Law is a system of rules a society or government develops in order to deal with things like crime, business agreements, and social relationships. Law also refers to the system of courts in which these rules are enforced. People who work in the field of law are called lawyers or judges.

There are many theories about the nature of law. One theory is that laws are a natural consequence of human nature and are designed to help us get along together. Another is that laws are a tool of the powerful and the wealthy to control the weak. Still others argue that laws are simply a means to achieve certain political or economic goals.

Many people study the discipline of Law to become lawyers or judges. Some people may also study the law as a way to understand their own society and culture. The study of law also deals with the history of different legal systems and countries.

A controversial issue in law concerns the criterion for evaluating methods of legal interpretation. The basic problem is how to get from the inputs of legal interpretation – such as legal texts and practices, actions and mental states of the legal actors, and customs – to an output that will determine what the relevant law is.

The most important criterion for determining what the law is is likely to be its impact on our obligations, rights, permissions, and powers. Theories in the family of moral impact theories tend to conceive of these as genuine normative obligations, and they support a method of interpretation that takes all relevant values into account.