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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

Wife selling in England was a way of ending an unsatisfactory marriage that probably began in the late 17th century, when divorce was a practical impossibility for all but the very wealthiest. After parading his wife with a halter around her neck, arm, or waist, a husband would publicly auction her to the highest bidder. Wife selling provides the backdrop for Thomas Hardy's 1886 novel The Mayor of Casterbridge, in which the central character sells his wife at the beginning of the story, an act that haunts him for the rest of his life, and ultimately destroys him.

Although the custom had no basis in law and frequently resulted in prosecution, particularly from the mid-19th century onwards, the attitude of the authorities was equivocal. At least one early 19th-century magistrate is on record as stating that he did not believe he had the right to prevent wife sales, and there were cases of local Poor Law Commissioners forcing husbands to sell their wives, rather than having to maintain the family in workhouses.

Wife selling persisted in England in some form until the early 20th century; according to the jurist and historian James Bryce, writing in 1901, wife sales were still occasionally taking place during his time. In one of the last reported instances of a wife sale in England, a woman giving evidence in a Leeds police court in 1913 claimed that she had been sold to one of her husband's workmates for £1. (Full article...)

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Sir Nicholas Fuller (1543 – 23 February 1620) was an English barrister and Member of Parliament. After studying at Christ's College, Cambridge, Fuller became a barrister of Gray's Inn. His legal career there began prosperously—he was employed by the Privy Council to examine witnesses—but was hampered later by his representation of the Puritans, a religious tendency which did not conform with the established Church of England. Fuller was repeatedly in contention with the ecclesiastical courts, including the Star Chamber and Court of High Commission, and was once expelled for the zeal with which he defended his client. In 1593 he was returned as the Member of Parliament for St Mawes, where he campaigned against the extension of recusancy laws. Outside of Parliament, he successfully brought a patents case which not only undermined the right of the Crown to issue patents but accurately predicted the attitude taken by the Statute of Monopolies two decades later.

Returned to Parliament in 1604 for the City of London, Fuller became considered the "leader of the opposition" due to his conflict with the government over policy, fighting the impositions on currants, the patent on blue starch, and opposing the proposed union with Scotland on legal and economic grounds. In 1607, in what became known as Fuller's Case, he again began challenging the Court of High Commission, and eventually got the Court of Common Pleas under Sir Edward Coke to agree that the common law courts had the power to free imprisoned ecclesiastical prisoners. These encounters with the ecclesiastical courts were described as "bruising", but by 1610 he was considered an "elder statesman", introducing bills on ecclesiastical reform and the statutory management of customs duties. He continued to sit in Parliament until his death on 23 February 1620. (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 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 English professor Alice D. Snyder helped lead the campaign that earned New York women the right to vote?

... that per a 2019 Supreme Court ruling, U.S. states are immune from private suits against them in courts of other states without their consent?

... that between 1970 and 1984 the WE Seal of approval program aided in an estimated US$100,000 in restitution being made to collectors of comics and other memorabilia victimized by mail fraud?

... that at oral argument in NIFLA v. Becerra, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan questioned whether a California law was "gerrymandered" in order to discriminate against crisis pregnancy centers?

... that the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland of 1815, considered among the most liberal constitutions of its time, was increasingly disregarded by the Polish government, leading to the November Uprising of 1830?

... that the red dresses in Métis artist Jaime Black's REDress Project represent the missing and murdered Indigenous women of Canada and the USA?

... that after the death of Olaseni Lewis, who was restrained by 11 police officers, UK law was changed to require police to wear body cameras when dealing with vulnerable people?

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Selected images

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

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...)

Jones v Kaney [2011] UKSC 13 is a 2011 decision of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom on whether expert witnesses retained by a party in litigation can be sued for professional negligence in England and Wales, or whether they have the benefit of immunity from suit. The case involved a psychologist (Kaney) instructed as an expert witness in a personal injury claim, who was said to have negligently signed a statement of matters agreed with the expert instructed by the opposing side, in which she made a number of concessions that weakened the claim considerably. As a result, according to the injured claimant (Jones), he had to settle the claim for much less than he would have obtained had his expert not been careless. To succeed in the claim, he had to overturn an earlier Court of Appeal decision that had decided that preparation of a joint statement with the other side's expert was covered by immunity from suit. Kaney therefore succeeded in getting the claim struck out before trial on an application heard by Mr Justice Blake in the High Court of Justice. The judge issued a certificate allowing the claimant to "leapfrog" the Court of Appeal and go straight to the Supreme Court to appeal against his decision.

The Supreme Court, by a majority of five to two, decided that expert witnesses were not immune in the law of England and Wales from claims in tort or contract for matters connected with their participation in legal proceedings. This reversed a line of authority dating back 400 years. The case considered the narrow issue, namely whether preparation of a joint statement by experts was immune from suit, and the wider public policy issue of whether litigants should be able to sue experts that they had instructed for breach of duty. There was discussion about whether removing the immunity would have a "chilling effect" on the willingness of experts to participate in court proceedings, although judges on both sides of the decision agreed that there was no empirical evidence on the point. Lord Phillips, a member of the majority, compared the situation of expert witnesses with that of advocates, on the basis that both owed duties to clients and to the court. Advocates' immunity from claims in negligence had been removed in 2001 in Hall v Simons. The change, he said, had not led to an increase in vexatious claims or a reduction in the performance of duties owed by advocates to the court. Lord Hope, in the minority, said that experts and advocates had different functions and so disagreed with the comparison. He also pointed out that English law would now be different from Scots law on this issue. (Full article...)

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See also: Lists of case law

More Did you know (auto-generated)

... that the legal battle over awarding channel 9 in Orlando, Florida, the longest case in FCC history at the time, filled 55 volumes?
... that in 2012, a "stylish but illegal monkey" was seen wandering a Toronto-area IKEA?
... that red-boxing by American politicians is used to coordinate with Super PACs, an activity that the Campaign Legal Center called the "primary mechanism for corruption of federal campaigns in 2022"?
... that due to legal and union restrictions, the production team for the Doctor Who episode "Space Babies" occasionally had to replace real babies with props?
... that an activist protested the use of Chinese characters for Taiwanese Indigenous names by changing her legal name to "Lee I want to exclusively list my tribal name, my Bunun tribal name is Savungaz Valincinan"?
... that an animal rendering and recycling plant dumped illegal amounts of ammonia, phosphorus, and fecal bacteria into the Transquaking River?

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General images

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

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

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