What are the relationship between state and law

Answered by: Patrick Temmy


University:  Institute of judicial administration  (Lushoto)


Programme: Certificate in laws


Year:  1


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Introduction 

There has much confusion on defining and understanding the term ‘State’. In most cases state is explained as a country, nation or government, but is completely wrong. These are just related terms but their meanings remain different. Normally, country is used to describe a geographical space or territory bounded by internationally recognized boundaries. Nation refers to a community of people constituted historically and who share territory, language, culture and economy and they identify themselves as part of a nation. E.g. the nation of Palestine exists but it does not have a country because its people were driven out of their territory. Government is interchangeably with the state but strictly speaking government refers to the executive arm of the state while state is an organ of class rule. The state is more than an executive it also includes judicial organs, legislature, prisons, army and civil service. It is possible for the government to change after a certain time but the state remains the same. This happens because in most jurisdictions government is formed by the strongest political party especially in multi-party countries. Summarily, One will say that state means public power. State power is constituted in a constitution of a country.

Emergence of state is traced at the time when society, due to improvement in the means of production, split into classes. Initially, economically powerful class formed the state but since the interests in society differed a special instrument was needed to superimpose the interests of the ruling class onto the whole society. Therefore, some changes were inevitable, state had to develop as a special public power with supreme authority and a system of institutions of coercion like the police, army and prisons.

To this juncture now one will be in a good position to answer the question as to whether state and law have always existed.

Sir, Frederick Angels once argued, “State has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did without it, that had no conception of the state and state power. At a certain stage of economic development which was necessarily bound up with the cleavage of society into classes, the state became a necessity owing to this cleavage”.

Interrelationship between State and Law.

The interrelation between law and the state is historical one. History demonstrates that law as a special system of social norms emerged together with the state as a special system of public power. It is argued that with the emergence of the state, emergence of special social norms that can be enforced by the state was necessary to support the new states. These norms had to be different form other social norms that were in operation before states emerged. The new norms (law) were initially selected by the state (from rules that existed in pre-state) but later on states stated to enact laws in both cases protecting the enforcement of those rules by the exercise of the new state power. This correlation between state and law has been retained throughout history. Therefore, no state has ever been without its own system of law, vise versa (no system of law has ever been without a state power defining what is the law and protecting its enforcement by the special means, which are at the disposal of the state and of the state only.

Conclusion

The above discussion has responded to the very important question as to whether Law and State have always existed. It is now a matter, which is so certain that the two phenomena have never been existed always, but they came through changes that took place in the world following various changes of development in society. It has been also highlighted that law and state are two sides of the coin that are inseparable. They support one another. There has been no state without law and likewise. Some reached a point of arguing that law is the custodian of the interests of the state. Law is put in place to support and safeguard the interests of the ruling class, and law is always political, in nature. Whether currently, that argument holds water is also a matter of discussion, basing on the fact that nowadays we have different types and branches of law some do support the rights of those who by one way or the other are discriminated or their rights are either violated or denied by different people or organs.