Law Reform Essay Year 11

Law reform is the process by which the law is adapted and shaped over time to better reflect the social values that society feels are important. The law cannot stand still. A key function of the legal system is to respond to changing values and apprehensions within society, resolve issues as they develop, overcome problems that occur in legal cases or events, support equality and respond to scientific or technological developments. Law reform is crucial if the law is to remain significant to a changing society. There are a few conditions that give rise to law reform, these include, changing social values, changing composition of society, new concepts of justice, failure of existing law, international law and new technology. Agencies and mechanisms of law reform also assess the effectiveness of law reform.
New concepts of justice are one of the settings that give rise to law reform. Society evolves over time and its views on justice alter for a variety of reasons. In the past, capital punishment for particular murder offences was seen as the most effective way of dealing with the most monstrous crimes. It was a case of society delivering pure retribution for a crime: ‘a life for a life’. As a result, social attitudes with respect to capital punishment shifted and no Australian jurisdiction now permits it. Capital punishment no longer served community’s purposes. This is conveyed in the Bilal Skaf law. In his case two people from the jury investigated the crime scene, this is strictly against the law, which led the case to start all over again. However a new law was introduced and electronic transcript that was used for their previous case was allowed to be used. Thus, the effectiveness of law reform in attaining impartial outcomes with regard to current law reform cases has been confirmed in this case.
Another condition that gives rise to law reform is technology. New technology has changed the way people lived over the course of the 20th century. The development