Law is a system of rules that are enforced by society or by a state, to regulate human behaviour. The precise nature of law is a subject of long-standing controversy. Some philosophers (including Roscoe Pound) see it as a form of social control and argue that it is coercive. Others (such as H.L.A. Hart and Joseph Raz) see it as a tool for the satisfaction of social wants, with coercion playing only a limited role.
The scope of law varies greatly across societies. Some, such as hunter-gatherer or pastoral societies, lack any law at all. Others, like modern industrial societies, have law covering a wide range of areas. Generally speaking, laws are divided into two domains: public law and private law. Public law concerns the activities of government and covers areas such as constitutional law, administrative law and criminal law. Private law involves legal disputes between individuals and covers such areas as contract, property, torts/delicts and commercial law.
A central part of law’s nature is its relationship to other normative domains, such as morality, religion and social conventions. It is important to understand how law differs from these other domains, how it interacts with them and whether its intelligibility depends on them. It is also important to examine how law is created and interpreted, including the ways in which it changes over time. This can be done through studying the history of law and through examining the different forms it has taken throughout the world, for example, Chinese law; European law; Indian law; Japanese law and Australian law.