Law is the set of rules that govern a society. These rules are established by the government and enforced by the courts. They can also be found in contracts and agreements that people make with one another.

The main purpose of laws is to keep the peace, maintain the status quo and preserve individual rights. These goals can be achieved by a variety of legal systems, but some work better than others.

A nation that is ruled by an authoritarian government, for example, may not be able to keep the peace or maintain the status quo. However, it may still be able to protect minorities against majorities, promote social justice, and provide for orderly social change.

In most countries, citizens are governed by a system of laws that are codified in a set of national or regional codes and are accessible to the public. Civil codes are usually written in a logical and systematic way that avoids excessive detail and contains general clauses that permit adaptation to change.

Common law, which has a strong influence on European culture, was developed in the Middle Ages. In some nations, this form of law was replaced by a more modern system called constitutional law, which is based on a document known as the constitution.

There are many different kinds of law, ranging from contract and property law to criminal, family, and inheritance law. Some are derived from a specific tradition, while others are created through jurisprudence and the development of knowledge about human behavior.

Some of the most important types of law include company law, civil law, and commercial law. These areas of law deal with complex issues such as contract and property, as well as insolvency and bankruptcy law.

Laws are made through a combination of legislative action, executive authority and judicial decision. In most jurisdictions, judicial decisions are acknowledged as “law” on equal footing with statutes adopted through the legislature and regulations issued by the executive branch of government.

These decisions often bind lower courts and future decisions of the same court to assure that similar cases reach similar results. This is a practice commonly referred to as the doctrine of stare decisis.

The legal system is a complex process that involves numerous different stakeholders, such as citizens, courts, businesses and governments. This complex system can be studied using a range of quantitative and qualitative empirical methods.

Qualitative methods are particularly useful in analyzing the types of evidence lawyers use and developing the type of arguments that they make. They also allow a researcher to gain unusually detailed perspectives on law, the actions of various stakeholders, and the societal context in which these operate.

In the United States, constitutionalism was an early example of creating an institutional control over a group of basic rules that determined the nature of the American political system. By formally conferring through devices of constitutionality, a higher status on these rules than was possible under earlier law systems, the United States set up an institution that would eventually become an international model for many other countries.