Legal norm facts for kids
A legal norm is a rule or principle that a government creates and enforces. These rules help manage how people interact in society. They tell people what their rights are and what they must do. Governments publish these rules as laws, and everyone living under that government must follow them. The government makes sure people obey these laws.
Legal norms usually apply to everyone and guide how people behave. However, sometimes special rules apply only to certain groups, like diplomats or public officials. This is called immunity.
Sometimes, a law can affect things that happened before it was made. This is called retroactivity. It means a new law might change rights or duties that were already set by older laws. There are two types:
- True retroactivity: When new rules affect legal situations that existed before the new rule started.
- Pseudo retroactivity: When old rules are changed, and this affects how past legal situations are seen.
Legal norms become valid when they are officially published. They start to be effective when people must begin following them. The time between a law being valid and when it starts to be effective is called "vacatio legis." Legal norms can end in a few ways:
- The government officially cancels them.
- A new law is made that covers the same things, replacing the old one automatically.
Contents
Understanding Legal Plans
Scott Shapiro's Planning Theory of Law looks at how legal organizations work and what legal norms are. This theory suggests that legal norms are like shared plans. Governments use these plans to manage society and keep things in order. This is true no matter if the rules or organizations are considered morally good or bad.
Governments manage society in two main ways:
- They act as planning organizations. They create, use, and enforce social plans. This means many legal norms are simply these plans.
- They also use and enforce legal norms that weren't created as part of a formal plan. An example is a customary norm, which is a rule that has developed over a long time from cultural traditions. Shapiro calls these "plan-like norms." They help people make decisions, deal with complex situations, and organize how everyone acts together.
In modern legal systems, there's a main plan with basic rules. This plan gives different officials their rights, powers, and duties. Below this main plan are smaller plans. These can be formal plans or plan-like norms. For example, laws about not committing crimes or rules for collecting taxes are sub-plans. So, all the laws in a place at a certain time are the total set of these plans and plan-like norms that officials enforce.
Why We Need Legal Rules
While some legal theories explain how laws work in practice, normative legal theory explores what the law *should* be. It looks at the values and reasons behind legal actions, new laws, and decisions made by judges. The word "normative" here means it covers all kinds of rules: legal rules, social rules, and moral rules.
Normative legal theories are often connected to ideas about morals and politics. For example, imagine we are talking about laws related to harm (like a car accident).
- A theory that explains how laws work in practice would look at *why* the current laws about harm were made.
- A normative theory would ask *what* rules about harm would be the fairest or most sensible.
Normative legal theory uses different ideas to decide the best rule to use in legal decisions. It is often shaped by moral or political ideas. Three main moral theories that influence normative legal theory are:
Duty-Based Ethics (Deontology)
This idea focuses on duty, rights, and what is allowed or forbidden by a moral rule. To decide if an action is "right," you check if it follows a moral rule. In criminal law, this means an action can only be a crime if it breaks a moral duty. It also relates to the idea that punishment should fit the crime.
Outcome-Based Ethics (Utilitarianism)
This idea says that decisions are made by looking at the possible results. The moral value of an action is judged by its outcome. It suggests that a system of legal rules should aim for the best overall outcome for everyone, rather than just focusing on individual actions.
Character-Based Ethics (Virtue Ethics)
In law, this theory suggests an action is right if a person with good character (a "virtuous" person) would do it. When judges apply virtuous legal norms, they show qualities like fairness, bravery, good judgment, intelligence, wisdom, and justice. This can lead to a focus on what is fair and right in legal decisions.
Thinkers on Legal Norms
Legal thinkers like Kelsen and Hart both believed that legal norms are more than just facts or moral rules. However, they had different ideas about what legal norms truly mean.
Kelsen's "Pure Theory of Law"
Hans Kelsen looked at what makes legal rules "normative" (meaning they tell us what we *should* do). He thought that all legal systems have similar structures, but each system is unique. This means law is different from morality. Kelsen argued that we assume a "Basic Norm" when we decide to see the actions of officials as rules we should follow.
In his book Pure Theory of Law, Kelsen wanted to define law completely. He focused on what makes legal norms unique and how legal systems are built. His theory supports legal positivism, which clearly separates what *is* (facts) from what *ought to be* (rules).
Kelsen saw law as a special kind of social thing that uses force to make people follow rules. He also said it's important to tell the difference between law as a fact and law as a norm.
- As a fact, Kelsen said "law is an order of human behaviour." He compared it to customs or etiquette, saying that law is something we can observe. It's a way society makes people follow rules.
- As a norm, laws are "what ought to be done if something should be the case." Kelsen believed that a rule like "it is a rule" only makes sense if people regularly follow it and have a critical attitude about it. He didn't focus on the human values or morality behind these rules.
Hart's "Sui Generis" (Unique) View
Hart disagreed that legal norms are formed only by the old "natural law model." He stressed the situations in which legal norms get their meaning. Hart thought that modern societies might work better with a simpler understanding of law, rather than strict moral rules.
Hart explained legal norms by looking at social facts, unlike Kelsen, who separated law from morality. While Kelsen believed legal theory should be completely free of values, Hart had a softer view. He agreed that moral principles or values could be part of what makes legal rules valid. Hart focused on the situation in which normative statements exist, saying that this situation greatly affects what these statements mean.
How Legal Norms Are Structured
Legal norms are the basic building blocks of legal systems. Their structure can be shown using an ontological model. This model helps explain how rules of conduct from legal norms influence how laws are created and used.
An ontological model of legal norms is a useful tool. It helps lawyers do research efficiently and make responsible decisions in court by applying legal norms correctly. Laws are created by the government and made official by Parliament. These laws form legal norms and show how they relate to each other. An ontological model can give lawyers clear, visual pictures of how laws are made and managed by the government. The norms themselves can be put into logic, rules, or ontologies to make it easier to find legal information and understand its meaning.
In the past, finding and browsing laws was based on searching for text. A lawyer had to type specific words to find the part of the law they needed. This was not very efficient. Sometimes, a legal rule might be split up, with different parts of the rule found in different laws. This made it hard for lawyers to do research, and even harder for people without a legal background to find information. The ontological model offered a good solution. It organizes laws based on the meaning of the legal norm they contain, making research clearer and more efficient.
See also
In Spanish: Norma jurídica para niños
