Law is the system of rules and regulations governing the behaviour of a community and the rights and duties of its members. It may also refer to specific areas of the legal profession, such as criminal law or labour law, and it can be used in a more general sense to describe any strong rule that has to be obeyed.
The main function of law is to control human behavior and prevent tyranny and other abuses of power by keeping people in order. However, the idea of a law-based society is more than just having laws; it means having a political system that makes and enforces laws, and is accountable to its citizens. This is why many laws, such as those limiting the sale of firearms or setting limits on smoking in public, have moral implications as well as practical ones.
Generally, laws are written by the state and applied to everyone in a country. But there are different forms of law, and the definition of a law can depend on where you are. For example, civil law systems use ideas and categories based on Roman law, and cover about 60% of the world; whereas common law is more widely used in the rest of the world and is a mixture of secular and religious influences.
There are also various theories about the nature of law. For example, Hans Kelsen developed a theory called ‘pure law’ that states that a law is simply a set of rules that must be abided by. Other legal positivists, on the other hand, say that laws should reflect a moral stance and include things like fairness or due process.