Legal Issues

Abstract

There are extreme cases where the law seems to be a remote three-ring circus of irrelevance and entertainment, and far removed from the standards that operate in a particular culture. In Third World countries the laws enacted in the capital seem to be at a far remove from the concerns of rural peasant dwellers. Some cultures do not understand the laws forbidding bigamy; some cultures cannot understand that personal revenge is not permitted in the case of, for instance, a murdered brother or that the killing of a daughter who becomes pregnant out of wedlock is not permitted. It is as if there are two realms of discourse: the cultural one and the legal one. In some cases the cultural expression of values is at a far remove from the myriad of laws that constitute the body politic: the concept of mala prohibita may sound like a foreign abstraction to many. Power and pageantry, together with apparently mysterious processes, have little bearing upon their view of punishment, reparation and dispute resolution. Large formal organisations such as the police force may not respond to the special problems of migrants unless specific action is instituted.