Law is the body of rules that governs a society, including customs and policies recognized as binding by a community and enforced through a controlling authority. Laws can be made at the local, state, national, or international level. Laws can be written or unwritten, and they may consist of statutes (enacted legislation), ordinances (local regulations), or case law (judgments).
Legal systems around the world vary significantly in their form and content. There are civil and common law countries, religious and customary societies, and many combinations of these. In general, laws are formulated at a legislative or executive level and administered by a court system. At the federal level, US law comprises a mixture of codified and uncodified statutory law, treaties ratified by Congress, regulatory agency directives, and case law derived from judges’ decisions. At the state and local levels, law is often formulated by elected legislatures and interpreted and enforced by an independent judiciary.
The term “law” may also refer to a philosophical or ethical theory of the right and good. Utilitarians define law as “commands, backed by threat of sanctions, from a sovereign to whom people have a habit of obedience.” Natural lawyers, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, believe in a set of moral and immutable laws of nature. Other philosophers have argued that the idea of law as commands is misleading, and that it should be redefined as a set of principles that reflect the needs and interests of a community.