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Something happens, maybe a sudden catastrophic event, or a growing sense that
something is wrong with our institutions and this alters the way we view the world.
Normal social rules become destabilised – members of society question or cease to
value the laws imposed on them sufficiently to constrain their behaviours in accord
with them. What results is a metaphorical state of nature in which the values of the
community emerge. This state may be macro – and relate to entire social rule, or micro
– relating to discrete areas of law. With enough support, a new paradigm emerges – its
values fixed either through a process of social normalisation or in law itself. This
process applies equally to the rule of law generally and to discrete areas of governance.
Lord of the Flies
Throughout this chapter I draw from Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies. It is the story
of British schoolboys marooned on a desert island following a plane crash. Their
struggle for survival starts well. Amid the initial exciting realisation that there are no
grown-ups on the island, the boys establish a system of self rule which governs the
search for food and shelter. These ‘self rules’ also legislate for the operation of a
smoking fire to alert passers-by of their presence and desire for rescue. As time passes,
the system of rules established from social conventions and a context far removed from
the desert island begins to destabilise as fear and power dominate the quest for survival.
Through the medium of the novel, Golding communicates his insights into the nature of
human behaviour and provides a rich tableau of human response to society without
normal rules, laws and conventions.
Objectivity
Part One – Law, Values and Reasoning
Values-based law is based on the premise that laws, rules and conventions work within
our individual processes of logic to contain and constrain our individual preferences.
But the power of rules, laws and conventions to maintain social order is not solely in
their objective existence. It is in the way they function in our individual reasoning; the
way we use them as we make sense of our social environments and to make decisions
about our actions. For example, there is a common perception that law is a system of
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