Notes

"It's a law of thermodynamics, and no one has ever witnessed a sustained violation of it." A scientific law is a statement of fact, deduced from observation, to the effect that a particular natural or scientific phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions are present. If the law is violated, it ceases to be a law.

"A referee is appointed to a football game in order to apply the laws of the game". It is a rule defining correct procedure or behavior in a sport. If the law is violated the consequence is losing the game or being expelled.

"All our life we live knowing that God's justice demands satisfaction for our transgression of God's law. The body of divine commandments as expressed in any religious text. The consequence of a violation of the law is sin.

"Shooting the birds is against the law. They were taken to court for breaking the law. The system of rules which a particular community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members. The consequence of the violation of the law is the imposition of penalties.

Legal norms may serve different purposes:

• Allocating goods or services.
• Prohibiting certain behaviors that are harmful to the society.
• Creating and attributing public powers among different bodies.

The relationships among members of the same social group are regulatedby several norms, where norms are something that is typical, expected, standard.

The sources of norms are:

• Social, social behavior.
• Moral, subjective authority and personal beliefs.
• Religious, religious texts.
• Legal, legal system.

Legal norms are produced by the legal system (or rather from those sources that are given system internally recognizes) which have the power of producing binding effects on individuals subject to the system. Unlike other categories of norms, legal norms can be enforced y the state through the imposition of penalties.

The characteristics of legal norms are:

• Effectiveness, the ability of a legal system to impose binding rules on individuals; it is not affected per se by limited violations of single norms, provided that the authority (often the State) can impose its political power over individuals within the relevant territory. Effectiveness is also a property of those norms that are produced by a legal system that is able to impose binding rules on its participants.
• Force of Law, describes the ability of norms to innovate the legal systems. It depends on effectiveness, which refers to the ability of norms to produce effects and be imposed as legal duty on participants in the system.
• Generality, framed as applicable to an indefinite number of individuals.

"Everyone who commits first degree murder or second murder is guilty of an indictable offense and shall be sentenced to imprisonment for life".

• Abstractness, framed as applicable to an indefinite number of situations.

"Everyone who commits first degree murder or second degree murder is guilty of an indictable offense and shall be sentenced to imprisonment for life".

Identifying legal norms, each legal system has some golden norms which are established by the constitution, which is the institution that identify the different sources in the legal system.

• Made by a competent authority (recognized as source of law).
• Nomen Iuris, the name of the law, it identifies a specific legal source.
• Legislative Procedures.

Legal norms can be implemented by the state, which is the social institution entitled to use the force and penalties to assure that laws and rules are followed. Unless there is an entity such as the State, the laws and rules won't be binding on the individuals.

Legal system (ubi societas society, ibi ius laws) there is a strict relation between Social Institutions and the Body of Legal Norms.

Legal system as social institution, constituent elements are:

• A certain number of subjects, who make up a social group and are connected to each other.
• Common criteria of evaluation are applied to categorize individual behaviours as licit or illicit, mandatory or not...
• Relationship established between individuals are qualified by law as either favourable or unfavourable legal situations.
• Titular power and authority assigned within the group (Art.1 Italian Constitution, individuals are considered to be the original holder of the sovranity, which has gradually been transferred to the State).
• Certain organs within the system are entitled to the legitimate use of force (Punishments to enforce the law).
• Authority has means of coercion to ensure the legitimate exercise of power.

Classification of legal system

There is a pluralism of legal systems, the State is only one among the existing legal systems The State has a legal system meeting the following characteristics:

• Authoritarian or Concentrated
• Necessary
• Territorial
• General
• Independent
• Sovereign

"A legal system having general ends which exercises sovereign powers over a specific territory, to which the subjects belonging to such system are necessarily subordinated " - Costantino Mortati.

Three characterising elements of the State legal system are:

• Territory, the State owns a territory which can be:
  • Dry land.
  • Continental shelf.
  • Waters included within the confines of the State.
• Sovereignty, it can be limited by the existence of superior authorities, such as European countries and EU.

The impact of the Internet on sovereignty,

• No more borders, everywhere and nowhere
• Jurisdiction to prescribe, to adjudicate, to enforce -> issues.
• Governance of crucial issues (domain name assignments) in the hand of a few agencies.
• Neutrality and freedom from governmental interferences.
• People, citizenship is a concept identifying the condition of being bound to a given State.

The concept of people is different from:

• Population, temporary sum of individuals living in the territory of the State
• Nation, community or race of people with shared culture, traditions, history, and (usually) language.
• Voters, individuals who have the legal right to vote in elections in a given State.

Citizenship is a concept identifying the condition of being bound to a given State:

• From which the individual receives certain rights.
• To which he or she owes certain obligations.
• Is forced to respect certain duties

Two criteria are used as distinctive elements to differentiate citizens from aliens:

• Ius Sanguinis
• Ius Soli