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Organs of Enforcement and Enforceable Instruments in a Comparative Perspective*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2016
Extract
Professor Lawrence M. Friedman, the well-known legal historian and legal sociologist, stressed in a recent essay that the contemporary relevance of law within broader social phenomena could be analysed in terms of community expectations. He wrote that during the 19th century “[p]eople knew that they were exposed, at all times, to the risks of sudden disaster — disease, death in childbirth and childhood, accidents, chronic economic uncertainties. They faced these calamities without private insurance, without public welfare programs, and without legal liability rules that made it practical to collect damages from private citizens and companies”. Societies of the past fostered a “culture of low expectations” with regard to law as well as to life itself. In contrast, our contemporary society driven by medical, technical and social developments heads towards the “reduction of uncertainty”. Amazing progress in medicine, the full-fledged emergence of the welfare state, and the expansion of private liability for accidents and injuries have, at least in Western countries, greatly enhanced people's expectations from the social mechanisms. The stature of law has grown accordingly to unknown pre-eminence since all methods of reducing risks are now shaped in terms of legal norms.
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References
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