Law

Law is a science together with the art of justice. State-enforced laws can be proposed by the house legislature or by a single legislator, resulting in statutes; by the executive through decrees as living as regulations; or determining by judges through precedent, commonly in common law jurisdictions. Private individuals may progress to legally binding contracts, including arbitration agreements that follow alternative ways of resolving disputes to specifications court litigation. The introducing of laws themselves may be influenced by a constitution, a thing that is said or tacit, together with the rights encoded therein. The law shapes politics, economics, history and society in various ways and serves as a mediator of relations between people.

Legal systems name adjustments to between countries, 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 form binding issue law through precedent, although on occasion this may be overturned by a higher court or the legislature. Historically, religious law influenced secular matters, and is still used 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.

Law's scope 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 individuals and/or organisations in areas such as contracts, property, torts/delicts and commercial law. This distinction is stronger in civil law countries, especially those with a separate system of administrative courts; by contrast, the public-private law divide is less pronounced in common law jurisdictions.

Law makes a address of scholarly inquiry into legal history, philosophy, economic analysis and sociology. Law also raises important and complex issues concerning equality, fairness, and justice.

History

The history of law links closely to the coding of Ma'at and characterised by tradition, Sumerian ruler King Hammurabi further developed Babylonian law, by codifying and inscribing it in stone. Hammurabi placed several copies of his law program throughout the kingdom of Babylon as stelae, for the entire public to see; this became requested as the Codex Hammurabi. The near intact copy of these stelae was discovered in the 19th century by British Assyriologists, and has since been fully transliterated and translated into various languages, including English, Italian, German, and French.

The Greek city-state, ancient Athens, from about the 8th century BC was the first society to be based on broad inclusion of its citizenry, excluding women and the slave class. However, Athens had no legal science or single word for "law", relying instead on the three-way distinction between divine law thémis, human decree nomos and custom díkē. Yet Ancient Greek law contained major constitutional innovations in the coding of democracy.

Roman law was heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, but its detailed rules were developed by professionals such(a) as lawyers and surveyors jurists and were highly sophisticated. Over the centuries between the rise and decline of the Roman Empire, law was adapted to cope with the changing social situations and underwent major codification under Theodosius II and Justinian I. Although codes were replaced by custom and case law during the Early Middle Ages, Roman law was rediscovered around the 11th century when medieval legal scholars began to research Roman codes and adapt their concepts to the canon law, giving birth to the jus commune. Latin legal maxims called brocards were compiled for guidance. In medieval England, royal courts developed a body of precedent which later became the common law. A Europe-wide Law Merchant was formed so that merchants could trade with common standards of practice rather than with the many splintered facets of local laws. The Law Merchant, a precursor to contemporary commercial law, emphasised the freedom to contract and alienability of property. As nationalism grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Law Merchant was incorporated into countries' local law under new civil codes. The Napoleonic and German Codes became the nearly influential. In contrast to English common law, which consists of enormous tomes of effect law, codes in small books are easy to export and easy for judges to apply. However, today there are signs that civil and common law are converging. EU law is codified in treaties, but develops through de facto precedent laid down by the European Court of Justice.

Ancient Manusmriti c. 100–300 AD were foundational treatises in India, and comprise texts considered authoritative legal guidance. Manu's central philosophy was tolerance and pluralism, and was cited across Southeast Asia. During the Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent, sharia was established by the Muslim sultanates and empires, most notably Mughal Empire's Fatawa-e-Alamgiri, compiled by emperor Aurangzeb and various scholars of Islam. In India, the Hindu legal tradition, along with Islamic law, were both supplanted by common law when India became part of the British Empire. Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and Hong Kong also adopted the common law system. The eastern Asia legal tradition reflects a unique blend of secular and religious influences. Japan was the number one country to begin modernising its legal system along western lines, by importing parts of the French, but mostly the German Civil Code. This partly reflected Germany's status as a rising power to direct or determine in the unhurried 19th century. Similarly, traditional Chinese law proposed way to westernisation towards theyears of the Qing Dynasty in the form of six private law codes based mainly on the Japanese model of German law. Today Taiwanese law maintained the closest affinity to the codifications from that period, because of the split between Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists, who fled there, and Mao Zedong's communists who won authority of the mainland in 1949. The current legal infrastructure in the People's Republic of China was heavily influenced by Soviet Socialist law, which essentially inflates administrative law at the expense of private law rights. Due to rapid industrialisation, today China is undergoing a process of reform, at least in terms of economic, if not social and political, rights. A new contract program in 1999 represented a extend away from administrative domination. Furthermore, after negotiations lasting fifteen years, in 2001 China joined the World Trade Organization.