Apologies for another blog post based entirely on what I'm learning in my course, but understandably it's taking up a lot of my time and imagination right now. Some bits of it I am finding really interesting though. Our seminars in legal method thus far have been based mostly on the concepts of society, order and the definition of law relative to these which proposes some ideas that I myself am really interested in.
What is 'order'? There's a chapter in Critical Introduction to Law which focuses on this. There is an inherent mantra in society that order is good and disorder is bad. We don't question this as such, but what is interesting is that we don't have a real say on what 'order' is, either. Mansell et al use the example of a desert island. If a child is born on a deserted island, it will take the rituals that its parents perform before it as 'the way things should be done'; standard procedure, what is 'acceptable'. Likewise we are born into a society with its ideas of what is right and wrong already laid out, and rarely do we really question these.
The idea of theft was most interesting to me. It seems a fundamental challenge to our 'order' if people go around stealing. Yet, as a premise solely by itself it could be externally deemed just as strange that someone insists on holding onto their personal items. In a communist society, perhaps. But regardless, to an external set of eyes that could feasibly be just as much a challenge to order as someone insisting on taking it. The example of a psychiatrist is used. A girl insists on holding bread in her hand and refuses to let the psychiatrist take it off her when he tries. When he pricks her in the head, she doesn't respond. She's in her own world, untouchable by the psychiatrist. In our society, we accept the role of a psychiatrist as being within his 'role' to do these things, but without that inherent acceptance of 'roles' set in our capitalist society, it could also be seen as just as strange that a man is standing there pricking a little girl and trying to take her bread off her as the little girl refusing to respond. To the girl, even, in her own world this psychiatrist is the fundamental challenge to her order. He is destroying her order.
So what is order? Mansell et al also challenge us to think about how it differs if we refer to order coming out of disorder, rather than disorder coming out of order. They are subjective concepts. Our only basis for 'disorder' is that it is breaking up our absolute definition of 'order', but what if we start with a definition of 'disorder' and challenge any concepts of order to come out of that? Does it make a difference?
The idea of roles is interesting. The chapter I read is based largely on societal roles, and how we fit into these and as a result conform to certain aspects of behaviour. This can be extended to refer to class roles. Because I mean, really, we do have certain expectations for the different classes of society. In the 17th century it was still illegal for the poor to eat certain foods, or wear certain clothes. But what would your honest response be if you saw a council-estate teenager dressed solely in Jack Wills? In a microcosm, it's a challenge to your perception of 'order'. Not a great challenge; I doubt you'd be going home to write to the Daily Mail about it (although, I'm sure there are many who would) but it's a challenge nonetheless. Because order and disorder are entirely about perception. To an extent, there are no civilised and uncivilised societies, only different cultures and different perceptions of order and disorder.
Kant refers to the natural 'order' when constructing imperatives. He says that one cannot construct a moral statement, an imperative, if when universalised it would impose a threat to the natural order. So for a very long time this idea of 'order' and 'disorder' has existed. Society's interpretations of what it means have not always been constant, but the perception of 'order', or indeed 'law' being this organic, ubiquitous material is an age-old idea. But the challenge is, maybe there are no primary elements to 'order' at all. Maybe it's all subjective. From an external perspective, any concept that we have drawn to the idea of 'order' could appear strange, or unusual. We have that enough with looking at different cultures around the world as it is, but if aliens came to visit there's a good change they'd find all of our unchallenged foundations of morality and perceptions of 'order' entirely stupid.
Law upholds 'order'. But order is a relative concept, so law is not this natural, organic element to society that it always seems to be accepted as. Law is dynamic; through common law it shall transgress and transcend with social rhetoric and relative morality. But as it transgresses, it shall be treated as absolute all the same. Like it's always been this way; or always should have been this way. And nobody shall argue with that. Law is 'law'.
