DIMENSIONS: EVALUATION / Perspective
R E F E R E N C E S
Law n. 1. the principles and regulations established by a government and applicable to a people, whether in the form of legislation or of custom and policies recognized and enforced by judicial decision. 2. any written or positive rule or collection of rules prescribed under the authority of the state or nation, as by the people in its constitution. Cf. bylaw. 3. the controlling influence of such rules; the condition of society brought about by their observance: maintaining law and order. 4. a system or collection of such rules. 5. the department of knowledge concerned with these rules; jurisprudence: to study law. 6. the body of such rules concerned with a particular subject or derived from a particular source: commercial law. 7. an act of the supreme legislative body of a state or nation, as distinguished from the constitution. 8. the principles applied in the courts of common law, as distinguished from equity. 9. the profession that deals with law and legal procedure: the practice of law. 10. legal action; litigation: to go to law. 11. an agent or agency actiing to enforce the law, esp. the police: The law arrived at the scene immediately after the alarm went off. 12. any rule or injunction that must be obeyed: Having a good breakfast was an absolute law in the household. 13. a rule or principle of proper conduct sanctioned by man's conscience, concepts of natural justice, or the will of a deity: a moral law. 14. a rule or manner of behavior that is instinctive or spontaneous: the law of self-preservation. 15. a. a statement of a relation or sequence of phenomena invariable under the same conditions. b. a mathematical rule. 16. a principle based on the predictable consequences of an act, condition, etc.: the law of supply and demand. 17. a rule, principle, or convention regarded as governing the structure or the relationship of an element in the structure of something, as of a language or work of art: the laws of playwriting; the laws of grammar. 18. a commandment or a revelation from God. 19. [sometimes cap.] a divinely appointed order or system. 20. the Law. see Law of Moses. 21. the preceptive part of the Bible, esp. of the New Testament, in contradistinction to its promises: the law of Christ. 22. lay down the law, a. to state one's views authoritatively. b. to give a command in an imperious manner. 23. take the law into one's own hands, to administer justice as one sees fit without recourse to the usual legal processes. [ME law, lagh, OE tagu < Scand; cf. Icel lag layer, pl. lóg law, lit., that which is laid down; akin to Lay1, Lie2]
Also: Law of averages; Law of conservation of energy; Law of conservation of mass; Law of cosines; Law of gravitation; Law of Moses; Law of motion; Law of sines; Law of the jungle; Law of the Medes and the Persians; Law of thermodynamics; Law of universal gravitation
[Urdang, Laurence, ed. Random House Dictionary of The English Language. New York: Random House, 1968.]
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