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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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Execution by elephant, or Gunga Rao, was a method of capital punishment in South and Southeast Asia, particularly in India, where Asian elephants were used to crush, dismember, or torture captives during public executions. The animals were trained to kill victims immediately or to torture them slowly over a prolonged period. Most commonly employed by royalty, the elephants were used to signify both the ruler's power of life and death over his subjects and his ability to control wild animals.

The sight of elephants executing captives was recorded in contemporary journals and accounts of life in Asia by European travellers. The practice was eventually suppressed by the European colonial powers that colonised the region in the 18th and 19th centuries. While primarily confined to Asia, the practice was occasionally used by European and African powers, such as Ancient Rome and Ancient Carthage, particularly to deal with mutinous soldiers. (Full article...)

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Sir Matthew Hale SL (1 November 1609 – 25 December 1676) was an influential English barrister, judge and jurist most noted for his treatise Historia Placitorum Coronæ, or The History of the Pleas of the Crown. (Full article...)

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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 Ordinances of 1311 (The New Ordinances, Norman: Les noveles Ordenances) were a series of regulations imposed upon King Edward II by the peerage and clergy of the Kingdom of England to restrict the power of the English monarch. The twenty-one signatories of the Ordinances are referred to as the Lords Ordainers, or simply the Ordainers. English setbacks in the Scottish war, combined with perceived extortionate royal fiscal policies, set the background for the writing of the Ordinances in which the administrative prerogatives of the king were largely appropriated by a baronial council. The Ordinances reflect the Provisions of Oxford and the Provisions of Westminster from the late 1250s, but unlike the Provisions, the Ordinances featured a new concern with fiscal reform, specifically redirecting revenues from the king's household to the exchequer.

Just as instrumental to their conception were other issues, particularly discontent with the king's favourite, Piers Gaveston, whom the barons subsequently banished from the realm. Edward II accepted the Ordinances only under coercion, and a long struggle for their repeal ensued that did not end until Earl Thomas of Lancaster, the leader of the Ordainers, was executed in 1322. (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?

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

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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...)

Motte v Faulkner (decided 28 November 1735) was a copyright lawsuit between Benjamin Motte and George Faulkner over who had the legal rights to publish the works of Jonathan Swift in London. This trial was one of the first to test the Statute of Anne copyright law in regards to Irish publishing independence. Although neither held the copyright to all of Swift's works, the suit became a legal struggle over Irish rights, which were eventually denied by the English courts. Faulkner, in 1735, published the Works of Jonathan Swift in Dublin. However, a few of the works were under Motte's copyright within the Kingdom of Great Britain, and when Faulkner sought to sell his book in London, Motte issued a formal complaint to Jonathan Swift and then proceeded to sue Faulkner. An injunction was issued in Motte's favor, and the book was prohibited from being sold on British soil. The basis of the law protected the rights of the author, and not the publisher, of the works, and Swift was unwilling to support a lawsuit against Faulkner. With Swift's reaction used as a basis, the lawsuit was later seen as a struggle between the rights of Irishmen to print material that were denied under English law. (Full article...)

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See also: Lists of case law

More Did you know (auto-generated)

... that police officers had to be flown in by helicopter to seize hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of cannabis plants found growing illegally in Jerrawangala National Park?
... that legal activist Carrie Campbell Severino, who co-authored a book about Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination, was once a law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas?
... 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 Hirsch Sommerhausen worked as a court translator in a dozen languages?
... that "illegal operation" was a common euphemism for abortion in early-20th-century North American newspapers?
... that the Israeli song "HaSela haAdom", about illegal trips to Petra, was banned in Israel?

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General images

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

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

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