“If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”
Winston Churchill
As citizens of the United States, we place our faith and a fair share of our fortunes in the hands of the government in the interest of our own protection and for the common good of our people. With our consent and monetary contribution, our government at the federal, state, and local levels provides us with certain necessary services, among which are national security, infrastructure such as roads and municipalities, as well as the creation and enforcement of the laws by which our society is to abide. The latter is my concern for this essay, as myself and my classmates have called into question the nature and effectiveness of our set of laws and the legal system in place to carry it out. It is in my interest to question this system and its growing influence in our everyday lives. Laws which were intended to protect and serve us have evolved into methods of dictating our behavior and have taken on far too large a role in our personal affairs.
First, it is necessary to address the origin of laws and how it has affected the rules we follow. Our founding fathers penned the first laws of our nation in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights not as means of controlling the people but rather with a mind to protect individual freedom and prevent the type of overreaching government which they had recently fought to emancipate themselves and their fellow Americans from. It is here that my curiosity is first sparked as to how, over the first two and a half centuries of our nation’s existence, some of the laws which govern us now were incorporated into the protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Surely our legislative and legal systems have evolved over that time, however perhaps in this instance not for the best.
Today, we see laws enacted and enforced, or not, for reasons of political gain and as results of expensive lobbies in Washington and financial pressures from Wall Street. One would be hard pressed to look back to the founding documents of our Nation and find any basis for laws restricting the size of our fountain drinks. Yet even less trivial examples apply. Perhaps laws regarding more serious societal issues such as drugs and alcohol, immigration, and others, too, could be called into question when evaluated from a more conservative, constitutional point of view. Do we, today, abide by laws because they are just, or out of fear of the repercussions, and what does this distinction mean to us as individuals?
People derive their morals and values from a variety of sources. Be it from religious teachings, ancient philosophy, family tradition, or even from our Bill of Rights, the majority of people have a sense of right and wrong and a reasoning behind such beliefs. Somewhere along the line, though, the laws and their respective consequences set forth by the government took precedence over morality, decency, and respect for thy neighbor. Too many people today live not to uphold their own moral standard, but rather to abide by laws out of fear of the consequences. Is there no more guilt without punishment?
This is certainly not to say that all laws are unjust. It should be held true without even being said that one should not murder or steal, yet with or without government enforcement, homicides and thefts still occur. Surely one would like to believe that our fellow citizens would drive safely even without speed limits, traffic laws, and the threat of DUI charges, but who is to say if it would truly be so? My argument lies not in an attack against our government or our legal system, but rather against those who have forgotten the values of accountability and respect for one another. Handicapped parking spaces should be left vacant not out of fear of a parking ticket, but rather out of respect and compassion for those for whom the spaces are marked. Laws will be passed and struck down; important and significant laws, as well as trivial and ineffective ones. Nonetheless, it is our responsibility to live in a manner that protects the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of all people and furthers the common good, not out of fear of the consequences but instead because we owe it to ourselves and to one another as a society and as Americans.
I liked the structure of your essay in which you started from the beginning and then transitioned to the present. However, I felt that your thesis stated one thing, but you went off in a different direction. I think it would have been beneficial to mention specific reasons how law has changed to dictate our behavior and why that’s intrusive in our lives. I thought the paragraph with the founding fathers and the origin of law was very nicely written. Overall, I would suggest staying within the framing of the thesis or to change the thesis to further match the content of your thesis. Nice job on this essay.
Maybe it is a shame that we can only write 700-900 words, as you have a very strong and very broad thesis. You do a good job of extrapolating upon it, but I wish you had the space to provide some more concrete examples. The Winston Churchill quote is also quite apt, as it put me in the proper frame of mind to understand the bigger picture of your thesis’s implications before I even finished reading the essay.
Your essay definitely made me think as you wrote about a really interesting topic. It made me realize that we wouldn’t need laws if we just treated each other right to begin with. Your organization is excellent. I like how you began with a quote, talked about the original intent of laws, and then the corruption of laws. In your conclusion, you talk about how we should do what is right because it is right, not because we fear punishment. Maybe you could add that idea of your paper to your thesis or intro because it seems like a big part of your argument.