Tradition
Law
Overview
Law is a set of rules that are created and enforced by governmental or societal 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 legislature, resulting in statutes; by the executive through decrees and regulations; or by judges' decisions, which form precedent in common law jurisdictions. An autocrat may exercise those functions within their realm. 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. Religious law is in use in some religious communities and states, and has historically influenced secular law.
The scope of law can be divided into two domains: public law concerns government and society, including constitutional law, administrative law, and criminal law; 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.
Law provides a source of scholarly inquiry into legal history, philosophy, economic analysis and sociology. Law also raises important and complex issues concerning equality, fairness, and justice.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Law is discussed.
For whatsoever Law is not written, or some way published by him that makes it Law, can be known no way, but by the reason of him that is to obey it; and is therefore also a Law not only Civill, but Naturall. For example, if the Soveraign employ a Publique Minister, without written Instructions what to doe; he is obliged to take for Instructions the Dictates of Reason; As if he make a Judge, The Judge is to take…
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
(14) Now the word law seems to be only applied to natural phenomena by analogy, and is commonly taken to signify a command which men can either obey or neglect, inasmuch as it restrains human nature within certain originally exceeded limits, and therefore lays down no rule beyond human strength. (15) Thus it is expedient to define law more particularly as a plan of life laid down by man for himself or others with a…
Benedictus de Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise — Part 1
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
The word law, taken in the abstract means that by which an individual, or all things, or as many things as belong to a particular species, act in one and the same fixed and definite manner, which manner depends either on natural necessity or on human decree. A law which depends on natural necessity is one which necessarily follows from the nature, or from the definition of the thing in question; a law which depends…
Benedictus de Spinoza, The Philosophy of Spinoza
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
We may consider also a third kind of relation between the individual and the law, a relation of disobedience to its penalty. This gives rise to the setting up of criminal laws, which, at bottom, are less a particular class of law than the sanction behind all the rest. Along with these three kinds of law goes a fourth, most important of all, which is not graven on tablets of marble or brass, but on the hearts of the…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The social contract & discourses
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; author linked in the graph; opens on it
There are some who look upon laws as an evil and a profanity, and who regard governing and being governed from natural love, hereditary, divinity or nobility, by faith and trust, as the genuine order of life, while the reign of law is held an order of corruption and injustice. These people forget that the stars—and the cattle too—are governed and well governed too by laws;—laws however which are only internally in…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Law
- Francisco Suárez
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Lev Shestov
- Jean Buridan
- Samuel von Pufendorf
- Claude Lévi-Strauss
- Cesare Beccaria
- Sergei Bulgakov
- Friedrich Schiller
- Jan Woleński
- Joel Feinberg
- Josef Pieper
- Pierre Charron
- Joseph Margolis
- Newton da Costa
- Lon L. Fuller
- Moritz Lazarus
- Philippe Van Parijs
- Alf Ross
- Giulio Pace
- Stéphane Lupasco
- Robert Alexy
- Constantin François Chassebœuf, comte de Volney
- Marian Massonius
Related ideas
- Eastern Orthodox Church
- Analogy
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- History
- Free market
- Germany
- Government
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Manusmriti
- Hans Kelsen
- Hinduism
- Philosophy
- Halakha
- Deregulation
- Immanuel Kant
- Ancient Greek
- Classical republicanism
- Judaism
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Justinian I
- Jurisprudence
- Justice
- Alexis de Tocqueville
- Karl Marx
Place in the tradition
Part of Academic publishing.