Law is a system of rules that are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior. Laws can be made by a collective legislature or by a single legislator, resulting in statutes, by the executive through decrees and regulations, or by judges through binding precedent, normally in common law jurisdictions. Private individuals can create legally binding contracts, including arbitration agreements that may elect to accept alternative arbitration to the normal court process. The formation 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 serves as a mediator of relations between people.
A general distinction can be made between (a) civil law jurisdictions (including Catholic canon law and socialist law), in which the legislature or other central body codifies and consolidates their laws, and (b) common law systems, where judge-made precedent is accepted as binding law. Historically, religious laws played a significant role even in settling of secular matters, which is still the case in some religious communities, particularly Jewish, and some countries, particularly Islamic. Islamic Sharia law is the world's most widely used religious law.
Law is a set of norms, which can be seen both in a sociological and in a philosophical sense.
Law, LAW, or laws may also refer to:
Canon law is the body of laws and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority (Church leadership), for the government of a Christian organization or church and its members. It is the internal ecclesiastical law governing the Catholic Church (both Latin Church and Eastern Catholic Churches), the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, and the individual national churches within the Anglican Communion. The way that such church law is legislated, interpreted and at times adjudicated varies widely among these three bodies of churches. In all three traditions, a canon was originally a rule adopted by a church council; these canons formed the foundation of canon law.
Greek kanon / Ancient Greek: κανών,Arabic Qanun / قانون, Hebrew kaneh / קנה, "straight"; a rule, code, standard, or measure; the root meaning in all these languages is "reed" (cf. the Romance-language ancestors of the English word "cane").
The Apostolic Canons or Ecclesiastical Canons of the Same Holy Apostles is a collection of ancient ecclesiastical decrees (eighty-five in the Eastern, fifty in the Western Church) concerning the government and discipline of the Early Christian Church, incorporated with the Apostolic Constitutions which are part of the Ante-Nicene Fathers In the fourth century the First Council of Nicaea (325) calls canons the disciplinary measures of the Church: the term canon, κανὠν, means in Greek, a rule. There is a very early distinction between the rules enacted by the Church and the legislative measures taken by the State called leges, Latin for laws.
I'm counting up the tolls
That I have paid for living my life
I'm patchin up the holes
Being gouged by this mass condemnation
But I won't be responsible for the things they've said and done
And I won't be responsible for any battles lost or won
Every person in this world can drop dead except for you
Every person in this world is on their side but you
And wherever you may go
I will go
I've come in from the cold
And I'm so glad that I've found my home
I'm keepin all I hold
It's not often that you get the things you've asked for
But you can't be responsible for the things they'll take away
I won't be opposable
Don't want to fight for every day
The questions you ask me have answers
Plain and clear
I will go and leave forever on the day
They find the boy who loves you half as much as I do
And until that day I will remain and never go away
But I can't be responsible for all the things they've done to you
They won't be held accountable and there's nothing you can do
They depend on the truth
Every person in this world can drop dead except for you
Every person in this world is on their side but you
And wherever you may go