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Rousseau Theory Of Law

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Introduction
Have you ever pondered over why different theorists are obsessed with the question of what the law is and what is its character? In my perspective this obsession is driven by the realization that laws and the rule adopted by any community are the primary determinants of how the people in that society fair socially, politically, economically, and even in the private spheres of their lives. Rousseau theory of the social contract goes beyond merely describing the process of developing and implementing laws, to the relationship between states and the people to expounding on how these societies are formed and how the law is sustained through the different systems of governments and doctrines such as the sovereignty of people and the …show more content…

When the surrenders this rights to liberty, he gains the right to civil liberty which serves the general will. Civil liberties allow man to possess the tile to property. The right to life and death is exercised when man, who is part of the sovereign community, overruns political laws used by the state to issue pardon to some people who have sanctions of death issued on their lives.
On the issue of strength in state of nature existence, the social contract allows a transmutation where strength is to be transformed to right and ‘obedience’ is transformed to duty. This ensure that the strongest persons remains the master in a civil society (book I page 2), while the weak have an opportunity to grow as well. In summary, my understanding of Rousseau’s theory is that as individual men, we come together and subject ourselves as slaves to a common master in order to access alternate rights which see that our rights to property and life and death and preserved without infringing on the rights of the next person. We are still ‘free’ since our liberties are combined to form a sovereign power which is non-destructible, and meant to serve the general will at all …show more content…

He believes that we are all created equal and by virtue of the laws of nature and justification, we have the right to exercise our force and align our resources to ensure we thrive in the best conditions possible. His development of the social contract theory and the formation of civil polities is based on the realization that as time changes, an individual man’s resources become lesser than the force required to sustain his life in the state of nature. Since man cannot create new force, the only way to ensure to ensure peaceful co-existence is to pool forces and resources and establish a unit of control of the balance between the rights and responsibilities of the people through a social

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