Text 1.
Solon (b. 630 - d. 560 B.C.)
Solon, the Athenian statesman, is known as one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. He ended exclusive aristocratic control of the government, substituted a system of control by the wealthy, and introduced a new and more humane law code. He was also a noted poet.
Unfortunately it was not until the 5th century B.C. that accounts of his life and works began to be put together, mostly on the evidence of his poems and his law code. Although certain details have a legendary ring, the main features of his story seem to be reliable. Solon was of noble descent but moderate means.
He first became prominent in about 600 B.C. The early 6th century was a troubled time for the Athenians. Society was dominated by an aristocracy of birth, who owned the best land, monopolized the government, and were themselves split into rival factions. The social, economic, and political evils might well have culminated in a revolution and subsequent tyranny (dictatorship), as they had in other Greek states, had it not been for Solon, to whom Athenians of all classes turned in the hope of a generally satisfactory solution of their problems. Because he believed in moderation and in an ordered society in which each class had its proper place and function, his solution was not revolution but reform.
Solon's great contribution to the future good of Athens was his new code of laws. The first written code at Athens, that of Draco, was still in force. Draco's laws were shockingly severe (hence the term draconian) so severe that they were said to have been written not in ink but in blood. On the civil side they permitted enslavement for debt, and death seems to have been the penalty for almost all criminal offenses. Solon revised every statute except that on homicide and made Athenian law altogether more humane.
Text 2.
"Let the Body Be Brought..."
In Britain, the United States and many other English-speaking countries, the law of Habeas Corpus guarantees that nobody can be held in prison without trial. Habeas Corpus became a law because of a wild party held in 1621 at the London home of a notoriously rowdy lady, Alice Robinson. When a constable appeared and asked her and her guests to quiet down, Mrs. Robinson allegedly swore at him so violently that he arrested her, and a local justice of the peace committed her to jail.
When she was finally brought to trial, Mrs. Robinson's story of her treatment in prison caused an outcry. She had been put on a punishment diet of bread and water, forced to sleep on the bare earth, stripped, and given fifty lashes. Such treatment was barbaric even by the harsh standards of the time; what made it worse was that Mrs. Robinson was pregnant.
Public anger was so great that she was acquitted, the constable who had arrested her without a warrant was himself sent to prison, and the justice of the peace was severely reprimanded. And the case, along with other similar cases, led to the passing of the Habeas Corpus Act in: Britain in 1679. The law is still on the British statute books, and a version of it is used in the United States, where the law is regarded as such an important guarantee of liberty that Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution declares that "Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended except in cases of rebellion or invasion".
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Habeas Corpus is part of a Latin phrase Habeas corpus ad subjiciendum that means "Let the body be brought before the judge." In effect, a writ of Habeas Corpus is an order in the name of the people (or, in Britain, of the sovereign) to produce an imprisoned person in court at once.
Text 3.
Napoleon's Law
The laws of much of continental Europe (particularly France), of Quebec in Canada, and of much of Latin America - along with the civil laws of Louisiana - owe their modern form largely to the work of a man who never even studied law. Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican soldier who became emperor of France after the French Revolution, established in 1800 five commissions to refine and organise the diverse legal systems of France. The result, enacted in 1804, was Napoleon's Code.
Some of its original 2,281 articles were drafted by Napoleon himself, and all were affected by his thinking, even though he was completely self-taught in legal matters. The code was a triumphant attempt to create a legal system that treated all citizens as equals without regard to their rank or previous privileges. It was also so clearly written that it could be read and understood by ordinary people at a time when only Latin scholars could make sense of the earlier laws handed down since Roman times. The code was adopted intact in most of the areas of Europe that Napoleon dominated and spread from there across the Atlantic, taking root particularly in French-speaking American communities. Many of its principles are still in force today.
Text 4.
From the History of Police Forces
Police is the agency of a community or government that is responsible for maintaining public order and preventing and detecting crime. The basic police mission - preserving order by enforcing rules of conduct or laws - was the same in ancient societies as it is in the contemporary sophisticated urban environments.
The conception of the police force as a protective and law enforcement organisation developed from the use of military bodies as guardians of the peace, such as the Praetorian Guard - bodyguard of the ancient Roman emperors. The Romans achieved a high level of law enforcement, which remained in effect until the decline of the empire and the onset of the Middle Ages.
During the Middle Ages, policing authority was the responsibility of local nobles on their individual estates. Each noble generally appointed an official, known as a constable, to carry out the law. The constable's duties included keeping the peace and arresting and guarding criminals. For many decades constables were unpaid citizens who took turns at the job, which became increasingly burdensome and unpopular. By the mid-16th century, wealthy citizens often resorted to paying deputies to assume their turns as constables; as this practice became widespread, the quality of the constables declined drastically.
Police forces developed throughout the centuries, taking various forms. In France during the 17th century King Louis XIV maintained a small central police organisation consisting of some forty inspectors who, with the help of numerous paid informants, supplied the government with details about the conduct of private individuals. The king could then exercise the kind of justice he saw fit. This system continued during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. After the French Revolution, two separate police bodies were set up, one to handle ordinary duties and the other to deal with political crimes.
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In 1663 the city of London began paying watchmen (generally old men who were unable to find other work) to guard the streets at night. Until the end of the 18th century, the watchmen - as inefficient as they were - along with a few constables, remained the only form of policing in the city.
The inability of watchmen and constables to curb lawlessness, particularly in London, led to a demand for a more effective force to deal with criminals and to protect the population. After much deliberation in Parliament, the British statesman Sir Robert Peel in 1829 established the London Metropolitan Police, which became the world's first modern organised police force.
The force was guided by the concept of crime prevention as a primary police objective; it also embodied the belief that such a force should depend on the consent and cooperation of the public, and the idea that police constables were to be civil and courteous to the people. The Metropolitan Police force was well organised and disciplined and, after an initial period of public skepticism, became the model for other police forces in Great Britain. Several years later the Royal Irish Constabulary was formed, and Australia, India, and Canada soon established similar organisations. Other countries followed, impressed by the success of the plan, until nations throughout the world had adopted police systems based on the British model. The development of the British police system is especially significant because the pattern that emerged had great influence on the style of policing in almost all industrial societies.
In the U.S., the first full-time organised police departments were formed in New York City in 1845 and shortly thereafter in Boston, not only in response to crime but also to control unrest. The American police adopted many British methods, but at times they became involved in local politics. The British police, on the other hand, have traditionally depended on loyalty to the law, rather than to elected public officials, as the source of their authority and independence.
Text 5.
Law and Society
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 in 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, but there are enough of the bad to make law necessary in the interests of everyone.
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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 then, but, if two good men in motor-cars going in the opposite directions 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, however, we 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 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 flashed 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 will 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.
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TASK 2. Translate the following passage into English paying special attention to the link words and expressions in bold type:
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