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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

A black and white photograph of King George and Queen Elizabeth seated on thrones

Royal assent is the method by which a monarch formally approves an act of the legislature, either directly or through an official acting on the monarch's behalf. In some jurisdictions, royal assent is equivalent to promulgation, while in others that is a separate step. Under a modern constitutional monarchy, royal assent is considered little more than a formality. Even in nations such as the United Kingdom, Norway, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein and Monaco which still, in theory, permit their monarch to withhold assent to laws, the monarch almost never does so, except in a dire political emergency or on advice of government. While the power to veto by withholding royal assent was once exercised often by European monarchs, such an occurrence has been very rare since the eighteenth century.

Royal assent is typically associated with elaborate ceremony. In the United Kingdom the Sovereign may appear personally in the House of Lords or may appoint Lords Commissioners, who announce that royal assent has been granted at a ceremony held at the Palace of Westminster for this purpose. However, royal assent is usually granted less ceremonially by letters patent. In other nations, such as Australia, the governor-general (as the Monarch's representative) has the right to dissolve the parliament and to sign a bill. In Canada, the governor general may give assent either in person at a ceremony in the Senate or by a written declaration notifying Parliament of their agreement to the bill. (Full article...)

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Selected biography

Assata Olugbala Shakur (born JoAnne Deborah Byron; July 16, 1947), also known as Joanne Chesimard, is an American political activist and convicted murderer who was a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). In 1977, she was convicted in the first-degree murder of State Trooper Werner Foerster during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. She escaped from prison in 1979 and is currently wanted by the FBI, with a $1 million FBI reward for information leading to her capture, and an additional $1 million reward offered by the Attorney General of New Jersey.

Born in Flushing, Queens, she grew up in New York City and Wilmington, North Carolina. After she ran away from home several times, her aunt, who would later act as one of her lawyers, took her in. She became involved in political activism at Borough of Manhattan Community College and City College of New York. After graduation, she began using the name Assata Shakur, and briefly joined the Black Panther Party. She then joined the BLA, a loosely knit offshoot of the Black Panthers, which engaged in an armed struggle against the US government through tactics including robbing banks and killing police officers and drug dealers.

Between 1971 and 1973, she was charged with several crimes and was the subject of a multi-state manhunt. In May 1973, Shakur was arrested after being wounded in a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike. Also involved in the shootout were New Jersey State Troopers Werner Foerster and James Harper and BLA members Sundiata Acoli and Zayd Malik Shakur. State Trooper Harper was wounded; Zayd Shakur was killed; State Trooper Foerster was killed. Between 1973 and 1977, Shakur was charged with murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, bank robbery, and kidnapping in relation to the shootout and six other incidents. She was acquitted on three of the charges and three were dismissed. In 1977, she was convicted of the murder of State Trooper Foerster and of seven other felonies related to the 1973 shootout. Her defense had argued medical evidence suggested her innocence since her arm was damaged in the shootout.

While serving a life sentence for murder, Shakur escaped in 1979, with assistance from the BLA and members of the May 19 Communist Organization, from the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in Union Township, NJ, now the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women. She surfaced in Cuba in 1984, where she was granted political asylum. Shakur has lived in Cuba since, despite US government efforts to have her returned. She has been on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list since 2013 as Joanne Deborah Chesimard and was the first woman to be added to this list. (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 Supply of Goods (Implied Terms) Act 1973 (c. 13) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that provided implied terms in contracts for the supply of goods and for hire-purchase agreements, and limited the use of exclusion clauses. The result of a joint report by the England and Wales Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission, First Report on Exemption Clauses, the Act was granted royal assent on 18 April 1973 and came into force a month later. It met with a mixed reaction from academics, who praised the additional protection it offered while at the same time questioning whether it was enough; several aspects of the Act's draftsmanship and implementation were also called into question. Much of the Act was repealed by the Sale of Goods Act 1979, which included many of the 1973 Act's provisions. (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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Selected images

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

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...)

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that law enforcement in the United States must warn a person of their constitutional rights before interrogating them, or else the person's statements cannot be used as evidence at their trial. Specifically, the Court held that under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the government cannot use a person's statements made in response to an interrogation while in police custody as evidence at the person's criminal trial unless they can show that the person was informed of the right to consult with a lawyer before and during questioning, and of the right against self-incrimination before police questioning, and that the defendant not only understood these rights but also voluntarily waived them before answering questions.

Miranda was viewed by many as a radical change in American criminal law, since the Fifth Amendment was traditionally understood only to protect Americans against formal types of compulsion to confess, such as threats of contempt of court. It has had a significant impact on law enforcement in the United States, by making what became known as the Miranda warning part of routine police procedure to ensure that suspects were informed of their rights, which would become known as "Miranda rights". The concept of "Miranda warnings" quickly caught on across American law enforcement agencies, who came to call the practice "Mirandizing".

Pursuant to the U.S. Supreme Court decision Berghuis v. Thompkins (2010), criminal suspects who are aware of their right to silence and to an attorney but choose not to "unambiguously" invoke them, may find any subsequent voluntary statements treated as an implied waiver of their rights, and used as or as part of evidence. At least one scholar has argued that Thompkins "fully undermined" Miranda. (Full article...)

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See also: Lists of case law

More Did you know (auto-generated)

... that British outrage at the sentencing of a white Kenyan settler to just two years' imprisonment for the 1923 killing of a black employee eventually led to the replacement of the colony's legal code?
... that The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes discusses the history of transgender man Ewan Forbes and his 1968 legal case to inherit his family's baronetcy that was silenced from public records?
... that the BK inequality was used to identify implausibly lucky Florida Lottery winners, whose involvement in illegal activities was later confirmed by investigations?
... that no one laughed at the worst joke in legal history?
... that, before same-sex unions were legally recognised in the UK, the London Partnership Register allowed nearly 1,000 couples to celebrate their relationships?
... that after Joseph S. Bartley was sentenced to twenty years in prison for embezzlement, he tried to have himself declared legally dead?

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General images

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

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

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