The Concept and the Characteristic Features of the Legal Norms

• Author: Getty Gabriela Popescu
• Position: Dunarea de Jos University of Galati
• Pages: 100-109

The Concept and the Characteristic

Features of the Legal Norms

Getty – Gabriela Popescu1

1Dunarea de Jos University of Galati

Abstract: People’s involvement in the life of so ciety is determined by their behavior which

manifests itself through actions, inactions and interpersonal relationships. All these put

together, create the society. The human activity is characterized by its many d imensions. One

of the most important is the normative dimension which involves establishing rules that

organize human behavior. This imposes a certain pattern of behavior on the individual, in

accordance with the social values existing in society at a certain moment. So, within the

human society, which is a dynamic, self-adjusting system, subject to specific processes of

structuring and restructuring, the actions through which people - endowed with their own

conscience an d will – ensure the functionality and dynamic of the social ensemble, can not

occur chaotically, but on contrary, they are carried out in an organized manner, based on

certain social rules, having a standardized nature. So, all social processes are conducted in an

organized manner based on the normative social system.

Human society is built and operated according to principles and rules deriving from the necessity

of a social existence, guiding people’s behavior and their adaptation to the needs of development

and social progress in general. The norms are in fact some rules, some universal statements which

incorporate the particulars and which regulate human conduct in a given action. The norms

influence people’s attitudes, decisions, goals and aspirations. They contribute to the rationalizing

of social life, thus ensuring people’s sociability, but also the predictability of social behaviors and

actions.

Initially, the term “norm” had, in Latin, the meaning of rule or of instrument necessary in order to

draw lines, which led in time to a means of directing towards something pre-established that is

the rule or the reference frame of the actions. Social coexistence has accustomed the individual to

show confidence in the previously formulated rules, as they were inferred from the experience of

previous generations.

In I. Huma’s opinion, human actions, in their most simple form of automatic responses to the

environment, are prior to norms which had the possibility of arising only in the frame of more

advanced forms of socio-human existence, when also the idea of ”liability” concerning those who

disrupt the community’s balance is formed. That means that they depend on the nature and

conditions of social action. So, rules are as varied as the types of human activities. Their

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