You hear it quite often (in various forms), usually when some TV or film character is about to defy some rule or regulation that will save them or cause massive explosions. But it has a serious side that involves less fire too. Are laws actually meant to be broken?
First, we need to consider why laws are written. For the most part, they are there to provide some kind of protection to the general population. A speed restriction is designed to protect pedestrians in a built up area or the passengers if there is a lower limit due to fog, for example. In these cases, the laws are there to tell people what they should not be doing. They’re not supposed to be broken because doing so would endanger someone. But the key thing is that if they weren’t there, most people would probably exceed the “safe” speed limit, not because they want to kill or injure someone but because they don’t know what the safe limit should be. We’re not all scientists.
What about murder then? That it is illegal to murder someone does not really exist to provide a “guideline” like speed limits do – I’d suggest that most people won’t ever murder someone because they know it is wrong. In this case, the law only really has any effect if it is broken.
Digression: Although perhaps you could argue that we only perceive it as wrong because it is illegal and has been for a long time.
When laws are written, for most cases (I have yet to reach the part of the course where I can say “for all cases”) there will be some form of punishment defined should the law be broken. This means that the law is expected to be broken and so there must be some form of action that can be taken against those who do so.
Of course that doesn’t mean it was “meant” to be broken, just that there are actions ready to be put into place if it does happen.
It is in this way that we can say that yet again, there is no clear answer to this legal question and a different answer will apply depending on the situation. Just like the law itself.
