Should the legal system have its 10 commandments?

First of all by saying 10 commandments, I am using it as a figure of speech for some kind of moral guidelines.

During the recent years I have started paying more attention on what is really happening in the world, especially in the courthouses.

To be honest, I am not satisfied with the current situation. The main purpose of the law system is to create an order, to give everybody equal rights, freedoms and most of all set justice.

Although, the more I look into different cases, the more I see that the whole system has turned into a joke. We are in a point, where often people simply try to take advantage of the laws and loopholes benefitting themselves by doing it. Lawyers have become simply the operators between the books and the judge trying to get the best for their client in exchange for money never considering whether it is the right thing to do. The law hall has become into a circus where the one who manages to bend or interpret the lawbook better wins.

I have seen too much cases, where the overall solution was truly disappointing.

For example, I could bring up a case from the country I currently recide in, which was a highly controversial case.

-A man set her wife on fire and overally he got away from it clean, simply due to some loophole in the books. The wife was in the hospital getting treated and she had not managed to fill in some paper.

-A man hits a father of two small children to death for showing him a middle finger for dangerous driving. He gets away clean again somehow bending the rules.

-A scammer scams hundreds of people and gets away clean simply as he interpreted laws. What he did. He called companies and offered them service. When the company did not say direct no, for example "Let me think about it", then he took it as an oral contract. As the phone call was not recorded then he managed to win in court thanks to a good lawyer.

- A man sells nearly 80 women to sex slaves and his punishment is 1400 hours of community service.

The current system has its perks and overally there are not too many similar cases. Although I believe what could rule out such flaws and direct the law system back to its roots would be using moral guidelines as setting the foundation for every other law.

Everyone understands what is right and what is wrong. I believe most, if not all, of you would say that the court made a wrong decision in the previous cases. Although the "bad guys" always got away thanks to some loop holes. Some kind of moral guidelines would diminish all kind of such actions which try to abuse the system by helping to loose all the possible loopholes.

The laws should stay as they are right now, although the ethical guidelines would be something that is at the same time above the laws and complementing the laws and every single act would be made directly according to these principles.

I know I have never studied law and many of my "arguments" might not be the strongest ones, although now it is your turn. The ones, who not like this idea, bash it, the ones who like it complete it

reply to post by Cabin


Dear Cabin,

When I was in Law School, I had a childhood friend (he was about 30 year older than me, he had been a neighbor), he took me to dinner one night to see how I was getting along. My father was in law enforcement and I had issues with taking on criminal cases for defendants. He told me something very simple. He asked if I wanted to be a judge or an attorney. I never wanted to be a judge and if I had decided to go into law, I would have been an attorney. My areas of expertise were constitutional law and contracts. He then asked me if I trusted lawyers to decide who was guilty and what information would you give your attorney if he decided if you were innocent or guilty.

As to your second point, no, we do not all agree on what is right and wrong. Consider gay marriage, online poker, pornography, downloading online music, smoking marijuana. Plenty of things we don't agree on. Abortion, assisted suicide, oh, the list goes on and on and on. Peace.