Pros And Cons Of Statutory Law

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Statutory law refers to the body of laws that have passed through Parliament. Statute law can vary from state to state. For example, different states might have different laws on the legal age in obtaining driver's license. In order for something to become statutory federal law, it must be drafted into a bill or an amendment to an existing law. The bill then must pass through three readings in the House. Throughout the process, questions will be asked, changes are proposed, and votes will be taken. If the House passes the bill, it goes to the Senate and go through the same process. If both the House and the Senate pass the bill, it goes to the Governor-General, who gives it the Queen's seal of approval. Common law, on the other hand, are judgments…show more content…
Even though it helps to prevent the law to be unfair or ill considered, unforeseen circumstances and changing situations in different cases may arise. Therefore, inflexibility of statutory law is another disadvantage. In contrast, common law or case law allows judges to examine the case according to individual circumstance instead of the law itself. On the other hand, because statutory laws are not made by experts in the legal field, this means there are possibilities for problems to derive. For example, methods of punishments or years of sentences. Further more, politician are often involved, therefore the result could be potentially dominated by political agenda of government. However, there are also many advantages on statutory laws. For example, it is accessible to the public. This allows the public to have a general idea on what is right and what is wrong. Besides, because it’s a written law, it provides the lawyer to have to ability to predict the scale on what punishments the defendant might receive. Whereas for common law, it is harder to predict the result. Nevertheless, common law can also be rigid as the rule of judicial precedent is that judges must follow a binding precedent if there is a similar case. Therefore, it can be unfair to defendant because judges are applying decision made from previous similar cases that can be inappropriate or bad on the current

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