Law is a subject that involves a lot of different topics. Some of these topics are very specific, while others are more general. A few of the core subjects are labour law, civil procedure and criminal justice. A broader field is business law, which encompasses laws that regulate commercial activities such as selling, buying or managing property. This includes business contracts, corporate law and commercial paper. Civil law also includes private law, which deals with things like family and property rights.
The purpose of law is to ensure justice. This may be distributive, such as ensuring the fair distribution of social benefits among people in a society, or it may be corrective, such as punishing behaviours that harm people or their property. A second purpose is to maintain order. This is why some behaviours are deemed unacceptable, for example, hurting another person without justification.
In its broadest sense, law means any rule governing human action or conduct. It may refer to a general principle of human behaviour, to rules or conventions that govern some activity, such as the rules of a sport or work of art, or to a particular set of principles relating to certain events or phenomena, such as the law of gravity or the law of supply and demand in economics. The word is derived from the Latin lege, meaning ‘order’ or ‘guideline’. The word is closely associated with the concepts of natural law and enlightenment philosophy, as well as with religion, especially Christianity and Islam.