Law is a set of rules that governs people in a society. These rules usually involve areas such as business, property and criminal justice. They are created by the government or a society and must be followed or broken. For example, if you break the law and are caught, you can be fined or sent to jail.

There are a number of definitions of law, including those provided by different authors. In addition, laws can be categorized by type and application.

Legal power:

In law, legal power refers to the ability to influence normative positions, relations or controversies. It can be either public or private, and may exist independently of a person’s position in a political hierarchy (e.g., Hohfeld 1919).

Rights:

Right is a type of entitlement that allows the right-holder to obtain certain benefits or to avoid certain consequences. It includes the rights of the owner to the land, buildings, and other things that are owned by them and to compensation for losses resulting from the use or ownership of those things.

Rights are defined in terms of how they affect others, and whether a person is able to protect them from harm or loss. Generally, there are four types of rights: a right in rem; a right in personam; an interest in land; and a right to compensation for a loss.

Law is immanent and probabilistic:

In the view of William Holmes, law does not exist because it is proclaimed or recognized; it exists because bad people expect it to.

A law is a collection of observations made by an individual, interpreted by other observers, and then used as a basis for making decisions about how to behave in certain situations.

Observers participate in the construction of law through assigning probabilities to their observations. As these estimates are updated, they determine the definition of law.

Custom:

In some nations, law is not a formal system of rules but a set of social conventions that have been passed down through generations. These traditions are based on a variety of beliefs, values and practices, and often have strong local characteristics.

They are often written or engraved on stone, or sometimes kept in books or a special archive. They are also recorded in the form of a constitution, which sets out the rights of citizens and the duties of those who represent them.

Law is not always codified: Several cultures in Asia and Africa retain their own systems of civil law that differ from the European tradition. In mixed jurisdictions, a civil law system is combined with traditional law and other jurisprudence traditions, such as Islamic law or the law of customary nations.

The history of law can be divided into two major periods: ancient and medieval. The ancient law is a pre-historical system based on the principles of the Hebrew religion and the ancient Greek philosophy of justice, while the medieval law is an early Christian legal tradition.