Activity 1:
Street vendorsVendor Power! is a poster-pamphlet which ‘decodes the rules and regulations for NewYork’s 10,000 street vendors so they can understand their rights, avoid fines, and earnan honest living.’

1. What aspects of street vending are regulated? By what means?

Aspects such as where a street vendor can sell, the exact spot at which they can stand, and the times at which they can sell are regulated. Other aspects that are regulated are ones such as how they can sell eg a license is required. However, there can only be a certain number of vendors on certain streets and the number of licenses are limited which is another aspect that is regulated i.e. how many licenses can be sold.

2. What aspects of regulation are regulated? By what means?

Most of the regulations mentioned above are regulated through the use of police intervention usually, where the police conduct and carry out checks every once in a while to ensure the vendors have a legal legitimate and authentic license, and that they are following the regulations mentioned above. Committees such as ones concerned with the environment and health and safety inspections are also involved in ensuring that street vendors stick to the rules. In cases which they do not, they receive extremely expensive fines.

3. How might the economic life of street vendors be improved? Will anyone elsebe negatively affected in the process?

I believe that the economic life of street vendors could possibly be improved by cutting the fines in cases where the vendors are genuinely unaware of certain rules and laws that are slightly more complex.

4. How have attitudes to street vendors changed over time?

Nowadays street vendors are viewed as a problem rather than a possible solution. There's always an aim to 'get them off the streets' or to cut the numbers per street etc whereas back then being a street vendor was viewed as an actual legitimate job whereupon one could make an okay living from. Now on the other hand the aim is to try and restrict them to an extent where it is almost impossible for them to be able to carry being a vendor without any extreme interventions and without constantly getting in trouble with the law. The restrictions placed upon them has become (one may argue) more and more absurd and much more technical starting from banning them from certain streets or limiting the number of street vendors in each street to very small details such as where one can specifically set up a vendor e.g the 10 inches from the curb rule etc.

Activity 2: Left versus right

Left versus Right is an attempt to visualise, and thereby understand, the differentperspectives of left-wing and right-wing politics.

Initiator David McCandless reminds us that ‘this is an attempt to depict the idealisedversions of the political spectrum. It's as if I'm stretching it tight, like a piece of rubber,so the details and forms are exaggerated. The reality is more subtle and multi-faceted’(http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/jul/22/information-beautiful-left-vright).

1. On your copy of the diagram, note the kinds of law that you would expect tofind working on each aspect of human life.

2. How do your notes differ when you are working on the left or the right side of the diagram?

On the left side of the diagram there is a much greater emphasis on laws related to the people, and the lives of the everyday people and laws that ensure equality and fairness for the people in their daily lives, whereas the ones on the right side are much more economy based and they are concerned with the economy, and money earning aspects of life. Laws of freedom are of greater importance on the right hand-side than they are on the left hand-side. The law is about making the economy as a whole greater, concentrating on the bigger aspects of an economy such as the military or businesses whereas the left is concerned with laws that protect the everyday individuals in an economy and place importance on all.

3. Where is ‘the economy’ in this diagram?

The economy is found on the right hand side more than the left side. However, the economy seems to meet in the middle between the left and right, in the centre as well. I believe it to be a combination of both in practice even though it is more evident on the right hand side.

	Created by Maryam Z over 10 years ago

1 Critical Introduction to Law Note on Week 14 Seminar work , created by Maryam Z on 25/01/2016.