Characteristics or Features of Law
The characteristics of law make the nature of the law clear or the wholistic form of law can be traced through its characteristics. The study of the law becomes incomplete without knowing the characteristics of law. The followings are its Features:
1. To Regulate and Control of Human Behaviour
The law provides an incentive to be civilized for every person living in the society to regulate and control their manner, habit, and conduct. It prohibits an individual is conducted to behaving which is not accepted in society. As a human being is a social being, he must cope with the ongoing values and social usages regardless he can be a citizen of another country. Human beings have good and bad natures. Law curbs unnatural and illegal activities and instructs humanity to be civilized. Thus, laws regulate and control human behavior.
2. To Treat Equally
Law treats everyone equally. It doesn’t treat anybody descriminitally. The law deals equally to every citizen or individual without any discrimination. But in the case of females, Dalits, minors, helpless, and disabled persons, the law can make separate laws to protect them. Yet it is also assumed by the law that it is for equal dealing to them. There is no discrimination in the eyes of the law in terms of the color of skin, rich and poor, male and female, etc. Thus, the law deals with everyone equally.
3. To Maintain Peace and Order in Society
Law acts to maintain peace and order in society. A society without the law is uncivilized. No one is safe and neither can they live in society. There is the use of “might is right.” There is the rule of hooliganism due to the increase in disorder, crimes, and unruly activities. People feel unsafe themselves and are bound to live under terror. There is always risk in life and property due to the reign of terror. By curbing such illegal activities, the law protects people by keeping law and order as well as peace in society.
4. Law Relates with Human Being and Society
Wherever there are human beings, there is society and thereby law relates with society and human beings, People and society have intermingled relationships law acts as making human relations with the society will be managed and regulated and even imagines a civic and human being. That’s why the law has a relation with human beings, the significance of law would be no more. Both law and society can change to each other in accord with time.
5. Law has Certainty, Formality, and Complexity
Law is an anthology of stately commands or rules executed by the government, there are no easy ways to formulate any law. The state must perform some formalities in order to make any law. Similarly, the law has certain fixity. It is rigid also. The law made once is very difficult to amend or the law is fixed, formal, and complex.
6. Law Recognize Custom and Usage
Law recognizes the existing reasonable usages and customs which are just and fair. It also protects them and it eradicates the unjust convention or usages and customs by making law. Law protects the fair tradition and culture that is relevant in modern times. The superstition and uncivilized social mores or ills are ended by law and it pressures the helpful social mores or usages which is its motto. The social usages which are legally valid are equal to the law.
7. Law is Dynamic and Rigid
Law is changed according to the passage of time so that it is called flexible. Similarly, the law cannot be early revoked and amended so that it is called rigid too. The amendment of law depends on the will of its people and the ruler. The aim of the law is to provide happiness to the larger community of people and inflict the violators of the law. They must cope with the consciousness level of the people and their devices as well as the contemporary time. On the basis of these factors, it gets changed. The nature of law is not static but dynamic.
8. Law is Democratic and Autocratic
The nature of law is both democratic and autocratic. Law is made on the basis of the political system running in the state, According to this political system, the law can be changed and amended, and executed. In the world, there are democratic as well as totalitarian or automatic states. Whether they are democratic or autocratic, they make laws and practice them according to their political ideology. Thus, the law in a democratic country is democratic and the law in an autocratic country is non-democratic.
9. Law is the Supreme Order or Rule of the State
In fact, the law is the supreme order of the state. In another sense, it is a set of rules. Such order or rule of the state must be followed by the Prime Minister, President, commander-chief, and Member of Parliament or every general person living in the state. In this way, the law is the most powerful one than other. It is the most powerful rule if anybody who does not abide by it, he is either punished or has to pay a fine according to the law.
10. Law has Latent Sanctioning Power
Law inherits natural sanctioning power. Such power is latent in the law. One who violates it is subjected to penalty or the latent power of law makes one follow it that would cause anarchy in the state. Moreover, the law is a powerful mechanism that regulates the behavior of residing in society. Law affects the habit and conduct of the people in three it forbids them to do certain things, which is prohibitory nature. Second, it makes to it is imperative and the last one is it leaves a person to do or not do anything.
11. Law Affects Social, Economic, Political, and Cultural Activities
Law affects more or less social-economic, political, and cultural activities. To more ahead and to create a civilized society by curbing the running social ills, law plays a great role. the law can change society. To unify and create harmony among perplex in the society. Largely law provides protection to fair and reasonable social usages and mores. in addition to it, the law provides protection to the social, political, and economic mores and values.
12. Law is a Tool to Achieve justice
Law is an important means to gain justice. In absence of law, nobody can get justice. Justice without the law is wild justice. Therefore, nobody can imagine justice without law since judicial and quasi-judicial bodies make law the basis of justice. Law is the backbone of judicial administration. Thus, the aggrieved person can only get justice with the help of the law. It is a universal assumption.
