Laws should be flexible enough to take account of various circumstances, times, and places.Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developi

The one of the basic premises of any law is to promote the conduct of a society: business, government, or any institution, in a seamless manner and to prevent ambiguity that arises from misconstruing of law or changing it frequently. Thus, it should be stable or remain same in form and judgement with the objective of buttressing the predictability. While, there is no reservation that laws should operate in a conventional or established wisdom, there is a reason to believe that changing times and circumstances, which have prevented the unequivocal interpretation of laws, have urged the authorities to amend the laws in order to stem such varied interpretations which are responsible for widespread conflicts.

However, true it may be that flexibility in laws affords the authorities to prevent conflicts, but it also promote, though inadvertently, delays in judgement and widespread piling of legal suits. The amendments in any law, though are initiated to look after varied and often fluctuating understanding, are inherently promote different understanding or perception of the same legal clauses, thus, are creating an environment of unpredictability and causing huge losses to business enterprises. For example, the study conducted by a law firm in India in 2007 that covered legal suits filed by business houses in different courts of India related to corporate filings had provided evidences that 80 per cent of the suits are those arising from undesirable changes in law and changes in law with retrospective effect and thus, these changes had caused these businesses to pay huge penalties. Thus, in brief, changes in laws that were introduced in view of the changes in business conditions had actually defeated its cardinal purpose of preventing ambiguities.

However, one argument that supports the idea that amendments in laws actually resolve discrepancies arising from change in times and circumstances is that due to the change in legal jurisdiction or administration, the resultant changes in law helped citizens and businesses to carry out their duties more effectively. This can be exemplified by the amendments implemented in Constitution of India that earlier granted special status to the State of Jammu and Kashmir (JK). Earlier, no citizen of India was permitted to buy a property in JK and no business was allowed to register its primary place of business in JK, if that citizen or management of that business is not indigenous to JK. This has resulted in incurring huge costs in transportation and house rent since non-residents of JK were forced to rent a house or management of that business house had to transport the cargo to JK from other parts of India, if business has to be conducted there. But as geographical boundaries of India change administratively in 2019, Government amended the law and brought the State of JK at par with other States of India, thus, brought in harmony. Therefore, if the changes in law promote prosperity and well-being of a society, these must be pursued as per changes in the society.

Finally, another argument that is in favour of changes in laws is that changes help to stem the insolvency of companies and banks that was earlier cumbersome because of vested interests of the creditors. In India, insolvency of companies is treated as long term procedure since creditors to the companies are present in many forms such as employees, banks, suppliers and investment agents. The law that used to address such cases was incomprehensive in addressing the claims of all such creditors, as a result made this process perennial. However, when Government amended the law in 2015 and put these creditors in priority as per the amount of their claim and their date of relationship with the company, the amendment expectedly resolved 198 cases of solvency in just 3 months which earlier were unresolved even after 6 years. Therefore, changes in laws which actually reduced the time in litigation must be followed.

While concluding, as it can be understand from above that although changes in law promote different and divergent interpretation, but these were expedient as the jurisdiction and administration changes, and thus promoted conformity to rules. Moreover, as the process of litigation delays unnecessarily, changes bring in early resolution. Therefore, laws should be flexible enough if changes are efficacious to replace the inconsistencies existed in the present laws.