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The Law Portal

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

The Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles of State Policy and Fundamental Duties are sections of the Constitution of India that prescribe the fundamental obligations of the states to its citizens and the duties and the rights of the citizens to the State. These sections are considered vital elements of the constitution, which was developed between 1949 by the Constituent Assembly of India.

The Fundamental Rights are defined in Part III of the Indian Constitution from article 12 to 35 and applied irrespective of race, place of birth, religion, caste, creed, sex, gender, and equality of opportunity in matters of employment. They are enforceable by the courts, subject to specific restrictions. The Directive Principles of State Policy are guidelines for the framing of laws by the government. These provisions, set out in Part IV of the Constitution, are not enforceable by the courts, but the principles on which they are based are fundamental guidelines for governance that the State is expected to apply in framing any policies and passing of laws. (Full article...)

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The Samlesbury witches were three women from the Lancashire village of Samlesbury – Jane Southworth, Jennet Bierley, and Ellen Bierley – accused by a 14-year-old girl, Grace Sowerbutts, of practising witchcraft. Their trial at Lancaster Assizes in England on 19 August 1612 was one in a series of witch trials held there over two days, among the most infamous in English history. The trials were unusual for England at that time in two respects: Thomas Potts, the clerk to the court, published the proceedings in his The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster; and the number of the accused found guilty and hanged was unusually high, ten at Lancaster and another at York. All three of the Samlesbury women were acquitted.

The charges against the women included child murder and cannibalism. In contrast, the others tried at the same assizes, who included the Pendle witches, were accused of maleficium – causing harm by witchcraft. The case against the three women collapsed "spectacularly" when the chief prosecution witness, Grace Sowerbutts, was exposed by the trial judge to be "the perjuring tool of a Catholic priest". (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 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961 (Single Convention, 1961 Convention, or C61) is a United Nations treaty that controls activities (cultivation, production, supply, trade, transport) of specific narcotic drugs and lays down a system of regulations (licenses, measures for treatment, research, etc.) for their medical and scientific uses; it also establishes the International Narcotics Control Board.

The Single Convention was adopted in 1961 and amended in 1972. As of 2022, the Single Convention as amended has been ratified by 186 countries. The convention has since been supplemented by the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, which controls LSD, MDMA, and other psychoactive pharmaceuticals, and the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances; the three conventions establish the legal framework for international drug control and the war on drugs. (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?

More did you know facts

Selected images

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

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...)

Seneca Nation of Indians v. Christy, 162 U.S. 283 (1896), was the first litigation of aboriginal title in the United States by a tribal plaintiff in the Supreme Court of the United States since Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831). It was the first such litigation by an indigenous plaintiff since Fellows v. Blacksmith (1857) and its companion case of New York ex rel. Cutler v. Dibble (1858). The New York courts held that the 1788 Phelps and Gorham Purchase did not violate the Nonintercourse Act, one of the provisions of which prohibits purchases of Indian lands without the approval of the federal government, and that (even if it did) the Seneca Nation of New York was barred by the state statute of limitations from challenging the transfer of title. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the merits of lower court ruling because of the adequate and independent state grounds doctrine.

According to O'Toole and Tureen, "Christy is an important case in that it revived the concept that states had special powers to deal with Indian tribes within their borders."

Although the case has not been formally overruled, two Supreme Court decisions in the 1970s and 1980s have undone its effect by ruling that there is federal subject-matter jurisdiction for a federal common law cause of action for recovering possession based on the common-law doctrine of aboriginal title. Moreover, the New York courts' interpretation of the Nonintercourse Act is no longer good law. Modern federal courts hold that only Congress can ratify a conveyance of aboriginal title, and only with a clear statement, rather than implicitly. (Full article...)

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See also: Lists of case law

More Did you know (auto-generated)

... that a U.S. Supreme Court case had "odd bedfellows"?
... that the release of Lee Hyori's album It's Hyorish had to be moved forward after several tracks were illegally leaked?
... that in the 2021 case Fedotova and Others v. Russia, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that lack of legal recognition for same-sex couples violated human rights?
... that in 2012, a "stylish but illegal monkey" was seen wandering a Toronto-area IKEA?
... that Western Australia was the second Australian state to legalise voluntary assisted dying?
... that it will soon be illegal for government employees to gamble in the country of Georgia?

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General images

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

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

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