Draft:Original research/Laws

"Law's  are systems of rules and guidelines, which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people."

Notations
Notation: Let the symbol © indicate that entity to which it is affixed is copyrighted.

Notation: Let the following symbols © 2011 John Doe indicate a notice of copyright. The year the copyright occurred (the author or creator composed the work) was 2011, the apparent author's name was John Doe (a generic used only as an example, Jane Doe is also used).

Radiation
"The dominant group whose values are expressed in the law is only one of many groups which are integrated in the moral and political fabric of the community."

Theoretical law
"It is the feeling on the part of the dominant group of being entitled to either exclusive or prior rights in many important areas of life."

Def.


 * 1) the "body of rules issued by the legislative authority [a government]",
 * 2) the "body of rules and standards to be applied by courts and similar authorities",
 * 3) a "written or understood rule that concerns behaviours and the appropriate consequences thereof",
 * 4) a "well-established, observed physical characteristic or behavior", or
 * 5) a "statement that is true under specified conditions"

is called a law.

Law is a "system of rules".

Law was "the command of a sovereign, backed by the threat of a sanction".

Law as an "interpretive concept" to achieve justice.

Law is an "authority" to mediate people's interests.

Statutes
Def. written "law, as laid down by the legislature" or legislated "rule of society which has been given the force of law by those it governs" is called a statute.

Case laws
Def. law "developed by judges through court decisions and opinions, as distinct from statute and other legislation" is called case law.

Conventions
Def. a "practice or procedure widely observed in a group, especially to facilitate social interaction; a custom" is called a convention.

Def. long-stablished "practice, considered as unwritten law, and resting for authority on long consent; usage" is called a custom.

"The distinction between custom and usage [is] that usage is a fact and custom is a law. There can be usage without custom, but not custom without usage."

Duress
Duress includes threats, violence, constraints, or other action brought to bear on someone to do something against their will or better judgment. Occasionally, a hierarchy set up by a dominant group, or to create a dominant group will create situations or circumstances of duress upon subordinates in this hierarchy.

Def. the "state of compulsion or necessity in which a person is influenced, whether by the unlawful restraint of his [or her] liberty or by actual or threatened physical violence, to incur a civil liability or to commit an offence" or being "constrained by threat" is called duress.

Antagonism
""Antagonism" was chosen over terms like prejudice and discrimination because it carries fewer moralistic and theoretical assumptions (see Schermerhorn, 1970:6-9). For example, both of these terms see conflict as emanating primarily from one side: the dominant group."

Acculturation
"Refugee groups, in addition to dealing with the conﬂicts of acculturation also deal with the grief over leaving their homes under duress."

"If positive social relations with the dominant group are desirable, then the options are assimilation and integration."

Oppression
"Oppression is commonly found in the context of racism and prejudice (Kleg, 1993; Robinson & Ginter, 1999a), which is often perpetrated in cases in which persons do not conform to the beliefs or expectations that allow inclusion in the dominant group (Goldberg, 1990)."

"The first modality can be described as oppression by force, coercion, or duress."

"Dominant groups can be more or less cruel, but their interest in power, wealth, and status seems consistent throughout history and across cultures. This was true of the tyrannical Mongolians of Genghis Khan, the Macedonians under Alexander the Great, and the Caesars of ancient Rome (Roberts, 1995). More recently and closer to home, however, oppression in the United States is currently being perpetrated on Latinos, African Americans, Asians, Native Americans, gays, lesbians, and other groups (Robinson, 1999; Robinson & Ginter, 1999a, 1999b). Before the twentieth century, dominance was maintained using considerable physical force and violence (Brown, 1970; Douglass, 1845). Such dominance continues today, although much more covertly, in many cases under deceptively benign appearances. The net result, however, is that these same groups are still routinely denied the opportunities for power, wealth, and status commonly available to the oppressive group (e.g., White male privilege; see Kiselica, 1999) that implicitly claims entitlement."

Case laws
"The question of "duress" is one of fact in the particular case, to be determined on consideration of the surrounding circumstances, such as age, sex, capacity, situation, and relation of the parties, and may exist whether or not the threat is sufficient to overcome the mind of a man of ordinary courage, it being sufficient to constitute duress that one party to the transaction is prevented from exercising his free will by reason of threats made by the other, and that the contract is obtained by reason of such fact. Unless, these elements are present, however, duress does not exist. The test is [...] the state of mind induced by the means employed - the fear which made it impossible for him to exercise his own free will."

"Thus by indirection, he menaced Speiden as effectively as if he had done so directly, and we see no material variance between the pleading and the proof."

Contract law
"Duress in the context of contract law is a common law defence brought about when one of the parties to the contract enjoyed an ascendant position in relation to the other party and abused that position by subjecting the other to threats. A party who has entered into a contract under duress is entitled to rescind or set aside the contract, rendering it voidable (in equity)."

Duress is a threat of harm made to compel someone to do something against their will or judgment; especially a wrongful threat made by one person to compel a manifestation of seeming assent by another person to a transaction without real volition. - Black's Law Dictionary (8th ed. 2004)

Duress in contract law falls into two broad categories:
 * Physical duress
 * Economic duress

Usurpations
Def. "the wrongful seizure of something by force, especially of sovereignty or other authority" or a "taking or use without right" is called an usurpation.

Law professors
"Unfortunately, performance is often hampered by negative feelings, which would be true for any group that had been saddled with centuries of oppression by the dominant group."

"Because the token is highly visible, she bears more performance pressure than members of the dominant group.8 The dynamics created by a skewed group context are exacerbated in the case of the African American female law professor."

Hypotheses

 * 1) Eventually laws are passed by free people.