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Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the art of justice. State-enforced laws can be made by a legislature, resulting in statutes; by the executive through decrees and regulations; or by judges' decisions, which form precedent in common law jurisdictions. An autocrat may exercise those functions within their realm. The creation of laws themselves may be influenced by a constitution, written or tacit, and the rights encoded therein. The law shapes politics, economics, history and society in various ways and also serves as a mediator of relations between people.

Legal systems vary between jurisdictions, with their differences analysed in comparative law. In civil law jurisdictions, a legislature or other central body codifies and consolidates the law. In common law systems, judges may make binding case law through precedent, although on occasion this may be overturned by a higher court or the legislature. Religious law is in use in some religious communities and states, and has historically influenced secular law.

The scope of law can be divided into two domains: public law concerns government and society, including constitutional law, administrative law, and criminal law; while private law deals with legal disputes between parties in areas such as contracts, property, torts, delicts and commercial law. This distinction is stronger in civil law countries, particularly those with a separate system of administrative courts; by contrast, the public-private law divide is less pronounced in common law jurisdictions. (Full article...)

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The Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles of State Policy and Fundamental Duties are sections of the Constitution of India that prescribe the fundamental obligations of the states to its citizens and the duties and the rights of the citizens to the State. These sections are considered vital elements of the constitution, which was developed between 1949 by the Constituent Assembly of India.

The Fundamental Rights are defined in Part III of the Indian Constitution from article 12 to 35 and applied irrespective of race, birth place, religion, caste, creed, sex, gender, and equality of opportunity in matters of employment. They are enforceable by the courts, subject to specific restrictions. (Full article...)

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Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria, Marquis of Gualdrasco and Villareggio (Italian: [ˈtʃeːzare bekkaˈriːa, ˈtʃɛː-]; 15 March 1738 – 28 November 1794) was an Italian criminologist, jurist, philosopher, economist, and politician who is widely considered one of the greatest thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment. He is well remembered for his treatise On Crimes and Punishments (1764), which condemned torture and the death penalty, and was a founding work in the field of penology and the classical school of criminology. Beccaria is considered the father of modern criminal law and the father of criminal justice.

According to John Bessler, Beccaria's works had a profound influence on the Founding Fathers of the United States. (Full article...)

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Selected statute

A statute is a law or formal written enactment of a legislature. Statutes typically declare, command or prohibit something. Statutes are distinguished from court law and unwritten law (also known as common law) in that they are the expressed will of a legislative body, whether that be on the behalf of a country, state or province, county, municipality, or so on. Depending on the legal system, a statute may also be referred to as an "act." (Full article...)

The Representation of the People Act 1832 (also known as the Reform Act 1832, Great Reform Act or First Reform Act) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (indexed as 2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 45), enacted by the Whig government of Prime Minister Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, introducing major changes to the electoral system of England and Wales, expanding the electorate in the United Kingdom. The legislation granted the right to vote to a broader segment of the male population by standardizing property qualifications, extending the franchise to small landowners, tenant farmers, shopkeepers, and all householders who paid a yearly rental of £10 or more. The act also reapportioned constituencies to address the unequal distribution of seats. The act of England and Wales was accompanied by the Scottish Reform Act 1832 and Irish Reform Act 1832, respectively.

Before the reform, most members of Parliament nominally represented boroughs. However, the number of electors in a borough varied widely, from a dozen or so up to 12,000. The criteria for qualification for the franchise also varied greatly among these boroughs, from the requirement to own land, to merely living in a house with a hearth sufficient to boil a pot. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

... that the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law was named after its founder Sir Elihu Lauterpacht and his father Sir Hersch Lauterpacht?

... that Guido Jung was dismissed from the Royal Italian Army after the enactment of the Italian Racial Laws despite having served as Minister of Finance under Mussolini?

... that in the Bancoult litigation, the English courts and government first decided that the Chagossians could return home (pictured), then that they couldn't, then that they could, and then that they couldn't?

... that the tenor Alfred Vökt, who performed in the premiere of Henze's Il re cervo, had a Doctor of Law degree?

... that the General Alliance against Racism and for Respect for French and Christian Identity sued Le Figaro for defamation against Catholics?

... that martial law was declared in Russell County, Alabama in 1954 after the assassination of Attorney General candidate Albert Patterson?

... that the year and a day rule regarding homicide was abolished because of advances in medicine and forensic science?

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Selected images

Image 1Legal systems of the world
Image 2Signing of the Magna Carta
Image 3The first Supreme Court of Puerto Rico
Image 4The Langdell Library of Harvard Law School
Image 5Jeremy Bentham's writings influenced law for generations.
Image 6Emperor Justinian I (527–565) of the Byzantine Empire who ordered the codification of Corpus Juris Civilis.
Image 7King Hammurabi receiving the code of laws from the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash
Image 8Painting of a jury deliberating
Image 9Statue of Lady Justice holding scales
Image 10Chief Justice John Marshall (1755 – 1835), an American statesman and jurist who greatly influenced constitutional law'
Image 11Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States as of October 2020
Image 12The defendants sitting in the dock during the Nuremberg Trials
Image 13Jawaharlal Nehru at the Allahabad High Court
Image 14A courtroom in Tokyo, Japan
Image 15The Constitution of India

Selected case

Case law, also used interchangeably with common law, is a law that is based on precedents, that is the judicial decisions from previous cases, rather than law based on constitutions, statutes, or regulations. Case law uses the detailed facts of a legal case that have been resolved by courts or similar tribunals. These past decisions are called "case law", or precedent. Stare decisis—a Latin phrase meaning "let the decision stand"—is the principle by which judges are bound to such past decisions, drawing on established judicial authority to formulate their positions. (Full article...)

R v Secretary of State for Home Affairs ex parte O'Brien [1923] 2 KB 361 was a 1923 test case in English law that sought to have the internment and deportation of Irish nationalist sympathisers earlier that year declared legally invalid. In March 1923 between 80 and 100 suspected Irish nationalists in Britain were arrested by the police and sent to the Irish Free State under the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act 1920 (ROIA). One of the detainees, Art O'Brien, challenged his detention in a test case at a divisional court. The case eventually went to both the Court of Appeal and House of Lords, who decided that the internments were illegal because the Irish Free State was an independent nation and so British acts of Parliament no longer applied to it.

The decision effectively illegalised the ROIA and led to the immediate release of O'Brien and the other detained individuals, who sued the British Government for false imprisonment. The government pushed through the Restoration of Order in Ireland (Indemnity) Act 1923, which limited the money they had to pay the detainees, who eventually received £43,000. O'Brien himself was re-arrested and found guilty of sedition, and was imprisoned until 1924. (Full article...)

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See also: Lists of case law

More Did you know (auto-generated)

... that The Bootleggers portrays the illegal alcohol trade during the Prohibition era of the Roaring '20s?
... that Bumper Pool legally changed his name to Bumper when he was 16 because of his father's childhood love for bumper pool?
... that the first United States court case to recognize moral rights in authorship involved the use of music by four Soviet composers in the 1948 Cold War film The Iron Curtain?
... that the court case Nintendo of America, Inc. v. Blockbuster Entertainment Corp. helped allow the game rental market to thrive for the years that followed the case?
... that Benedictine monk Brother Justus helped make stills so that farmers could illegally make alcohol during Prohibition?
... that the futurist novel Man of Smoke, according to a scholar, contains a hidden legal code for readers to piece together?

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General images

The following are images from various law-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Aristotle, by Francesco Hayez (from Jurisprudence)
Image 2The Constitution of India is the longest written constitution for a country, containing 444 articles, 12 schedules, numerous amendments and 117,369 words (from Legal history)
Image 3The Supreme Court Building houses the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. (from Judiciary)
Image 4King John of England signs the Magna Carta (from Legal history)
Image 5Lady Justice (Latin: Justicia), symbol of the judiciary. Statue at Shelby County Courthouse, Memphis, Tennessee (from Judiciary)
Image 6Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens (from Jurisprudence)
Image 7Philosophers of law ask, "What is law, and what should it be?" (from Jurisprudence)
Image 8Corpus Iuris Civilis, 1607 (from Judiciary)
Image 9Thomas Aquinas was the most influential Western medieval legal scholar. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 10Bentham's utilitarian theories remained dominant in law until the twentieth century. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 11Mill believed law should create happiness. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 12"With law shall land be built", from the Code of Jutland (1241) above the Copenhagen Court House, Denmark (from Legal history)
Image 13Image of pages from the Decretum of Burchard of Worms, an 11th-century book of canon law (from Canon law)
Image 14Gratian (from Judiciary)
Image 15Oliver Wendell Holmes was a self-styled legal realist. (from Jurisprudence)

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