integration b...

A response paper, make the topic creative Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

A response paper, make the topic creative - Essay Example Her challenge, however, is to do so without seeming to minimize the horror of what happened at Tuskegee. One of the most important aspects of her research is the focus on actually interviewing and interacting, to the degree possible, with people involved with the experiments. She does this to reduce the melodrama involved with the reporting and understanding of these events. In a lecture at Loyola University, she powerfully explains the why this is important. Melodrama, she says, is a story in which the characters â€Å"aren’t important† – they are an afterthought used to â€Å"fill in the gaps,† while in a drama, the characters are central (Reverby Lecture 2012). Historians, she says, should write drama. The problem with melodrama is that it reduces everyone involved to set pieces. In a historical context, this obstructs retellings of the true history, but possibly more importantly, it makes the melodramatic experience seem exceptional, and obfuscates its connection to societal constructs of oppression. She rejects the idea that melodrama is all that could be had of an experience such as this. She powerfully states her aim in the opening of her work, Examining Tuskegee, where she asserts that â€Å"there are truths here [in Tuskegee] – facts that fit the evidence better than do others† (Reverby 9). One such fact, for instance, patients eventually did get treatments – just not enough of them. It turned from a story of non-treatment to â€Å"under treatment† (Reverby 117). Why is this important? Under-treatment of othered people, she argues, is incredibly normative. It happens all the time. Thus, by treating the Tuskegee experiments as some sort of horrific monstrosity, the commonality of aspects of what happened there are lost, so the focus is on the exceptional horrific problem than the very common, barely less horrific one. Furthermore,