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  3. Laws should be flexible enough to take account of various circumstances, times, and places. Write a response in which you discus

Laws should be flexible enough to take account of various circumstances, times, and places. Write a response in which you discus

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问题 Laws should be flexible enough to take account of various circumstances, times, and places.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
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答案 Laws dictate what we can and cannot do and play a key role in maintaining the order of our modern society. Some people suggest that laws be flexible enough to take account of various circumstances, times, and places. While this proposal seems to be reasonable and it can lead to certain benefits to individuals, I cannot fully agree with this recommendation for two reasons. First, laws should be fair and just to all, and the flexibility of laws creates opportunities for someone who break the laws to evade the punishment. Second, from a practical point of view, it is very time-consuming and resource-exhausting for the legal system to determine each case and apply the flexible laws. To begin with, I agree to certain extent that if laws can be flexible enough to take different situations into account, on an individual level this is a commendable policy. The reason is that if laws are too rigid, individuals’ reasonable action may be punished hastily and unjustifiably. To understand why this is the case, we need to keep in mind that society today, as well as one’s action, is very complex. Hence, when one’s action is seemingly against the law there might be justifiable reasons behind it. For instance, blood for blood and an eye for an eye have been some of the simplest rules governing our social behavior. Thus, murder is considered one of the most serious crimes and in many countries is punishable by death sentence. However, if a law simply stipulates that those who kill another person shall be executed, then it fails to take killing during self-defense into account. To be more specific, the laws here do not consider the motivation behind the action of killing. When one’s own life is threatened by the aggressor, his or her defensive action leading to the death of the aggressor should not be considered as a crime. In this scenario, the specificity of the action of killing should be taken into account. Indeed, in modern laws, self-defense is a valid reason for justifying killing another person. However, if a law becomes too flexible there will be two serious issues that are detrimental to the society as a whole. The first problem is that an over-flexible law could create loopholes for those who really commit a crime to escape the punishment they deserve. This is because that one’s action, no matter how unlawful it may be, could always find certain excuses to shift the blame. If the case of justifiable killing mentioned above is a scenario where one is tested false positive for committing a crime, the issue being discussed here concerns false negativity. That is, one should be punished by laws but with the laws being too flexible, their action remains unchallenged in court. For example, speeding should certainly be considered as an offense against traffic laws, but if such laws contain several extenuating clauses that can absolve speeder from getting punished, then the foreseeable outcome is that anyone speeding will try to justify their unlawful action by citing those clauses as their reason for speeding. The ultimate consequence would be that the traffic laws will be very hard to implement. Of course, some may argue against my reasoning above, citing for example that the speeders will eventually be punished because our legal system is capable of effectively evaluating the case of speeding, just like the fact that trials pertaining to murder and manslaughter are always heavily scrutinized. This counter-argument is certainly built upon some valid grounds, but it is somewhat over-simplistic and too idealistic. In other words, we may not have the resources to explore each and every case. In reality, it takes time and efforts for the legal system to get to the bottom of most cases; moreover, the truth of some cases is actually not known despite efforts to shed light on them. As a result, from a practical point of view our legal system would be challenged with tremendous amount of burden if we were required to evaluate all cases and then apply corresponding laws to them. Admittedly, for some serious cases such as murder, our legal system should indeed be extra cautious, but for a speeding case we should not over-spend the resources of our legal system on them. This is perhaps the reason why in reality speeding is often met with a ticket without much room for considerations. To summarize, it should be acknowledged that in some cases laws should be flexible enough to fully investigate the nature of the crime before reaching a monumental decision, especially severe punishments. However, if all laws become flexile, there will be loopholes that people will take advantage of and commit a crime. What’s more, despite the theoretical possibility that our legal system could commit a vast amount of time and manpower to prevent those fraudsters, in reality doing so would require tremendous resources and is not socially economical. Given these considerations, I largely stand against the proposal that laws should be flexible enough. (833 words)
解析     本题围绕“法律是否应该灵活”而展开，是一个非常抽象的题目，也因此是一道很经典的Issue难题。在题干中，我们并不清楚讨论的具体是哪些法律，题目也没有就情况、时间、地点给出具体的限定，因此我们在写作当中一定要将文章所描述的内容具象化。为此，这篇范文举了两组生活当中的法律例子，其一是杀人偿命，其二是超速罚款。
    回到文章的立论，对于法律类的Issue题(以及更为广泛的社会类议题)，一个比较好的出发点是从个人和集体来谈，也即一个议题对于个人而言也许是好的／坏的，但对于整个社会而言却是坏的／好的。但是，我们考虑到要以社会整体为重，所以主立场还是取决于该议题在社会层面上的好坏。这一种分析方法在接下来的范文中还会碰到。对于本题来说，显然，如果法律足够灵活，它就能最大程度地确保个人的利益——这也是本文第一主旨段的内容，因为社会问题是复杂的，一个案件也往往不是那么非黑即白，其背后有着复杂的动因。文中举了杀人偿命和正当防卫的例子，其实构想了这样一个场景：如果法律不足够灵活，那么一个正当防卫致人死亡的例子就会被误判为谋杀，这对于个体来说无疑是一个悲剧。
    但是，文章立刻指出，在社会层面上这么做却是有害的，并且给出了两个原因。其一是过于灵活会让有罪之人开脱，其二是实际操作上法律系统不一定有资源将所有案件捋清。前面这一点可以看作是第一段的对立面，也即法律太严太死板会让好人被冤枉(对个体不利)，但法律太松又会让有罪之人得不到惩戒(对社会不利)。接着，文章又从理论与实践的角度来阐明，所谓法律尽善尽美的灵活性可能只是理想主义者的一厢情愿，因为要调查一个案件需要司法系统投入可观的资源，而事实上我们的社会和司法系统没有这么多资源可以消耗。笔者就有过在美国开车超速，然后上法庭的经历。在正式开庭之前有一个预审，而在预审之前公诉人找到了笔者，说念你初犯，我们来做一个交易：一会儿我把你的超速降级成一个违规停车，你也就不要上诉，直接认罪，交钱走人——这就是所谓的plea bargain，中文叫作“辩诉交易”。究其原因，乃是如果笔者决定上诉，那么就需要后续的公堂对峙，会消耗可观的司法资源。因此，权宜之下，公诉人采取了减轻刑罚以快速解决的方案。由此可见，这一篇文章不仅采取了个人与集体的拆解方法，还使用了理论与实践这一方法。
    两种思路的嵌套反映出问题的复杂性，从而提升了文章的思考深度，进而能拿到高分。另外，理论与实践是政策建议类文章的一种非常有效的破题方式，我们在其他文章中也会经常见到。
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