Which country has the best Laws, overall, and how could they improve them to make them suitable for adoption by all other countries?

Why would we want to standardize ourselves when humanity covers such a wide spectrum of beliefs and cultures? It simply makes no sense, I can see no benefit in eliminating our diversity as you propose.

@dynamicduo Only as far as our laws. Not culture or diversity. Just basic laws.

But our laws are based in culture in many places, thus by eliminating those laws, you are influencing their culture. Look at Sharia law for an example. Laws and culture are not as easily dividable as you believe.

i personally am very fond of german law. but i would introduce some of Japan’s legislation on some of the issues.

There is a natural selection occurring with human cultures. The more dominant ones (Germanic cultures, in my opinion) have more influence in the world and the less dominant cultures I think will assimilate into the dominant ones. Eventually we’ll probably have a world government (how soon I don’t know), but it’s laws won’t be based on a specific country but on the laws of more dominant countries and on the laws of international bodies such as the UN.

@doggywuv Does “dominant” = best?

@lloydbird Well “dominant” in this context would mean that it’s more likely to survive. For example, in the Middle East, Persian culture is more likely to survive than a Native American culture, because the Persian culture is adapted to the environment. On the global scale, the dominant culture would be one that is more likely to survive in the world as a whole. My opinion is that some cultures are more powerful than others, so they’re more likely to survive.
I don’t know if I’ve explained this well…

I don’t like the idea of universal laws. The whole concept is community standards. Why should someone else’s standards be imposed on a culture from the outside?

@Marina Are your laws not “universal” in your country? You seem to be happy with them. So why not extend them? If they are so good. You seem to suggest that you would not like other peoples laws foisted upon you. Is this because you think that they are inferior? If so, then why not promulgate you superior laws to the benefit of others?
@doggywuv So, ‘Might =Right’?

@lloydbird In this country the laws are not universal, except for Federal laws, which are only a small part of the legal codes in various communities.

I would not like laws developed by other countries without my input “foisted upon me.” Remember taxation without representation? I don’;t think anyone would. That was my point.

@Marina Do you have any problem with the “Federal laws” of your country?

What is the definition of best laws? Who decides what those are? What body puts them in place and then enforces them?

No, I don’t agree with all of the laws in my country. Chances are I would not agree with all the laws of any other country.

So what?

@Marina Best laws = Optimally beneficial.
“Who decides..” = All concerned.
“What body puts them in place and then enforces them?” = The one that is established by ‘all concerned’ to do so.

Oh, a fantasy question.

@Marina Speculative.

I think our laws have always been influenced by other countries, and will continue to be so. I think this country will start to see our laws be manifested and adjudicated in great part by a quasi global judicial entity – you know, it’s a global thing, remember “we are family”.

@doggywuv is on the right track. You wouldn’t want standardization of society or culture because that would make human society less fit and less able to survive the coming shocks. No one knows what those shocks will be, but we can be certain they will come, sooner or later. We need to have every type of human governance possible, in case one of them turns out to be better than all the others at adapting to the shock.

There is no “best.” It’s all about adaptation. We like to think that democracy with capitalism is more adaptable, but that may or may not be the case. There may be situations where a more cooperative society or a more dictatorial society will have a survival advantage. It is best, hard as it may be to believe, to have all kinds of human systems in action at any one time, including the lawlessness of the Congo and the harsh dictatorial nature of the North Korean regime.

Those are, of course, regimes that are several standard deviations from the norm, and those of us in the middle of the bell curve might find them heinous, but you never know. They might turn out to be what saves humanity, unlikely as that may seem.

In any case, if you ask what country has the best laws, you have to go much further than you have in establishing criteria by which to determine what the “best” is. Your “optimally beneficial” is so vague as to be meaningless. Presumably we already have the optimally beneficial mix of laws in the world. They are the result of all human history. And, as I say, no one knows what will happen in the future, so we can’t possibly know what the optimally beneficial laws are, especially since there is no one optimally beneficial system that can adapt the best to all possible circumstances.

I’m sure you meant well in asking this question. Maybe you were hoping for people to put up some candidates, and then have a debate over whether they are good candidates or not. However, I think that’s putting the cart before the horse. First you need criteria by which to judge legal systems. From your standard of “optimally beneficial,” it sounds like you are a utilitarianist. A follower of John Stuart Mill.

That’s all well and good, but how do you define “good?” Who gets to decide what is good? If it is every individual combining individual goods into some kind collective good soup, how would you measure such a thing? And at what moment would you measure it? What would you do about change—it happens every second. The greatest good now may not be the same as the greatest good now.

So I’m not at all sure what you’re trying to get at, or what you imagine might be possible to get at. I don’t know what kind of discussion you were hoping to stimulate—presumably not a meta-discussion. But, without generating the rules of a discussion first, you really can’t have a meaningful discussion. It’s just a mess, like humanity.

I love laws on product safety. These can, and should be standard world wide. I love to travel and would like to make sure I will not kill myself with the wrong brand of tooth paste. EU rules are fine.

I’d love environmental rules to be global. Your pollution doesn’t stop at our borders.

I’d love laws on education, protection of individuals and anti-discrimination to spread world wide. Let them use any UN or European Council resolutions as a base.

Personally, I would overall see better distribution of civil rights, well being and economic power over the world. Evening out the social and economical differences will reduce the urge by many to migrate to the richer countries and hopefully increase the impulse to work rather than fight wars.

I love laws prohibiting the death penalty. I do not want the state to turn me in a killer accomplice. No killing out of my name. The same for prohibiting torture, unfair, cruel punishments, land mines and safe guarding a fair judgement system.

There’s more, but I’ll leave it at this.

I don’t think there’s any country with the “best laws”. Countries can use best practices and lessons learned from other countries, for both laws and bylaws. China is copying a lot of environmental laws and bylaws from Germany. They have clearly realized they got a big problem.

At this point in history it seems impossible, but I think it is a nice ideal to have. Many oof you have seen me write that I am waiting for Gene Rodenberry’s United Earth (UE). The thing is if you promote one law across the world, then what happens if you don’t agree in the end with some of the laws that are adopted? You have no where to go, no choice, you can’t move to a different country seeking a better fit. Just within the US many argue that it is important to not give to much power to the central goverment, that the state governments help keep that power in check. BUT, here is the thing, generally it makes me sick when I see some of the laws some of the states pass, and I think our central government does a much better job of protecting people’s individual rights and adhering to the consititution. So I can talk myself into it and right back out.

I like @whitenoise list and I think @Marina had great points.

@daloon Am intending to provide you with a commensurate response as soon as conditions befit. Thanks for the extent of your input.
Just a quick point – Can you please elaborate on this theory of ‘Legislative Darwinism’ that you are basing your argument on?
I’m not sure of its ability to survive inspection.
Can you help?

@lloydbird I’m not sure what to say. It’s pretty simple. Survival of the fittest. The society that is most fit, given the environment, will be most likely to survive in that environment. Our environment changes, so, presumably, the “most fit” society (which includes it’s legal system) can change given external circumstances.

For example, Cuba is great at dealing with hurricanes, and not so good at building its economy. The US is great at giving handouts to businesses, but not so great at making sure its citizens have access to health care. So, each nation would be better able to handle different circumstances. In a time of economic downturn, nations that share the wealth probably recover faster than those who encourage widening the economic divide. Indeed, they may do better in good times, as well.

China is said to be the Asian tiger that will take economic leadership in the world in the near future. Perhaps democracy is not necessary to build fabulous wealth. All the nations have competing legal systems, and those that are fittest, given the current environment, will do better than other systems, and will be, under one definition, the “best overall.”

@JLeslie – Even with a United Earth or a United Federation of Planets there would be regional peculiarities. And it makes sense.

@mattbrowne I guess that would be true, similar to the states in the US? But, there would be a supreme law/court, wouldn’t there? I look at it like our states get away with breaking federal laws until they are challenged and get up to the supreme court.

@JLeslie – Exactly. Californian law sometimes differs from, say Kansas law. It’s the same in Germany with its 16 states. Sometimes there are differences even within one state. Here’s a funny example: In parts of Nordrhein-Westfalen on one particular Thursday there’s the so-called Weiberfastnacht during carnival and it’s legal for women to cut off the tie of every man they encounter. Men who know this custom wear old ties to “cut their losses”. A couple of years ago an American tourist who didn’t know about this custom lost an expensive tie and he sued the woman who cut his tie, but he lost. I think the legal basis was based on something like this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custom_(law)

@mattbrowne
haha