Classification of Law

In order to understand the many different aspects of law it is helpful to look at the various areas of classifications of law. There are many legal principles or rules of law that are found in statutes, cases decided by courts, and other sources that are applied by the courts in order to decide lawsuits, and these rules or principles of law are classified as substantive law. On the other hand, the legal procedures that provide hoe a lawsuit is begun, how the trial is conducted, how appeals are taken, and how a judgment is enforced are called procedural law. In other words, substantive law is that part of the law that defines rights, and procedural law establishes the procedures whereby rights are enforced and protected. For example A and B have entered into an agreement, and A claims that B has breached the agreement. The rules that provide for bringing B into court and for the conduct of the trial are rather mechanical and they constitute procedural law. Whether the agreement was enforceable and whether A is entitled to damages are matters of substance and would be determined on the basis of the substantive law of contracts.

Law is also frequently classified into areas of public and private law. Public law includes those bodies of law that affect the public generally; private law includes the areas of the law that are concerned with the relationship between individuals.

Public law may be divided into three general categories: (1) constitutional law, which concerns itself with the rights, powers, and duties of federal and state governments under the U.S. Constitution and the constitutions of various states; (2) administrative law, which is concerned with the multitude of administrative agencies, such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board; and (3) criminal law, which consists of statutes and general maxims that forbid certain conduct as being detrimental to the welfare of the state or society generally and provides punishment for violations of these laws.

Private law is that body of law that pertains to the relationships between individuals in an organized society. Private law encompasses the subjects of contracts, torts, and property. Each of these subjects includes several bodies of law. For example, the law of contracts may be subdivided into the subjects of sales, commercial paper, agency, and business organizations. The major portion of this text covers these subjects, which constitute the body of law usually referred to as business law.

The law of torts is the primary source of litigation in the country and is also a part of the total body of law in such areas as agency and sales. A tort is a wrong committed by one person against another or his property. The law of torts is predicated upon the premise that in a civilized society people who injure other persons of their property should compensate them for their loss.

The law of property may be thought of as a branch of the law of contracts, but in many ways our concept of private property contains much more than the contract characteristics. Property is the basic ingredient in our economic system, and the subject matter may be subdivided into several areas such as wills, trusts, estates in land, personal property, bailments, and many more.