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Every day society changes, sometimes it might be as little as cultural difference. But have you ever thought that society might have a huge impact on our law system? Society rests on the belief that legal standards that have to be met, must be set by society. Society is not the number one influencer in the law and decision making but, it is deeply considered when a law is being changed or created. We as humans find ourselves living in a period of social stress which leads to increasing demands for major reform in our law. (Mandelker 1970). All these changes that happen in our society raise legal questions. These changes occurring mean we need to constantly reconstruct the law so we can make sure our system of law and justice meets the everyday challenges that society faces. (Department of Justice 2017).
As a human starts developing and experiencing new situations in life they’ll start to realize that there is no existing law that deals with it. (Department of Justice 2017). The good thing about this is that government legal experts are constantly reviewing our laws and are seeking ways to improve them. (Department of Justice 2017). As well as there are lawyers that bring up questions to court to maybe create a change. The best one yet is, Social action groups are always seeking ways to change the law that they find unfair to Canadian society. (Department of Justice 2017). At the end of the day, we as Canadians are technically making the laws, and we are also giving the government something to work with, and that is society.
One specific example of how society has made the law evolve to meet the needs of society is the LGBT same-sex marriage. Even though this law was passed a bit ago, it was and still is a historical moment in Canadian history. On July 20, 2005, marriage between two partners of the same gender became legal. I think this example is very powerful. I think this because this was 110 percent influenced by society. In 2001, Statistics Canada collected information about same-sex partnerships, and only 0.5 percent declared being in a same-sex marriage. (Eichler 2017). In 2006, one year after same-sex marriage was legal, the 2006 census collected data on legally same-sex married couples and it showed that there were more than 45,000 declared same-sex couples, and 16.5 percent of those couples were married. On the 2016 census, there were 72,880 declared same-sex marriage, and 33.4 percent were married. (Eichler 2017).
This all connects to how society made this legal. For many decades it was hard for people to come out and be their selves. The whole LGBTQ movement encountered many major setbacks starting in the 90’s. But social shifts were happening during the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Every day, more people come out as a part of the LGBTQ. As time went on a lot of people knew, or knew of at least one person who was a part of LGBTQ, and being discriminatory wasn’t safe. (O’Brien 2017). The LGBTQ community had a really big influence on changing the law. This group did many things from having their world's first LGBTQ television channel which was called “Pride Vision”. To having Pride parades every year, and having Joe Clark march as the grand marshal at Calgary Pride (who was the first Prime Minister of Canada to ever attend a Pride Parade). (Wikipedia 2019). There were plenty of protests, continuous amounts are the Pride parade, which now is mostly just a normal event, back 20 years ago though it was more or less a protest. Going back a little earlier, a lot of the momentum for the LGBTQ movement came from the aids crisis and the protests surrounding that in the 80s and 90s. The government essentially stood by this disease wiped out huge amounts of gay people and did very little to help. That helped make people more sympathetic and begin to change their opinions about the topic. Now this goes to show that doing things as a whole and creating power as a whole can impact and help the law evolve to society’s standards. This shows that as a society, if they believe in something so much, then it can help the law change and can also change everyone’s perspective. Because now same-sex marriage is legal and being discriminatory is illegal. I would like to conclude this essay by stating a part of the Canadian Human Rights Act- “Prohibited grounds of discrimination
3 (1) For all purposes of this Act, the prohibited grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, disability, and conviction for an offense for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.” (Charter Rights and Freedoms 2019).
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