The Main Purposes of Law

Laws are set of rules formed to maintain order and discipline in our society. Two main purposes of law are: 1. stating and elaborating our rights and responsibilities towards society, 2. ability to distinguish right from wrong. When a law that is existing for a long time is challenged for not serving the purposes stated above, then they are considered rigid. Rigid laws need to be reformed to provide flexibility. For instance, consider suffrage - the civil right to vote. For ages, women were not allowed to vote. In 20th century many women suffragists fought for their right to vote. In my opinion, this was right full fight against rigid law that women should not vote. Many suffragist were arrested and jailed. Finally, in 1920, the United State government declared Nineteenth Amendment and women were allowed to vote. Having said that laws should not be rigid, I do think that laws should be strongly enforced when a country’s overall health is on the line. For example, China the most populous country in the whole world, enforced one child law. Most of us living in the United States think that this law is brutal. One child law faced a huge criticism as it is undermining human right to reproduce. In spite of such heavy criticism, China enforced one child law. After implementing one child law China is now the second most populous country after India. This kind of law enforcement which may sound outrageous to most of us is necessary when country’s over all health is one line. High population rate in developing countries like India and China is a big issue as it opens the door to issues like increase in poverty, lower education rate, higher health costs among other things. In conclusion, there should always be room for improvement in passing law to make our society better day by day. Hence, laws should not be rigidly followed when citizens’ basic rights are hampered and they should be strongly enforced for the collective well-being of society.