Law is the system of rules and principles that a particular society recognizes as regulating the actions of its members. It may be state-enforced by legislation resulting in statutes, or it may be privately enforced through contracts and arbitration agreements (such as those governing commercial transactions), or even through traditional court litigation. Law influences politics, economics and history in various ways, and serves as a mediator between people. It is therefore a subject of intense interest, and many books contain numerous different ideas about what law is.
A number of philosophers have attempted to define law, and their theories often overlap with one another. For example, utilitarian law theorists like John Austin argue that “law is the aggregate set of commands, backed by threat of sanctions, from a sovereign to men, as political subjects”; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, on the other hand, promoted a notion of natural law which, though no longer influential in modern Western societies, still exists in some religious communities.
Other scholars have argued that the essence of law is simply power. This view argues that laws are followed because they are issued by a powerful sovereign who is seen as morally superior to others; coercion is thus an essential part of the law’s nature, and, for example, if a dictator creates arbitrary or even bad laws, they will be obeyed as long as he has the means to punish those who disobey them. This interpretation of the law grew in popularity in the 19th century, and its influence was reinforced by Max Weber’s reshaping of thinking on the extent of the state’s legitimate power in modern times: the modern military, police force and bureaucracy pose special problems for accountability that earlier writers such as Locke or Montesquieu could not have anticipated.
In the practice of law, law is usually interpreted through legal precedents, and in some countries, such as the United States, this is called caselaw. The principle of stare decisis, which translates from Latin as “to stand by decisions”, entails that courts must follow the precedent of earlier cases when ruling on similar situations; this is to ensure consistency and fairness in judgments.
There are a wide variety of fields in law, from criminal law to civil rights and family law. Each field has its own specific set of rules that governs the activities of lawyers and judges who specialize in that area. Other fields of law include labour law, which focuses on the tripartite industrial relationship between worker, employer and trade unions; environmental law, which regulates the use of natural resources; and intellectual property law, which covers copyrights and patents.
Law is also an academic discipline, and universities have departments that teach it at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Some law schools have also created journals and other publications that cover a range of topics related to the discipline. Some of these, such as “The Journal of Legal Education”, are peer-reviewed, and are considered to be of high quality.