Major societal impacts on law and governance

¶ … Society Bring Law

Law Alteration

There is a fair amount of veracity in the assumption that major changes in society frequently account for changes in laws. The relationship between these two occurrences appears fairly direct and even logical. Major changes in society ultimately result in different types of behavior in people. When people begin acting differently, their actions tend to produce different consequences than before whatever change was made in society. Not all of these consequences are favorable. Some are dangerous, and many times, they are unforeseen and can have a significant impact on society in a way that was not intended due to whatever sort of change was initiated. Therefore, there are frequent occurrences of alterations in the law to accommodate for these unforeseen occurrences, and to attempt to preserve the original spirit and safety of the law.

Numerous examples can substantiate this thesis. Virtually any aspect of technology can readily demonstrate this fact. This statement is particularly true when people tend to combine technologies. A quite specific example of this fact is the advent of cellular phones, which swiftly overtook pagers and two-ways as the preferred form of communication between individuals. Initially, there were very few laws related to the usage of cell phones, let alone restricting them in certain circumstances.

However, as time passed and mobile phones became more ubiquitous, certain trends were observed. One of these was related to driving, as people both talked on their phones and would frequently send text messages as they were simultaneously operating two ton (or heavier) vehicles. There were observable trends in traffic infractions as well as in accidents that were directly related to the change in society that virtually everyone was using cell phones -- and oftentimes while they drove. The result was that legislation restricting the usage of these devices soon followed. Now, depending on what particular state a motorist is in, he or she can be prevented from either talking on a mobile phone (Brown, 2012) or texting on it (Miller, 2010).

Developments in the internet also helped to produce fundamental changes in society also brought about changes in the law. One of the most popular usages of the internet was to share file between various people. In some instances, the files shared were under copyright -- in several of these cases people who were both sharing the file as well as downloading such a file did not own the copyright information. This popular trend of sharing files and downloading files continued for some time, and potentially deprived legal copyright holders of substantial amounts of money that they missed out on conventional sales for music, movies, and other forms of media.