page_title: Humanities
section_title: Law and politics
hierarchical_section_title: Humanities / Fields / Law and politics
caption_attribution_description: "The Old Bailey, Known Also as the Central Criminal Court"
context_page_description: Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the time. Today, the humanities are more frequently contrasted with natural, and sometimes social sciences, as well as professional training.
  The humanities use methods that are primarily critical, or speculative, and have a significant historical element—as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences, yet, unlike the sciences, it has no central discipline.
  The humanities include the study of ancient and modern languages, literature, philosophy, history, archaeology, anthropology, human geography, law, politics, religion, and art.
  Scholars in the humanities are "humanity scholars" or humanists. The term "humanist" also describes the philosophical position of humanism, which some "antihumanist" scholars in the humanities reject. The Renaissance scholars and artists were also called humanists. Some secondary schools offer humanities classes usually consisting of literature, global studies and art.
context_section_description: In common parlance, law means a rule that (unlike a rule of ethics) is enforceable through institutions. The study of law crosses the boundaries between the social sciences and humanities, depending on one's view of research into its objectives and effects. Law is not always enforceable, especially in the international relations context. It has been defined as a "system of rules", as an "interpretive concept" to achieve justice, as an "authority" to mediate people's interests, and even as "the command of a sovereign, backed by the threat of a sanction". However one likes to think of law, it is a completely central social institution. Legal policy incorporates the practical manifestation of thinking from almost every social science and discipline of the humanities. Laws are politics, because politicians create them. Law is philosophy, because moral and ethical persuasions shape their ideas. Law tells many of history's stories, because statutes, case law and codifications build up over time. And law is economics, because any rule about contract, tort, property law, labour law, company law and many more can have long-lasting effects on how productivity is organised and the distribution of wealth. The noun law derives from the late Old English lagu, meaning something laid down or fixed, and the adjective legal comes from the Latin word LEX.
caption: A trial at a criminal court, the Old Bailey in London
exif: {"Image XResolution": "2000", "Image YResolution": "2000", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0", "Image DateTime": "2006:02:10 22:26:37", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "160", "EXIF ExifVersion": "[0, 2, 2, 0]", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "[0, 1, 0, 0]", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "828", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "626", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Custom"}