Issue-21.
Laws should be flexible enough to take account of various circumstances, times, and places.
The argument asserts that that laws need to be flexible. This flexibility, it is stated, could be afforded by offering consideration to various circumstances like changing social environment, time and place. But laws are the principles in our daily life and if too many allowances are made the result could be chaotic.
The purpose of law is to maintain social stability. Laws help people make prediction about the consequence of their behaviors. Under a system where exceptions were always made for different circumstances, times and places, people would always find a way to shirk the responsibility that they have to obey the law. In business, for example, the ultimate goal is to maximize profit. Businesses can and do enterprise to thwart laws by churning out exceptions as to what they have done wrong should not be punished. Stringent, unchanging laws would create an atmosphere wherein businesses could no longer escape responsibility for their actions.
On the other hand, we should observe that laws themselves can be changed. History is filled with examples that laws have been changed over different circumstances, time and places. Take the right of inheritance as an example. Heirs were once only considered the eldest sons. That law was later revised to include other sons, daughters and wives. This law represents social progress and it wasn’t the law that was considered with more flexibility but a new law, put in place without exceptions. What is more, in the field of criminal law, there used to be a practice of implication whereby a criminal or his family members must accept punishment for wrongdoing. Today, this practice has changed to reflect social progress. Essentially, over time, we’re able to look carefully at changing laws that have worked to serve their purposes. However, while they change, they aren’t flexible.
In conclusion, laws should not be indefinitely fixed. However, laws cannot be flexible because of the chaotic effect that it would have on social stability.
- The purpose of law is to maintain social stability. 这句话采取了不定式作表语的用法。此处使用是为了表示目的。
- Under a system where exceptions were always made for different circumstances, times and places, people would always find a way to shirk the responsibility that they have to obey the law. 这一句使用了虚拟语气，前半句用were假设了总是允许例外发生的情况，对应后半句的would，表明这个假设条件可能带来的后果。用词上，shirk一词的选择非常好，它是GRE级别的词汇，表示avoid，但更能体现作者的词汇量。
- ... and it wasn’t the law that was considered with more flexibility but a new law, put in place without exceptions. 这里使用it was not…that的句型强调了the law，和but后面的new law作对比，指明两者的性质上的区别：不是旧的law灵活了，而是new law变得完整，更加不容exceptions了。
本文采取总分总的结构，论述了作者对laws和flexibility关系的看法。作者围绕法律的稳定性展开讨论，先解释了法律如果不稳定，将会带来哪些恶果；然后说明了法律发生变动不是因为它灵活不稳定了，而是为了更加稳定地维护社会秩序。因此作者反对题目中的statement，认为法律不应过于灵活，因为会失去权威性，从而难以达到维护稳定的目的。