(Ebook) MULLA The Key to Indian Practice by Dinshaw Fardunji Mulla ISBN 9789351437031, 9351437035

(Ebook) MULLA The Key to Indian Practice by Dinshaw Fardunji Mulla ISBN 9789351437031, 9351437035

The province of law differs from that of ethics. While ethics condemns every sort of falsehood; law does not punish all falsehoods, but only those that affect the good
governance of the state. On referring to the Indian Penal Code, 1860, one finds that
che only kinds of falsehoods which are punishable under the Code are perjury, forgery, cheating, and giving false intormation to a public servant in certain matters.
At times, law goes beyond ethics, and makes it penal to do an act which may not be objectionable from an ethical point of view. A rule of the road in the United Kingdom and India is that drivers shall keep to the left, and a breach of the rule
constitutes an act punishable in both the countries. A different rule prevails on the continent of Europe, for the rule there is that drivers shall keep to the right. Neither
of these rules, however, is opposed to ethics.
Keeping aside ethics, a perusal of law is necessary. Law may be divided into civil and criminal. It is not easy to distinguish berween crime and civil wrong and, in
some cases, the same act may be a crime as well as a civil wrong. Yet there is a distinction between the two, which, in its essence, is quite simple. The distinction does not lie in the nature of the act complained of, but in the consequences which visit the wrongdoers. In case of a crime, the wrongdoer is punished and kinds of
punishment vary from fine to imprisonment, depending upon the nature of crime.
In case of a civil wrong, the aggrieved person is normaly compensated by monetary relief. Law dealing with civil wrongs and the remedies available for their redressal may be conveniently labelled as civil law. In the present lecture we are concerned
with civil law, as distinguished from criminal law. There is another division of law, often expressed by the words 'substantive' and 'adjective' or 'procedural'.