The truth of the matter is that advocates of limited government at best can offer a written constitution to bind the government or the people whenever it suits their purpose. Of course, that cultural trend might reverse itself the next day, but in any case what is conceded by the limited government advocates is that success requires great numbers of supporters among those in a position to affect public opinion. This article deals with civil law as opposed to criminal law. Civil law deals with the violation of a person's rights where the violation results from mistake or accident and what a person's proper relation is to those who violates his rights under such means. Criminal law is the field dealing with the deliberate intentional knowing violation of a person's rights and the proper relation of people towards criminals.
Civil law is divided into two general categories, Contract law and Tort law.
A contract is a promissory agreement between two or more persons which creates, modifies, or destroys a legal relation. Contract law deals with such matters are how a contract is created, what the contract means and what happens when the provisions are violated. A court is an institution that serves to determine whether or not it would be morally proper to exercise the use of force and whether such force ought to be accepted and respected by civilized persons. The underlying basis for courts is that man is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Since it is possible for rational men to have differences of opinion where one or more of such persons does not have knowledge of all the facts, or where it is not possible to know all the facts, and since, further, it is desirable for civilized persons to know that some individual whom they neither know nor care about is properly engaging in the use of force, rational, civilized persons have an interest in seeing that there are institutions available which are impartial, fair to all concerned, and in favor of justice.