Law is the set of rules that a community or society recognizes as regulating its members. It is generally viewed as serving four principal purposes: setting standards, maintaining order, resolving disputes and protecting liberties and rights. The study of law encompasses not only the formalities of how laws are made, but also their deeper dimensions – the values and aspirations behind them, and the way in which they interact with other social forces.
There are many different kinds of law. For example, contract law deals with the agreements people make to exchange goods and services – from buying a bus ticket to trading options on a derivatives market. Property law defines people’s rights and duties toward tangible property (real estate, such as land or buildings) and intangible property (such as money or shares of stock). Tort law protects citizens from being harmed by the actions of others, whether through an automobile accident or defamation. Criminal law punishes those who commit crimes such as murder or theft, and administrative law concerns the legality of public policies and regulations.
A broad and complex subject, law touches on all aspects of a country’s life. Its most basic form is a written command, backed by the threat of punishment, from a sovereign ruler. But law can also include rules of custom and tradition that are not explicitly enforceable by a state. Roscoe Pound, for example, argued that law is “the principle of coercive power operating through a system of rules and institutions”.
It is important to note that not all laws are the same. The varying nature of law from nation to nation can be explained by the political and cultural forces at play. For example, in some places religious beliefs influence the development of law, as is seen in the Jewish Halakha and Islamic Sharia. In other cases, the law is based on further human elaboration of divine commandments, such as Islamic fiqh or Jewish canon law.
The laws of a given place must be interpreted by humans, usually lawyers or judges. These people, being humans, are not perfect and will often disagree with each other. The interpretation of law is therefore not a simple process. For example, judges and attorneys might disagree about the meaning of a particular law or about the extent to which it should be enforced.
As a result of all of these considerations, the study of law is a hugely complex subject. Despite its complexity, law influences the lives of everyone on earth in some way. In a world where armed conflict is frequent, it is even more important to ensure that the law serves its principal functions of establishing and maintaining standards, keeping order, resolving disputes and protecting liberty and rights. This is why it is so important for law students to understand the broader context in which they are studying the law.