Darlene had just left her third visit with the attorney in her church office. When Darlene had learned that an attorney was offering free legal help at her church one afternoon a week, she’d immediately signed up. Darlene wasn’t even sure that she had a legal problem. She just knew she needed help. On her first visit with the attorney, Darlene didn’t even know what to say. She just poured all her problems out, feeling disorganized, emotional, helpless, and embarrassed. Fortunately, the attorney had listened carefully and compassionately, making only a few affirming comments while asking only a few questions. Yet when her time was coming to a close, the attorney surprised Darlene by identifying several clear legal issues, while also clarifying her financial, familial, and medical issues. Darlene left that first visit without clear solutions yet, but at least she could now see her different sorts of problems. And on her second and third visits, the attorney helped Darlene chart clear steps to address her legal issues, while also guiding Darlene toward resources to address her non-legal issues.
Triage
Triage is the preliminary examination of casualties to prioritize who may survive with what kind of treatment. Hospital emergency rooms and military field hospitals perform triage on emergency medical patients. Other professionals do their own sort of triage when meeting new clients, to determine who they can and cannot help within their field and skills. People have all kinds of issues, all at once. Some of those issues are legal, while other issues are medical, financial, familial, educational, psychological, psychiatric, philosophical, or spiritual. Navigating effectively through life often involves unwinding one’s own complex problems to discern and address their nature and sources. Your problem may be legal, or it may be partly legal but more so medical, financial, or relational. Distinguish the different types of your issues and problems so that you can address them with the right help and adjustments. Know when you have a legal problem versus some other kind of problem.
Law
To distinguish your legal problems from your other problems, you need an idea of what law is. Law is authority that the government recognizes and enforces. Law comes in several different forms, most of which the following paragraphs describe. But the type or source of law may not be so important to you as the fact that you have a legal, rather than a spiritual or relational, issue. No matter the kind or source of law that your matter implicates, law determines the outcome of a legal matter. If you have a legal problem, law solves it, one way or another. If instead your problem is philosophical or psychological, law isn’t going to help you. Lawyers find lots of things interesting. A lawyer will talk with you all day long about philosophical, theological, or relational matters. But it’ll only be talk, and law won’t do anything for you, unless you have a legal issue. You have a legal issue when the government will apply authority to solve the issue, one way or another. Lawyers don’t prescribe medication, administer therapy, or give benedictions. You’d need a doctor, therapist, or priest for those services. Lawyers instead invoke government authority.
Nature
Law must come from somewhere. We have several forms of so-called positive law, including the enactments that you can read in statute volumes and administrative code books. The Declaration of Independence, though, recognizes that the positive enactments that people and their rulers write as law have a deeper source. The founders placed that source in natural law, referring expressly to God-given, inherent, or immutable rights. Together, we recognize some things as embedded in our nature and natural relationships. Out of our nature, legal rights and interests arise, no matter what a king, dictator, or tyrant says. Natural rights are surprisingly powerful. You don’t have to be a legal philosopher to invoke your natural rights. Natural rights are the first thing to which people naturally turn, even those, like children, who know nothing in particular about law and have never heard of natural rights. That’s what makes them natural rights. Don’t hesitate to advocate naturally, sensibly, and fitting to the circumstances, when invoking your legal rights. When you do so, you are resting on the most-powerful form of law, which is natural law.
Constitutions
Constitutions are a foundational source of government legal authority. Constitutions form governments that enforce laws. Constitutions also contain legal authority that governments enforce. The U.S. Constitution, for instance, acknowledges your right not to have the government deprive you of a life, liberty, or property interest without due process of law. Constitutional rights address your more-significant personal interests around things like what the police may and must not do to you and what public schools may and must not do to interfere with how you raise your children. While other forms of law address many of your more-immediate rights and interests, you’ll still see this guide occasionally mention your constitutional rights as determining your interests on significant legal issues. Keep your constitutional rights in mind, especially when dealing with police, government agencies, public officials and schools, and other government authority.
Statutes
Statutes are another source of legal authority, more likely than constitutions to affect your immediate legal rights and interests. Congress and the state legislatures enact statutes, a lot of them. The statute books run to hundreds of volumes. The local councils of counties, cities, villages, and townships enact ordinances, operating like statutes. Statutes and ordinances address many of your public and private rights and interests around things like the taxes you pay, the license you must obtain to practice your trade or profession or to operate a motor vehicle, the location in which you may work or live, the structure you may build in that location, and what conduct will land you in prison for a good long while if not for the rest of your life. This guide will repeatedly refer to laws that have their source in statutes. Pay attention to statutes. They generally mean business.
Regulations
Administrative regulations are another source of legal authority. Federal and state executive-branch agencies promulgate regulations, lots of them. The codes of federal and state regulations, like federal and state statutes, run to hundreds of volumes. Administrative agencies adopt regulations to carry out the legislative authority that statutes grant to agencies. You’ll see regulations on a wide range of subjects from workplace safety to the treatment of agricultural lands, storage of dangerous chemicals, transport of fuels, marketing of securities, and sale of food and drugs. Regulations are more likely to affect commercial, industrial, business, financial, and professional matters than personal, recreational, and residential matters. But regulations reach the home, too. And regulations, like statutes, carry the force of law. You can suffer fines and injunctions for violating regulations. You could even end up in jail for certain types of regulatory violation. This guide will refer to laws that have their detail in regulations. Pay attention to regulations. They, too, generally mean business.
Cases
Case decisions are another source of legal authority, which may seem odd. A case decides a dispute between parties, like two neighbors who sue one another over their property boundary, two business owners who challenge one another’s use of the same trademark, or a prosecutor who charges a suspect with a crime. What could a dispute between two parties have to do with your rights, when you were not a party to the dispute? Case decisions set patterns, principles, or precedent for later disputes. Some of your more-significant rights, especially constitutional rights, rest on case decisions. Case decisions can also be very significant to your contract rights, property rights, family law rights, and tort claims, among other claims and rights. Lawyers cite case decisions to advocate rights, negotiate settlements, and influence case outcomes. Pay attention to big, influential case decisions when they touch on your rights and interests.
Procedures
Rules and procedures are another form of legal authority. Rules and procedures generally determine how you invoke legal authority, not what the authority actually says you must do, may do, or must not do. Courts, for instance, adopt rules of procedure telling you how to go about getting the court’s help. Administrative agencies may also adopt rules and procedures telling you how to get the agency’s help. Your state worker’s compensation commission, for instance, would have rules telling you how to invoke the commission’s authority to make your employer pay your medical expenses and work loss relating to a workplace injury. Agency rules may also operate like administrative regulations, determining substantive rights and interests. Indeed, agencies often call their regulations rules. Lawyers cite rules and procedures to get things done. Pay attention to rules and procedures when you need the law’s help to get things done.
Contracts
Contracts are another source of authority, backed and enforced by law, affecting many of your rights, obligations, and interests. A contract is an enforceable promise or agreement between parties, backed by consideration. Consideration refers to the value that each party promises within the contract. When you buy a motor vehicle, for instance, your consideration is the money you’ll pay for it, while the seller’s consideration is the vehicle conveyed. Contracts govern virtually every asset, interest, good, or service you buy, sell, or lease, from apartments, homes, vehicles, stocks, bonds, and groceries, to medical care, dental care, lawn services, and cable television. A contract also determines your employment, including your job duties, hours, security, compensation, and benefits. Contracts thus determine a great deal of what matters most to you. Pay attention to contracts.
Claims
The above legal authority can give rise to claims. When you or someone else violates a legal right or interest, someone may well have a claim for legal relief. That relief may be for money damages, return of personal property, removal from or restoration of real property, and court orders not to repeat misconduct on penalty of contempt sanction and incarceration. In short, claims matter. Claims for you and against you can make a big difference to your rights and interests. In a perfect world, no one would have a claim against anyone else. But the world is not perfect. In our imperfect world, it’s generally better to have a claim than to face a claim, although to have a claim also means that someone has violated your legal rights, which in itself is not a good thing. Pay attention to claims. Claims are the legal coin through which parties enforce legal rights.
Ownership
The above legal authority also gives rise to ownership. Ownership is a bundle of rights generally including the right to control, use, and dispose of the thing owned. You own real property like your home because of the contract through which you purchased it, the statutory laws of inheritance through which you received it, or the statutory and case law of gift. You would own a motor vehicle, airplane, or kitchen appliance in the same way. Law might not only ensure that your ownership includes keeping others from depriving you of your property but also determine how you must maintain your property and what you must do to sell it. Pay attention to your rights and the rights of others as to ownership. Ownership means a lot.
Rights
The above legal authority also gives rise to rights. A right is an interest that you can enforce by invoking government authority under law. You’ve just seen, for instance, that ownership generally includes the right to exclusive use. So, there you go: the legal construct of ownership allows you to invoke government authority to evict someone from your real property or for the return of personal property stolen from you. Rights are akin to claims. You invoke legal rights to accomplish objectives or resist others from affecting your interests. Through rights and claims, you can get things done or stop others from doing things affecting you.
Reflection
Take two or three of the bigger issues with which you are currently dealing, and for each of those issues identify their legal, medical, financial, family, psychological, and spiritual dimensions. Can you see how you may need to address their different dimensions in different ways? Take two or three of your current legal issues, and identify whether each issue might depend on natural, constitutional, statutory, regulatory, case, procedural, contract, or property law. Do you recognize that you have substantial contract rights and interests? Do you recognize that you have substantial property rights and interests? Do you have legal issues you may need to address that rely on your contract or property rights? Do you believe that you may have claims against others who have violated your rights, whether or not you wish to pursue those claims? Is anyone asserting a claim against you alleging your violation of their rights?
Key Points
Distinguish your legal matters from your other matters for best effect.
Law is government-backed authority invoked to determine interests.
Natural rights remain effective arguments for your legal interests.
Constitutions govern your legal rights relative to government actors.
Statutes govern many of your public and private legal rights.
Administrative regulations address commercial and private conduct.
Case decisions can influence important private rights and interests.
Rules and procedures address how to invoke government authority.
Contract rights determine provision of goods and services.
Claims arising from violations of legal rights determine legal issues.
Ownership is a bundle of legal rights backed by government authority.
Advocating legal rights influences voluntary and enforced outcomes.