Law is the system of rules that a community or state develops to regulate behavior, maintain order and justice. It is enforced through governmental institutions and may be written or implicit, formal or informal, sanctioned or unsanctified, enforceable or non-enforceable. Laws are used to resolve disputes and issues arising from conflicting interests. They can include rights, responsibilities and obligations between individuals, groups or organizations; between businesses; between nations; and between the state and its citizens. Laws can be criminal or civil in nature.
The precise definition of law is an area of intense scholarly discussion, and its controversies have given rise to many subfields of inquiry such as legal history, philosophical analysis and economic theory. The concept of law has also provided a foundation for many theories and arguments, including those concerning equality, fairness and justice.
Generally speaking, law is that which is agreed upon and accepted by the members of a society or state. Whether these laws are written or implicit, the adherence to them is considered to be what defines a society as lawful. Laws can be created by a collective legislature through statutes or decrees, or they can be established by judges through precedent (usually in common law jurisdictions). Laws can also be privately established by contracts and agreements between private parties.
In addition to defining societies, laws serve a variety of other important purposes. For example, they can establish property rights and prevent people from being harmed by others through illegal activities like murder or theft. They can provide a way to settle differences, for instance when two people claim ownership of the same land or work. Laws can also help ensure that government officials, police and other public servants carry out their duties without bias or unfair treatment.
For some, the word law evokes images of a cold, heartless and inflexible institution, whereas for others it relates to an idea of justice and fairness. The latter point is particularly important since, as noted by Max Weber, the modern extension of power of the state into a vast array of private spheres poses new challenges for accountability that earlier writers such as Locke or Montesquieu could not have foreseen.
Some of the more specific fields of law include labor law, which deals with employee issues; tort law, which provides compensation to those who are harmed through the negligence or wrongdoing of others; and immigration law, nationality law, and family law. All these fields deal with the interaction between a person and a government entity, although the last three are more directly related to the person’s citizenship in a particular nation-state.