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 developing

Laws are set in place to ensure fairness and that everyone abide by the same rules. The prompt recommends that laws be flexible enough to account for various circumstances, times, and places. In my opinion, I mostly agree with this statement for two reasons.

Some may argue that this statement allows criminals to break the law and escape justice through loopholes. While law’s are created to ensure fairness and civil behaviour among citizens, the wording of laws are deliberate and made to prevent defence attorney’s from finding loopholes for their client’s crimes. Take for instance, if laws accounting for drinking and driving were made flexible. Let’s say an intoxicated woman decides to drive home and a pedestrian witnesses the severity of her inebriation. The pedestrian then walks in front of her car in attempt to prevent her from driving and the woman runs him over. If the law were flexible, it is possible that the defence attorney could argue that the pedestrian’s temerity caused the accident, not the driver. This example illustrates the dangers of flexible laws, as those who should be held accountable may escape justice.

However, in many cases, written laws cannot account for every possibility and should therefore have some degree of flexibility. For instance, the laws of breaking and entering are set to prevent people from unlawful entry into another’s property. However, the initial laws failed to account for a case where an individual was forced to do so for their own safety or survival. In this case, the individual was stuck outside in the snow and had to break into a nearby cabin for warmth, else they would have frozen to death. For these reasons, the court acquitted the individual and created exceptions that accounted for such necessary acts. That being said, to promote rigidity of laws would mean to encourage the conviction of many innocent people.

Another law in which adopting the prompt’s recommendation prove beneficial is in the case of domestic violence. Take for example, a case where a woman was physically abused by her husband for five years and had finally reacher her breaking point, resulting in her stabbing him. While the initial laws regarding domestic abuse failed to account for unprovoked acts of self-defence, the courts later diagnosed the woman with “battered person syndrome”. This is a disease is a form of PTSD and develops throughout years of domestic abuse, and has been supported by research. If laws were not made flexible, then many individual’s suffering from battered person syndrome would be found guilty and convicted of a crime in which they had no control over.

Indeed, there are many factors that one must account for when discussing such a complex topic. While flexible laws may allow for loopholes in the Criminal Justice System, it is also important to account for many innocent people who may fall between the gaps and be committed of crimes that they should not be held accountable for. For these reasons, my opinion remains that the laws should be made flexible to account for various circumstances.