WHAT IS LAW?

Although “the law” may seem to be abstract and far removed from everyday life, it actually is a framework for much of what you do. Perhaps you get a traffic ticket or want a local store to replace a defective toaster you bought. Perhaps you must testify as a witness to an accident or want to stop a road-widening project near your home. Each of these scenarios involves the law. What is law? You can surely find various definitions of it, because scholars investigate the nature of law through many perspectives, including legal history and philosophy, or social sciences such as economics and sociology. The study of law raises important questions about equality, fairness and justice, which are not always simple. However in the broadest terms, law is the set of rules that guides our conduct in societyand is enforceable through public institutions. The most important institutions for law are the judiciary, the legislature, the executive, its bureaucracy, the military and police, the legal profession and civil society.

Our relations with one another are governed by many rules of conduct – from important concepts of ethics and fair play to minor etiquette matters such as which fork to use and how to introduce strangers to one another. We obey these rules because we think they are right or simply because we desire the approval of others. If we do not follow these rules, others may treat us differently – from giving us a disapproving look to completely rejecting us.

The history of law is the history of our race, and the embodiment of its experience. It is the monument of its wisdom and of its frequent want of wisdom. The best thought of a people is to be found in its legislation; its daily life is best mirrored in its customs and traditions, which constitute the law of its ordinary transactions.

There never has existed, and there never will exist, on this planet any organization of human society, any tribe or nation that has not been more or less controlled by some recognized form of law.

The recognition of the existence of law is inherent in man's nature, and is a necessity of his being. While all true philosophy recognizes that society exists for the individual, and not the individual for society, yet it is also true that the individual is intended to exist in society, and that he must in many things subordinate his own will to that of society, since society cannot exist without law. Thus the existence of law is inseparable from that of the human race.

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