Social code

“ on the same principle as that now generally accepted—that it is the restrictions placed on vice by our social code which make its pursuit so peculiarly agreeable. ”

“ While certain features of each code of conduct would eventually fulfil their purpose and in time be overshadowed by concerns of a different nature brought on by the process of social evolution, the code itself would lose none of its authority during the long stage of human progress in which it played a vital role in training behaviour and attitudes. “These principles and laws, these firmly-established and mighty systems”, Bahá’u’lláh asserts, “have proceeded from one Source, and are the rays of one Light. ”

“ Other cases must incessantly occur, for the determination of which no analogy is furnished in the written law, and in these the constitution of society, from which a law of custom is continually germinating, must be the sole authority. Still more erroneous would it be to suppose that in any community a code was ever preenacted as the basis of social organization and civil rights, and that the national character was derived therefrom. ”

“ While the first class seems to identify group welfare with individual welfare, all the others imply divergence of interest and seek to safeguard the general interest at the expense of private liberty. While groups 2 and 3 aim at this directly, group 4 seeks the same end indirectly, while groups 5, 6, 7 and 8 pertain to the system of control, by which alone obedience is secured and the preceding ordinances made effective. Putting aside the extraneous matter, which often obscures the real purpose of a code, I believe that all bodies of social requirements can be split up into the above groups. ”

“ Moral and legal schemes that attempt the impossible in the way of definite formulation compensate for explicit strictness in some lines by implicit looseness in others. The only truly severe code is the one which foregoes codification, throwing responsibility for judging each case upon the agents concerned, imposing upon them the burden of discovery and adaptation. ”

“ The legislators of to-day, vaguely impressed by statistical and biological, ethnographical and anthropological data, and still imbued with the old prejudice of social and political artificiality, were at first hurried into a regular mania for legislation, under which every newly observed social phenomenon seemed to demand a special law, regulation, or article in the penal code. ”

“ The members of modern civilised societies are under the sway of a code of Public Opinion, enforced by social penalties, which no reflective person obeying it identifies with the moral code, or regards as unconditionally binding: indeed the code is manifestly fluctuating and variable, different at the same time in different classes, professions, social circles, of the same political community. ”

“ During a 1971 discussion on the judiciary's philosophy with regard to the general subjects of law and freedom, the chairman of the Supreme Court stated that the penal code and criminal procedures adopted in 1968 assign to the law the role of regulator of social behavior. The law has become, he said, not simply an instrument stipulating the rights and obligations of the citizen; its important social role provides a firm foundation for society's behavior. ”

“ There exists a code of social law, which is universally subscribed to, as necessary and indispensable for the preservation of social harmony and decorum. One man has given public notice that he is self-emancipated from its obligations ”

“ Wherever commerce shall extend its social influences, wherever justice shall be administered by enlightened and liberal rules, wherever contracts shall be expounded upon the eternal principles of right and wrong, wherever moral delicacy and judicial refinement shall be infused into the municipal code, at once to persuade men to be honest and to keep them so ”

“ But such a conclusion would be hardly fair to the civilised peoples; first, because their social environment is more complex, so that the bearing of their moral code is less simple and direct; it is less easily obeyed, because its teachings are more generalised in form and do not provide clear irresistible rulings for all or any large proportion of the much greater variety of situations with which individuals find themselves confronted. Secondly, because the code is a higher one and makes greater demands upon the self-control of individuals. ”

“ Is society sincere in its demand? There are in the United States nearly two million people—mulattoes, begotten contrary to the written code. There must be an unwritten code that permits individuals to ignore the demands of society and mate according to choice. Shall I avail myself of the provisions of this unwritten code? Shall I, or shall I not? Shall I ask that pure girl to go counter to the requirements of all civilized communities and enter a union devoid of legal sanction? ”

“ The people, being subject to the laws, ought to be their author: the conditions of the society ought to be regulated solely by those who come together to form it. But how are they to regulate them? Is it to be by common agreement, by a sudden inspiration? ”

“ This brings us to the question of the force which dominates the making of laws, and I shall attempt to show that it is the needs of a community as distinguished from the needs of the individuals who compose it. If the standard of justice is subjective; that is, if laws are made by either individuals or communities, we must begin the study of law with a study of the evolution of the human race. While it was once thought that the individual was the unit into which the race was originally divided, almost everyone now concedes that the unit was the social group. ”

“ General laws are meant to regulate our conduct to each other, within certain rules; that the confidence necessary for the social union may be maintained. A principle laid down by the law, is promulgated as a general rule; and in the confidence that this rule will be respected by all; or that if violated, society will punish the violator, it is recognised as a general principle of action. ”

“ This theory of the direction of control can be verified by examining the facts. The legal, social or moral codes actually enforced in a community express the social will, seeing they are collective products, and intended to regulate conduct. The study of these, therefore, reveals the direction of social control.
If we study undeveloped societies, we find no such formulations of the social will. If we study very advanced societies, we find the social will formulated into such general principles and abstract propositions that its true tendency does not appear on the surface. ”

“ If an agreement exists, who is to execute its provisions? And if some refuse to assist, and shirk social duties, have they any claim to the assistance of the organization, have they any social rights? ”

“ On the other hand, early codification of custom in a system of written laws secures that thereafter custom shall not develop in this blind unintelligent and socially prejudicial manner, but shall be developed only by deliberate intention and the reasoned fore-thought of the ruling powers of society; it will then develop in the main, in spite of many mistakes, in a way which promotes the efficiency of social life and the welfare of society. ”

“ And if we are to have great and stable nations, it is easy to see that these rules of order must become a body of law and custom including most, if not all, of the familiar institutions of society. These are a product of progressive invention, trial, and survival as much as the railroad or the factory, and they have in the long run the same purpose, that of the fuller expression of human nature in a social system. ”

“ It was lately stated, that if a legislature can by law form a new society, to draw money artificially from the rest of a nation, that the residue of the old society was no longer in a social state. By the association of the people, the principle of an equality of rights may be asserted and established. By the association of the government, the contrary and artificial principle of exclusive privilege, may be asserted and established. ”

“ The advantage of belonging to such a society is not to be measured [Pg 82] by counting up the working of individual cases; but by the whole characteristics of the social state, taken as a whole, and including, as one essential part, the administration of criminal law in such a way as to be in conformity with the conditions of healthy social development. The difficulty, I think, though I can only indicate the argument briefly, results from a common illusion, which is illustrated by the once famous social contract theory. ”

“ The protection of constitutionality and legality shall be ensured in order to realize the socio-economic and political relations laid down by the constitution and statute, and to protect the freedoms of man and the citizen, self-management, social property, the self-management and other rights of organizations of associated labour and other self-managing organizations and communities and socio-political communities. ”

“ Now what constitutes the commonweal, or common notion of what is for the common good, will and always must be expressed in the form of laws of some kind—either political laws, instituted by the citizens in public assembly, as of old by folk-moot, or if you will by real councils or parliaments of the people, or by social customs growing up from the experience of Society. The fact that at present many or the majority of laws and customs are bad, does not mean that we can do without good laws or good customs. ”

“ For the end and intent of such laws being only to regulate the behaviour of mankind, as they are members of society, and stand in various relations to each other, they have consequently no business or concern with any but social or relative duties. ”

“ Broadly speaking, there are in every community two authorities which can make law: the State, i.e., the ruling and directing power, whatever it may be, in which the government of the community resides, and the People, that is, the whole body of the community, regarded not as incorporated in the state, but as being merely so many persons who have commercial and social relations with one another.... ”

“ The social organization system and legal regime, ranging from ancestral family and community principles and ethical and moral standards, passing through production and trade relations, solidarity and social responsibility, forms of community and state administration; up to a very complex system of laws, rules, uses and customs that embodied free work by the community, the stewardships and charges system, which allowed the orderly and balanced community life as well as relationships and exchanges with other communities or states. ”

“ Organizations of associated labour, chambers and other general associations, self-managing communities of interest, other self-managing organizations and communities, agencies of the socio-political communities, trade unions and other socio-political organizations and social organizations shall, by means of social compacts, ensure and adjust self-management regulation of socio-economic and other relations of broader common concern to the parties to the compacts, or of general social concern. ”

“ Society consisted at first merely of a few general conventions, which every member bound himself to observe; and for the performance of covenants the whole body went security to each individual. Experience only could show the weakness of such a constitution, and how easily it might be infringed with impunity, from the difficulty of convicting men of faults, where the public alone was to be witness and judge: the laws could not but be eluded in many ways ”

“ The sociologist and the statesman should co-operate in discovering the laws of society and the methods of utilizing them, so as to let the social forces flow freely and strongly, untrammelled by penal statutes, mandatory laws, irritating prohibitions, and annoying obstacles. ”

“ The general principle that the citizen must never act otherwise than as a citizen, does not carry with it an obligation under all conditions to conform to the law of his state, since those laws may be inconsistent with the true end of the state as the sustainer and harmoniser of social relations. The assertion, however, by the citizen of any right which the state does not recognise must be founded on a reference to an acknowledged social good. ”

“ In studying institutions and tracing the course of their development, we must always remember that the uninterrupted continuance of their history may depend as much on the moral force of their existence as on the more limited and defined fact of their accurate and legal recognition by others. In every society a state of fact must in time become a state of law, as wise legislation is more the recognition by law of existing conditions than the formulating of new codes. ”

“ The home, the school, the church, the club, business, profession, trade, and union, all insist on strict, correct conformity to standard; all demand authoritatively implicit obedience and submission to rule and regulation. ”

“ We shall perceive that no human foresight is sufficient to establish such a system at once, and that, if it were so established, the occurrence of unforeseen cases would shortly altogether change it; that there is but one way of forming a civil code, either consistent with common sense, or that has ever been practised in any country, namely, that of gradually building up the law in proportion as the facts arise which it is to regulate. ”