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Что Вы понимаете под словом «закон»? Прочитайте и переведите текст.

What Is Law?

The word «law» refers to limits upon various forms of behav­iour. In all societies, relations between people are regulated by pre­scriptive laws, laws which prescribe how people ought to behave. For example, the speed limits are laws that prescribe how fast driv­ers should drive. Some of such laws are customs, that is, informal rules of social and moral behaviour. And some of them are precise laws made by individual nations, governments and enforced against all citizens within their power.

The purpose of government-made laws is social control (with­out laws there would be anarchy in society) and the implementa­tion of justice. Sometimes laws are simply an attempt to implement common sense. It is obvious to most people that dangerous driving should be punished. But in order to be enforced, common sense needs to be defined in law.

The laws made by the government of one country are often very different from the laws of another country. But the law today is, to a large extent, a complex of different and relatively inde­pendent national systems. Despite major revisions over the centu­ries, the legal system of England and Wales is one of the oldest still operating in the modern world. English law has directly influ­enced the law of former British colonies such as Australia, India, Canada and the nation where law plays a bigger part in everyday life than anywhere else, the United States. In addition, although the legal systems of Western Europe and Japan come from rather different traditions, there are enough similarities in principle and institution.

Each country in the world, even each state of the United States, has its own system of law. But it should be said that there are two main traditions of law in the world. One is based on English Com­mon Law, and has been adopted by many Commonwealth coun­tries and most of the United States. The other tradition, sometimes known as Continental, or Roman law, has developed in most of

continental Europe, Latin America and Africa which have been strongly influenced by Europe. Continental law has also influenced Japan's legal system. In these countries Continental systems have resulted from attempts by governments to produce a set of precise, detailed codes to govern every legal aspect of a citizen's life.

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