Talk:Statutory law

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[edit] sovereigns

I ask the question of whether statutory law pertains to sovereigns. It is my understanding that statutory laws were made for the purpose of limiting governments or "persons" power over sovereigns, or, "The People". I have read many supreme court cases where it states that sovereigns are not a party to statutory laws,codes,or regulations.

[Note: The above question and comments were posed by an anonymous user at IP address 209.193.29.101 on 28 February 2006.] Regards to all, Famspear 21:17, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

What the user at 209.193.29.101 meant by the phrase "statutory law pertains to sovereigns" is unclear. At any rate, statutory laws were and are made for various purposes, depending on the law. Taxing statutes are enacted primarily to impose taxes, etc. Criminal statutes are enacted primarily to define behavior deemed by society to be punishable, and to punish that behavior (among other things). Statutes on contracts are made primarily for the purpose of laying down rules for contracts. Thus, the phrase "sovereigns are not a party to statutory laws [ . . .]" etc., might not be the exact wording that our fellow user intended. Perhaps the user is instead asking about another legal concept, such as Sovereign immunity (??).

In fact, it's unclear what the user means by a "sovereign" although it appears the term is being used in the sense of "The People" (as in, The People of the United States are sovereign, etc.) Like many terms the word "sovereign" may have different meanings depending on the context in which the term is used. It may have one or more technical legal meanings -- which may or may not be the meaning being intended by our fellow user.

I'm guessing that what the user was trying to ask was: "Was statutory law developed for the purpose of limiting the power of government over The People (with The People being the sovereign)?" My answer to that question would be: Perhaps yes, in some cases, but not necessarily as a general proposition. Each statute, regulation, etc., has its own purpose or purposes, which may or may not be related to the desire to limit the power of the government.

So, perhaps some clarification would be needed from the user in order to properly address his or her questions. Famspear 21:42, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup tag

Added 17:11, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

This article is horrible. The bulk of it refers to tangential issues. Very little discussion is given to just what statutory law is, how it came about, etc.

Also there is a link near the beginning of the article to "Common Law" that goes to "Non-Statutory Law" instead that I dont know how to fix.

[edit] Link error

I fixed the error in that link to the common law page. I don't have the time or much expertise on the subject of statutory law to update the page at the moment, though.