Hey, everyone.  Hoje eu falo sobre collocations comuns com a palavra law.


Transcrição
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So here's a very common way to use the word 'law': when someone breaks the law. Obviously, if you fail to obey a law; if you do something against the law, then you're breaking the law. For example, shoplifting is against the law. What is shoplifting? That's taking merchandise from a shop without paying for it. That is against the law and if you've done it, you've broken the law.

So I did a search on Twitter and the first thing that popped up was the question "Did the Obama administration knowingly break the law?" Knowingly is an adverb and it would mean that if the Obama administration broke the law, they did so aware that they were breaking the law. I didn't follow the link to the article so I don't know exactly what the Obama administration might have done that was against the law, but there you go. It's true, though, isn't it, that some people break the law because they think they're above the law.


Some people think they're immune to the law. In theory, however, no one is above the law, or no one should be. I know people who think they're above the law, or at least above the rules. It's kinda sad, 'cause I don't wanna be near those people.



Now, I've been talking about the law and breaking it, and being against it, and being above it, and that reminded me of another great idiom: take matters into your own hands. When you take matters into your own hands you're going ahead and dealing with something that needs to be dealt with. And that usually happens because the people who should have dealt with it... didn't, or they didn't do it in a way that was satisfactory to you. So you decide to do something yourself. You decide to take matters into your own hands.
We see that a whole lot on TV shows, right? People who are not happy about the way the police have been dealing with a crime, for example. They think the police have been too slow or haven't been doing enough... And they decide to take matters into their own hands and conduct their own investigation, and find information and uncover evidence themselves, and sometimes even deal with the criminal themselves! They really take matters into their own hands instead of just waiting for the police to do something.

If you watch TV shows regularly, can you give me an example of a recent episode where a character took matters into their own hands? Let me know in the comments and talk to you next time!

Key expressions

break the law
above the law
against the law
take matters into your own hands