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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

The Salt march, also known as the Salt Satyagraha, Dandi March, and the Dandi Satyagraha, was an act of nonviolent civil disobedience in colonial India, led by Mahatma Gandhi. The 24-day march lasted from 12 March 1930 to 6 April 1930 as a direct action campaign of tax resistance and nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly. Another reason for this march was that the Civil Disobedience Movement needed a strong inauguration that would inspire more people to follow Gandhi's example. Gandhi started this march with 78 of his trusted volunteers. The march spanned 387 kilometres (240 mi), from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, which was called Navsari at that time (now in the state of Gujarat). Growing numbers of Indians joined them along the way. When Gandhi broke the British Raj salt laws at 8:30 am on 6 April 1930, it sparked large-scale acts of civil disobedience against the salt laws by millions of Indians.

After making the salt by evaporation at Dandi, Gandhi continued southward along the coast, making salt and addressing meetings on the way. The Congress Party planned to stage a satyagraha at the Dharasana Salt Works, 40 km (25 mi) south of Dandi. However, Gandhi was arrested on the midnight of 4–5 May 1930, just days before the planned action at Dharasana. The Dandi March and the ensuing Dharasana Satyagraha drew worldwide attention to the Indian independence movement through extensive newspaper and newsreel coverage. The satyagraha against the salt tax continued for almost a year, ending with Gandhi's release from jail and negotiations with Viceroy Lord Irwin at the Second Round Table Conference. Although over 60,000 Indians were jailed as a result of the Salt Satyagraha, the British did not make immediate major concessions. (Full article...)

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Selected biography

Sir Aubrey Melford Steed Stevenson, PC (17 October 1902 – 26 December 1987), usually known as Sir Melford Stevenson, was an English barrister and, later, a High Court judge, whose judicial career was marked by his controversial conduct and outspoken views.

After establishing a legal career in the field of insolvency, Stevenson served during the Second World War as a Deputy Judge Advocate General of the Armed Forces. He was subsequently Judge Advocate at the 1945 war crimes trial of former personnel of the German submarine U-852 for their actions in what became known as the Peleus affair. In 1954 Stevenson represented the government of British Kenya during Jomo Kenyatta's unsuccessful appeal against his conviction for membership of the rebel organisation Mau Mau. Later that year he represented the litigants in the Crichel Down affair, which led to changes in the law on compulsory purchase. In 1955 he defended Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed for murder in the United Kingdom. He was deeply distressed by the execution of Ellis, for whom there had been no defence in law, but whom Home Secretary Gwilym Lloyd George was expected to reprieve. Two years later, Stevenson took part in the unsuccessful prosecution of John Bodkin Adams for the murder of Edith Alice Morrell.

Stevenson became a High Court judge in 1957, and acquired a reputation for severity in sentencing. He sentenced the Kray twins to life imprisonment in 1969, with a recommendation that they serve not less than 30 years each. In 1970 Stevenson passed long sentences on eight Cambridge University students who took part in the Garden House riot, and the following year gave Jake Prescott of the Angry Brigade 15 years for conspiracy to cause explosions.

One of his fellow judges, Sir Robin Dunn, described him as "the worst judge since the war". After Dunn's attack, several high-profile legal figures came to Stevenson's defence, among them fellow judge and biographer Lord Roskill, who pointed out that Stevenson could be merciful to those he regarded as victims. Lord Devlin described Stevenson as the "last of the grand eccentrics". Mr Justice Stevenson retired from the bench in 1979 aged 76, and died at St Leonards in East Sussex on 26 December 1987. (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 Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 (c. 31) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that significantly reformed the common law doctrine of privity and "thereby [removed] one of the most universally disliked and criticised blots on the legal landscape". The second rule of the doctrine of privity, that a third party could not enforce a contract for which he had not provided consideration, had been widely criticised by lawyers, academics and members of the judiciary. Proposals for reform via an act of Parliament were first made in 1937 by the Law Revision Committee in their Sixth Interim Report. No further action was taken by the government until the 1990s, when the Law Commission proposed a new draft bill in 1991, and presented their final report in 1996. The bill was introduced to the House of Lords in December 1998, and moved to the House of Commons on 14 June 1999. It received royal assent on 11 November 1999, coming into force immediately as the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

... that the non-payment of debts is the archetype for the seventeen other Hindu titles of law, including that of sexual crimes against women?

... that the case Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co established the precedents for UK contract law?

... that Swarup Rani Nehru (pictured)appealed to women to make salt in defiance of the salt laws in British India?

... that although the Chancery Amendment Act 1858 was repealed in the United Kingdom, it is still valid in the Republic of Ireland and parts of Canada?

... that freedom of religion in Singapore, which is guaranteed by Article 15 of the Constitution of Singapore, may be restricted by a general law relating to public order, public health or morality?

... that Peter Rosted served as chief judge at Norway's Inderøy District Court for 46 years, from 1733 to 1776?

... that the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act extinguished all aboriginal title in Alaska?

More did you know facts

Selected images

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

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 thanks to the advocate general's opinion, one is likely to know the outcome of a court case before the European Court of Justice before it even starts drafting the ruling?
... that Guajajara environmental activist and land defender Paulo Paulino Guajajara, who worked to stop the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, was killed by a group of illegal loggers?
... that women seeking abortions in Eswatini or in Lesotho may travel to neighbouring South Africa, where it is legal?
... that American legal scholar John Hart Ely penned a law review article castigating the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, despite being pro-choice?
... that the pseudonymous manga artist Junichi Yamakawa never disclosed to his editor his legal name, address, or contact information?
... that "illegal operation" was a common euphemism for abortion in early-20th-century North American newspapers?

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

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