Английский для юристов III курс, часть I

Журавлева Е.В.

English for Law students

Part I

Английский для юристов III курс, часть I

 

 

CONTENT

CHAPTER I. LAW AND ORDER........................................................................................................ 3

What is law?................................................................................................................................... 3

The Need For Law............................................................................................................................. 8

Reader’s Corner: THE SYSTEM OF LAW IN RUSSIA....................................................................... 17

The Customs Law........................................................................................................................... 19

Grammar Review 1 – All Tenses Active. Conditionals.................................................................. 22

Conditionals 1, 2, 3....................................................................................................................... 24

Chapter II. Political Systems................................................................................................ 28

British Political System................................................................................................................. 28

American Political System............................................................................................................ 32

Choose your project...................................................................................................................... 36

Reader’s Corner: THE STATE SYSTEM OF RUSSIA........................................................................ 37

Grammar Review 2 – Prepositions of Place, Movement, Time...................................................... 42

Chapter III. Lawmaking Process.......................................................................................... 45

Lawmaking process in Britain....................................................................................................... 45

Lawmaking process in the United States........................................................................................ 45

Reader’s Corner: ENFORCING THE LAW....................................................................................... 51

Grammar Review 3 – Passive Voice................................................................................................ 55

CHAPTER I. LAW AND ORDER

Warming-up

Are laws for ordinary people or for lawyers?
Do you always observe the law?
Do you think laws change in the course of time?

 

Read the text

What is law?

The English word “law” refers to limits upon various forms of behaviour. Some laws are descriptive: they simply describe how people, or even natural phenomena, usually behave. An example is the rather consistent law of gravity; another is the less consistent laws of economics. Other laws are prescriptive - they prescribe how people ought to behave. For example, the speed limits imposed upon drivers prescribe how fast we should drive. They rarely describe how fast we actually do drive, of course.

 

In all societies, relations between people are regulated by prescriptive laws. Some of them are customs - that is, informal rules of social and moral behaviour. Some are rules we accept if we belong to particular social institutions, such as religious, educational and cultural groups. And some are precise laws made by nations and enforced against all citizens within their power.

Customs need not be made by governments, and they need not be written down. We learn how we are expected to behave in society through the instruction of family and teachers, the advice of friends, and our experiences in dealing with strangers. Sometimes, we can break these rules without suffering any penalty. But if we continually break the rules, or break a very important one, other members of society may ridicule us, act violently towards us or refuse to have anything to do with us. The ways in which people talk, eat and drink, work and relax together are usually called customs.

Order is rich in meaning. Let's start with “law and order”. Maintaining order in this sense means establishing the rule of law to preserve life and to protect property. To the seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588—1679), preserving life was the most important function of law. He described life without law as life in a “state of nature”. Without rules people would live like predators, stealing and killing for personal benefit.

The basic function of law, then, is to provide rules governing people in their relationships with others so that all people may live in maximum harmony. Every law restricts a person’s freedom to some extent, but these restrictions are usually necessary so that all people may have greater freedom.

 

Ex.4. Read the text again and correct these statements.

e.g. The English word “law” refers to limits upon various forms of thinking.
The English word “law” does not refer to limits upon various forms of thinking.
The English word “law” refers to limits upon various forms of behaviour.

1. Descriptive laws simply describe how people look.

2. Prescriptive laws prescribe how people ought to run.

3. In all societies relations between people are regulated by descriptive laws.

4. We learn customs through the Constitution.

5. The ways in which people talk, eat and work are called laws.

6. Order is poor in meaning.

7. To Thomas Hobbes, destroying life was the most important function of law.

8. Without rules people would live like “angels”.

9. Every law extends a person’s freedom.

10. These restrictions are usually useless.

 

 

Ex.7. Fill in the gaps in the table

Verb	Noun	Adjective
1)	2)	Various
describe	3)	4)
prescribe	5)	6)
	religion	7)
educate	8)	9)
ridicule	10)	11)

 

Ex.8. Use your answers in Ex.3 and get ready to retell the text.

 

 

Read the text

The Need For Law

Mr. Jones, having murdered his wife, was burying her in the garden one night, when his neighbour, hearing the noise, asked him what he was doing.

“Just burying the cat”, said Mr. Jones

“Funny sort of time to bury a cat”, said the neighbour

“Funny sort of cat”, said Mr. Jones

Now it is obvious to everyone that, in a community such as the one which we live, some kind of law is necessary to try to prevent people like Mr. Jones from killing their wives. When the world was at a very primitive stage, there was no such law, and, if a man chose to kill his wife or if a woman succeeded in killing her husband, that was their own business and no one interfered officially.

But, for a very long time now, members of every community have made laws for themselves in self-protection. Otherwise, it would have meant that the stronger man could have done what he liked with the weaker, and bad men could have joined together and terrorized the whole neighbourhood.

If it were not for the law, you could not go out in broad daylight without the fear of being kidnapped, robbed or murdered. There are far, far more good people in the world than bad ones, but there are enough of the bad to make law necessary in the interests of everyone.

There is no difficulty in understanding this but it is just as important to understand that law is not necessary just because there are bad people in the world. If we were all as good as we ought to be, laws would still be necessary. If we never told lies, never took anything that didn't belong to us, never omitted to do anything that we ought to do and never did anything that we ought not to do, we should still require a set of rules of behaviour, in other words laws, to enable us to live in any kind of satisfactory state.

How is one good man in a motor-car to pass another good man also in a motor-car coming in the opposite direction, unless there is some rule of the road? People sometimes hover in front of one another when they are walking on the pavement before they can pass, and they may even collide. Not much harm is done, but, if two good men in motor-cars going in opposite direction hover in front of one another, not knowing which side to pass, the result will probably be that there will be two good men less in the world.

 

So you can see that there must be laws, however good we may be. Unfortunately, there are none of us always good and some of us are bad, or at any rate have our bad moments, and so the law has to provide for all kinds of possibilities. Suppose you went to a greengrocer and bought some potatoes and found on your return home that they were mouldy or even that some of them were stones, what could you do if there were no laws on the subject? In the absence of law you could only rely upon “the law of the jungle”. You could go back to the shop, demand proper potatoes and hit the shopkeeper on the nose if he refused to give them to you. You might then look round the shop to try to find some decent potatoes. While you were doing this, the shopkeeper might hit you on the back of the neck with a pound weight. Altogether not a very satisfactory morning's shopping!

Or you might pay your money to go to see a film at a cinema. You might go inside, sit down and wait. When the cinema was full, there might be flash on the screen: “You've had it, Chums”. And that might be the whole of the entertainment. If there were no law, the manager could safely remain on the premises and, as you went out, smile at you and say: “Hope you've enjoyed the show, sir”. That is to say, he could do this safely if he were bigger than you or had a well-armed bodyguard.

 

Every country tries, therefore, to provide laws which help its people to live safely and as comfortably as possible. This is not at all an easy thing to do, and no country has been successful in producing laws which are entirely satisfactory. But we are far better off with the imperfect laws which we have, than if we had none at all.

 

Ex.9. Practiсe saying these words.

[x]	[R]	[Qu]
cat	garden	now
man	far	out
bad	pass	round
kidnapped	harm	pound
absence	demand	down
back	armed
satisfactory

 

[QI]	[eI]
night	neighbour
time	stage
wife	enable
terrorized	state
lies	weight
kind	pay
rely	wait
	remain

 

Ex.10. Use the text and give English equivalents to:

1. убивать -

2. хоронить -

3. преуспевать в чем-либо -

4. вмешиваться -

5. похищать людей -

6. грабить -

7. сталкиваться -

8. в интересах кого-либо -

9. пренебрегать чем-либо; избегать что-либо -

10. полагаться, рассчитывать на что-либо -

11. в отсутствии чего-либо -

12. предотвращать что-либо, удерживать от чего-либо -

13. принадлежать кому-либо, чему-либо -

14. болтаться, вертеться, колебаться, метаться -

15. давать право, возможность –

 

Ex.13. Fill in the table.

Verb	Noun
entertain	1)
2)	success
prevent	3)
4)	interference
choose	5)
6)	protection
produce	7)
8)	satisfaction
collide	9)
require	10)

 

Ex.14. Find in the text as many verbs that describe illegal action as possible and give nouns that would describe a doer of an action and an action itself:

For example: to terrorize - terrorist – terror

 

Ex.26. Word study.

A. Find in the text adjectives related to these nouns:

constitution legislation

crime economy

finance industry

B. Find in the text nouns related to these verbs:

to relate to found

to organize to distribute

to institute

 

The Customs Law

The Customs 1)правила are closely connected with financial 2)право which 3)регулирует the budget, taxation, state credits and other spheres of financial activity.

The Customs functions are: to calculate and 4)собирать the duty on imported 5)облагаемые пошлиной goods; 6)выдавать import and export licenses for 7)ограниченные для ввоза и вывоза goods, to prevent trade in 8)запрещенные goods.

So, the Customs business of the Russian Federation (as it is stated in the Customs Code) is the activity which includes the procedures and 9)условия for transporting 10)товары и транспортные средства across the Customs border of the Russian Federation, the 11)взимание of the Customs payments, Customs registration, Customs control and other instruments for implementing the Customs policy.

b) Scan the text to answer the following questions.

1. How many times is the word “customs” used in the text? Write out all the phrases and translate them.

2. In what connection do the customs rules appear in the text?

3. What does the text say about financial law?

4. What does the customs business include?

 

Ex.29. Memory check

a) Which category of law deals with:

1. budget, taxation, state credits

2. relations in the economic sphere of life

3. matters arising from employment relations

4. individual types of crimes and punishment

5. legal forms of executive and administrative activity

b) B. Which category of law would deal with the following crimes:

1. robbery

2. smuggling

3. violation of human rights

4. failure to pay customs duties

5. speed limit excess

 

 

Conditionals 1, 2, 3

British Political System

Britain is a constitutional monarchy. This means that the official head of state is the monarch but that the monarch's power is limited. The legal authority lies with parliament, and the executive authority lies with the government.

There are two Houses of Parliament: the House of Commons, consisting of 659 MPs (Members of Parliament), and the House of Lords with over 1,100 members, called peers. Peers are not elected to the House of Lords but are entitled to membership either by inheriting a title (hereditary peer), by being given a title as a reward for public service which is not passed on to their children (life peer) or by holding a particular office, e.g. certain bishops of the Church of England and the Law Lords, who make up the highest Court of Appeal.

MPs are elected by a system called “first-past-the-post”: In each constituency the candidate with the most votes is elected - all the other votes are lost. The MPs usually belong to one of the major three parties, the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democratic Party. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also have MPs belonging to the nationalist parties. The main business of the House of Commons is to make the laws of the land by passing Acts of Parliament. Another important function is that of checking the work of the government, which is regularly carried out by MPs asking government members questions about their policies. The work of the House of Lords is confined to examining and revising bills passed by the House of Commons. (Once the House of Lords and the monarch have accepted the bills they become law and are called Acts).

The most important body of people in the government is the Cabinet. The Prime minister, who is the leader of the largest party in the Commons, chooses the members of the Cabinet, who are drawn mostly from the Commons. Ministers in the Cabinet are the heads of government departments, e.g. of education or finance. The ministers are assisted in their work by junior ministers and by civil servants; the latter are not politicians but normally know more about the running of the departments than the ministers do. The ministers depend on them for advice but are responsible for deciding on the policies of the departments.

 

 

Журавлева Е.В.

English for Law students

Part I

Английский для юристов III курс, часть I

 

 

CONTENT

CHAPTER I. LAW AND ORDER........................................................................................................ 3

What is law?................................................................................................................................... 3

The Need For Law............................................................................................................................. 8

Reader’s Corner: THE SYSTEM OF LAW IN RUSSIA....................................................................... 17

The Customs Law........................................................................................................................... 19

Grammar Review 1 – All Tenses Active. Conditionals.................................................................. 22

Conditionals 1, 2, 3....................................................................................................................... 24

Chapter II. Political Systems................................................................................................ 28

British Political System................................................................................................................. 28

American Political System............................................................................................................ 32

Choose your project...................................................................................................................... 36

Reader’s Corner: THE STATE SYSTEM OF RUSSIA........................................................................ 37

Grammar Review 2 – Prepositions of Place, Movement, Time...................................................... 42

Chapter III. Lawmaking Process.......................................................................................... 45

Lawmaking process in Britain....................................................................................................... 45

Lawmaking process in the United States........................................................................................ 45

Reader’s Corner: ENFORCING THE LAW....................................................................................... 51

Grammar Review 3 – Passive Voice................................................................................................ 55

CHAPTER I. LAW AND ORDER

Warming-up

Are laws for ordinary people or for lawyers?
Do you always observe the law?
Do you think laws change in the course of time?

 

Read the text

What is law?

The English word “law” refers to limits upon various forms of behaviour. Some laws are descriptive: they simply describe how people, or even natural phenomena, usually behave. An example is the rather consistent law of gravity; another is the less consistent laws of economics. Other laws are prescriptive - they prescribe how people ought to behave. For example, the speed limits imposed upon drivers prescribe how fast we should drive. They rarely describe how fast we actually do drive, of course.

 

In all societies, relations between people are regulated by prescriptive laws. Some of them are customs - that is, informal rules of social and moral behaviour. Some are rules we accept if we belong to particular social institutions, such as religious, educational and cultural groups. And some are precise laws made by nations and enforced against all citizens within their power.

Customs need not be made by governments, and they need not be written down. We learn how we are expected to behave in society through the instruction of family and teachers, the advice of friends, and our experiences in dealing with strangers. Sometimes, we can break these rules without suffering any penalty. But if we continually break the rules, or break a very important one, other members of society may ridicule us, act violently towards us or refuse to have anything to do with us. The ways in which people talk, eat and drink, work and relax together are usually called customs.

Order is rich in meaning. Let's start with “law and order”. Maintaining order in this sense means establishing the rule of law to preserve life and to protect property. To the seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588—1679), preserving life was the most important function of law. He described life without law as life in a “state of nature”. Without rules people would live like predators, stealing and killing for personal benefit.

The basic function of law, then, is to provide rules governing people in their relationships with others so that all people may live in maximum harmony. Every law restricts a person’s freedom to some extent, but these restrictions are usually necessary so that all people may have greater freedom.