Law is a body of rules governing a community, typically enforced by a controlling authority, such as the police or a court. It may be embodied in written laws or simply in a code of conduct, such as the Code of Hammurabi. Laws may apply to individuals, groups or entire nations. Some laws are derived from human custom and traditions, while others are legislative in origin. In the United States, a common law system of law is based on decisions made in individual cases, compiled into case law, while some countries, such as Japan, have a civil law system derived from legal codes.
There are different schools of legal philosophy, some advocating that a strict application of generally sound laws should be the rule, while others see law as a morally unchangeable and transcendent set of principles governing human behavior. The philosopher John Austin offered a utilitarian answer to this question, stating that “law is commands, backed by the threat of sanctions from a sovereign whom people have a natural habit of obeying.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other proponents of natural law theory believed that laws reflected innate moral principles.
In a democracy, the rule of law dictates that all citizens are equal before the law. However, this principle is difficult to achieve when there are many different types of laws governing different areas of life. For example, the law that governs property, such as contract and tort law, is very different from the laws that cover crimes against a state, such as murder and rape.