Law is defined as any set of rules recognized by a community as regulating its members’ actions. Law influences politics, economics, history and society in myriad ways while serving as a mediator between individuals. There are various concepts about what laws should look like and how they should operate that exist today – making law an object of many academic inquiries as well as books, articles and debates about this topic.
Law encompasses all of the rules, regulations, rights and duties of any given community. As an umbrella subject it encompasses areas like labour law, taxation law, civil procedure law criminal procedure law as well as evidence law. Law has an enormous effect on how citizens interact with one another as well as being treated by governments; scholars of political science philosophy history social science share an immense interest in it.
Law can be hard to pin down; laws vary greatly between legal systems. But one theme has emerged from books and debates around law: that it is a set of rules that regulate human behavior regulated by state agencies; they set standards of behavior with punishments attached for violations; these laws ensure all members of a community live peacefully together.
Laws may be created by individuals, groups, or the state and designed to control certain aspects of social life – for instance the environment – or human behavior. Lawmaking can be an intricate process and it’s impossible to know whether any laws that are created will actually work; each theory offers advantages and disadvantages when creating laws.
Hans Kelsen popularized the ‘pure theory of law’. According to this view, laws aren’t forced upon people, but define rules they must abide by in a community. This differs from utilitarianism which states that laws exist simply to achieve specific social goals.
There is also the challenge of law creation and enforcement – an ongoing challenge in every nation. Max Weber revolutionized our understanding of state power; military, police, and bureaucratic authority pose new difficulties for accountability that would have been unanticipated by earlier writers such as Locke or Montesquieu.
Legal studies offer a wealth of material for academic inquiry into law and society, in the areas of legal history, philosophy, economic analysis and sociology. Furthermore, studying law raises fundamental issues about equality, fairness and justice – challenging yet rewarding endeavours! It can bring great enrichment and knowledge to our lives.
