Overview of and topical guide to law
The following outline is provided as an overview of and introduction to law:
Law is the set of rules and principles (laws) by which a society is governed, through enforcement by governmental authorities. Law is also the field that concerns the creation and administration of laws, and includes any and all legal systems.
Nature of law
Law can be described as all of the following:
- Academic discipline – the body of knowledge given to - or received by - a disciple (student); a branch or sphere of knowledge, or field of study, that an individual has chosen to specialise in.
- one of the humanities – an academic discipline that studies the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences.
- System – set of elements (often called 'components' instead) and relationships which are different from relationships of the set or its elements to other elements or sets.
- part of the legal system – legal scholarship and practice shapes how the law is interpreted and applied in societies
