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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 group legislature or by a single legislator, resulting in statutes; by the executive through decrees and regulations; or established by judges through precedent, usually in common law jurisdictions. Private individuals may create legally binding contracts, including arbitration agreements that adopt alternative ways of resolving disputes to standard court litigation. 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. Historically, religious law has influenced secular matters and is, as of the 21st century, still in use in some religious communities. Sharia law based on Islamic principles is used as the primary legal system in several countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia.

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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Selected article

Criminal damage in English law was originally a common law offence. The offence was largely concerned with the protection of dwellings and the food supply, and few sanctions were imposed for damaging personal property. Liability was originally restricted to the payment of damages by way of compensation.

As time passed, specific laws were introduced to deal with particular situations as they were judged to require intervention, most particularly alongside the rise of mechanisation and urbanisation during the Industrial Revolution.

The modern law of criminal damage is mostly contained in the Criminal Damage Act 1971, which redefines or creates several offences protecting property rights. The Act provides a comprehensive structure covering merely preparatory acts to the most serious offences of arson and causing damage with intent to endanger life. As such, punishments vary from a fixed penalty to life imprisonment, and the court may order payment of compensation to a victim. (Full article...)

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Selected biography

William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, PC (2 March 1705 – 20 March 1793), was a British barrister, politician and judge noted for his reform of English law. Born to Scottish nobility, he was a member of the Scottish Clan Murray and was educated in Perth, Scotland before moving to London at the age of 13 to take up a place at Westminster School. He was accepted into Christ Church, Oxford, in May 1723, and graduated four years later. Returning to London from Oxford, he was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn on 23 November 1730, and quickly gained a reputation as an excellent barrister.

He became involved in politics in 1742, beginning with his election as a Member of Parliament for Boroughbridge, now in North Yorkshire, and appointment as Solicitor General. In the absence of a strong Attorney General, he became the main spokesman for the government in the House of Commons, and was noted for his "great powers of eloquence" and described as "beyond comparison the best speaker" in the House of Commons. With the promotion of Sir Dudley Ryder to Lord Chief Justice in 1754, he became Attorney General and, when Ryder unexpectedly died several months later, he took his place as Chief Justice.

As the most powerful British jurist of the century, Mansfield's decisions reflected the Age of Enlightenment and moved the country onto the path to abolishing slavery. He advanced commercial law in ways that helped establish the nation as world leader in industry, finance and trade; modernised both English law and the English courts system; rationalized the system for submitting motions, and reformed the way judgments were delivered to reduce expense for the parties. For his work in Carter v Boehm and Pillans v Van Mierop, he has been called the founder of English commercial law. He is perhaps now best known for his judgment in Somersett's Case (1772) where he held that slavery had no basis in common law and had never been established by positive law (legislation) in England, and therefore was not binding in law. This judgement did not, however, outlaw the slave trade. However, historians note that Mansfield's ruling in the Somersett case only made it illegal to transport a slave out of England against his will, and did not comment on the institution of slavery itself. (Full article...)

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Selected statute

A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative body, a stage in the process of legislation. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. Statutes are laws made by legislative bodies; they are distinguished from case law or precedent, which is decided by courts, regulations issued by government agencies, and oral or customary law.^{[better source needed]} Statutes may originate with the legislative body of a country, state or province, county, or municipality. (Full article...)

The Statute of Uses (27 Hen. 8. c. 10 — enacted in 1536) was an Act of the Parliament of England that restricted the application of uses in English property law. The Statute ended the practice of creating uses in real property by changing the purely equitable title of beneficiaries of a use into absolute ownership with the right of seisin (possession).

The Statute was conceived by Henry VIII of England as a way to rectify his financial problems by simplifying the law of uses, which moved land outside the royal tax revenue (i.e., through royal fees called feudal incidents), traditionally imposed through seisin. At the time, land could not be passed by a will, and when it devolved to the heir upon death was subject to taxes. Hence, the practice evolved of landowners creating a use of the land to enable it to pass to someone other than their legal heir upon their death, or simply to try and reduce the incidence of taxation. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

... that the Franklin County Courthouse (pictured) incorporates the walls and columns left after Confederate forces burned the previous courthouse during the American Civil War?

... that a bipartisan commission was established by law in 2003 with the mandate to study prison rape in the United States?

... that T. Muthuswamy Iyer was the first Indian judge of the Madras High Court?

... that a grand jury found Arizona Territory's "Thieving Thirteenth" legislature exceeded a US$4,000 legal limitation for operating expenses by US$46,744.50?

... that English gynaecologist Margaret Puxon, who started studying law to prevent boredom while on maternity leave, eventually became a barrister?

... that the Stephen Downing case, also known as the Bakewell Tart murder, has been described as the longest miscarriage of justice in British legal history?

... that John B. Creeden was a founder of both Boston College Law School and Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service?

More did you know facts

Selected images

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

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...)

Al-Kateb v Godwin, was a decision of the High Court of Australia, which ruled on 6 August 2004 that the indefinite detention of a stateless person was lawful. The case concerned Ahmed Al-Kateb, a Palestinian man born in Kuwait, who moved to Australia in 2000 and applied for a temporary protection visa. The Commonwealth Minister for Immigration's decision to refuse the application was upheld by the Refugee Review Tribunal and the Federal Court. In 2002, Al-Kateb declared that he wished to return to Kuwait or Gaza. However, since no country would accept Al-Kateb, he was declared stateless and detained under the policy of mandatory detention.

The two main issues considered by the High Court were whether the Migration Act 1958 (the legislation governing immigration to Australia) permitted a person in Al-Kateb's situation to be detained indefinitely, and if so, whether this was permissible under the Constitution of Australia. A majority of the court decided that the Act did allow indefinite detention, and that the Act was not unconstitutional.

The controversy surrounding the outcome of the case resulted in a review of the circumstances of twenty-four stateless people in immigration detention. Al-Kateb and 8 other stateless people were granted bridging visas in 2005 and while this meant they were released from detention, they were unable to work, study or obtain various government benefits. Al-Kateb was granted a permanent visa in October 2007. (Full article...)

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See also: Lists of case law

More Did you know (auto-generated)

... that the Colonial Office refused to appoint Cyrus Prudhomme David to the magistracy, considering it wrong "as a matter of policy" to appoint a second Black man to a legal post in Trinidad and Tobago?
... that according to one legal scholar, "no intelligent lawyer could well practice without" the books of Joseph Kinnicutt Angell?
... that William E. Woods took three same-sex couples to fill out marriage licenses in 1990, beginning a series of events that would lead to the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States?
... that an activist protested the use of Chinese characters for Taiwanese Indigenous names by changing her legal name to "Lee I want to exclusively list my tribal name, my Bunun tribal name is Savungaz Valincinan"?
... that the legal battle over awarding channel 9 in Orlando, Florida, the longest case in FCC history at the time, filled 55 volumes?
... that in the 1951 court case Kuzych v White, on appeal from the British Columbia Court of Appeal, five law lords of the British Judicial Committee ruled in favour of a Communist-led trade union?

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General images

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

Image 1The 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 2Gratian (from Judiciary)
Image 3Corpus Iuris Civilis, 1607 (from Judiciary)
Image 4King John of England signs the Magna Carta (from Legal history)
Image 5Aristotle, by Francesco Hayez (from Jurisprudence)
Image 6Image of pages from the Decretum of Burchard of Worms, an 11th-century book of canon law (from Canon law)
Image 7Lady Justice (Latin: Justicia), symbol of the judiciary. Statue at Shelby County Courthouse, Memphis, Tennessee (from Judiciary)
Image 8Oliver Wendell Holmes was a self-styled legal realist. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 9Philosophers of law ask "what is law, and what should it be?" (from Jurisprudence)
Image 10The 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 11Thomas Aquinas was the most influential Western medieval legal scholar. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 12Mill believed law should create happiness. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 13Bentham's utilitarian theories remained dominant in law until the twentieth century. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 14Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens (from Jurisprudence)

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