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LAW. 25 LAW. law. (In cases not governed In- Federal law. the Federal courts nominally apply State law; but in the absence of written law, they interpret the common law as they see ft: so that, as far as their jurisdiction extends, their decisions have developed a uniform common law for all the States.) (.3) Decisions of the State courts, con- struing the acts of the Legislature and inter- preting (i.e. developing) the common law. (4) Executive orders and regulations. (.5) Municipal ordinances. (0) By-laws of corporations and other associations. The development of a Federal custom of the Constitution (I. A 2) has been necessitated by the ditKculty of amending the written C'on.stitu- tion. The absence of any corresponding custom in the States is explained by the ease with which the State constitutions are amended. The inter- pretation and development of the common law by the Federal courts (II. B 2) may in one sense be termed Federal law. but this law is superseded by acts of the State legislatures. For bibliography consult the authorities re- ferred to under .Jurispki'DENc-e, C.xon L.w, Civil Law, Contract, Corporatiox, Equity, Evidence, Pleading, Tort. etc. LAW. A term of science and philosophy, there used in a metaphorical sense. The primary meaning of the word "law' is written enactment or rule of action laid down by authority. Such law, when enforced by authority, secures a cer- tain uniformity of action. The observed uni- formity of action of physical objects thus pre- sents a striking resemblance to the conduct of law-controlled human beings. This resemblance w^as without doubt the logical ground for the be- lief, which appeared in the earliest known times, that the course of nature is prescribed by enact- ment of a conscious being or of several such beings. Such a view comes to fullest expression in later .Semitic literature. "He gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment." "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." Against this view protests have been raised for many centuries, but it is only within quite recent times that a less anthropomorphic and more scientific view of the uniformity of natural processes has gained wide currency. Ac- cording to this view, the 'law of nature' is not an enactment expressing the will of some con- scious being and obeyed by natural objects, but only the mere fact that all events have causes (see C.usALiTy) : and causes of events are not unaccountable entities in some way producing effects by some sort of creative magic, but noth- ing more nor less than the invariably uniform antecedents of those events. Ever since Hume's trenchant criticism of such words as 'force' and 'power.' it has come more and more to be seen that nothing is explained by referring effects to the power of causes to produce effects. To at- tribute the order of nature to the power of some great being who can lay down the law to nature is to explain a fact by a mystery. Science gains nothing, therefore, by ascribing all the uniformi- ties of nature to the determining decree of a supernatural being. The power of such a decree to produce an effect is no more self-explanatory than .nny causal efficiency of any physical object. Descartes and his school, and also modern paral- lelists (see Parallelism), assert that while physical phenomena may cause other physical phenomena, and psychic phenomena may cause other psychic phenomena, there is no possible interaction between phenomena of the two dif- ferent classes. See Occa.sioxalism. Laws of nature, whether physical, psychical, or psycho-physical, are of different orders or grades. Some observed uniformities are particu- lar instances of more extensive uniformities ob- taining in many prima facie diverse phenomena. For instance, the divergence of the motions of the earth and of the moon from a straight line was successfully correlated by Sir Isaac Newton with the phenomena of falling bodies nearer the earth's surface. And inasmuch as not only the motions of the earth and of the moon accord with this law, but also the motions of all the planets and of sticli comets as have been care- fully studied, all these uniformities are correlat- ed in the so-called law of gravitation, which is by hypothesis conceived as obtaining among all physical objects within the universe. In this law of gravitation we have perhaps the best instance of what is called a scientific law — i.e. a law which can be stated with accuracy, and to the universality and unconditionality of which all available evidence points with all the assurance of valid logical induction. But not all discovered laws have this logical conclusiveness. JIany of them are merely rough generalizations. The e.xact conditions under which a phenomenon occurs nuiy not yet have been ascertained, and still we may know that under certain general circumstances, not all of which are sufficiently defined, that phenomenon does actually and frequently occur. Take for instance the facts of heredity." We know that if there have been in several successive generations many criminals in a certain line of descent, other criminals will probably appear when the present representatives of that line begin to reproduce. But we are not in a position to state the exact conditions under which this further criminality will be sure to appear. Some of the children may escape the taint altogether; some may have ten- dencies toward criminality, but not too strong to be overcome by proper social influences; while still others are practically incorrigible. Here then we have an instance of a more general law of heredity, which may be stated in the proposi- tion that psychical and physical characteristics of children are more or less conditioned by the psychical and physical characteristics of their parents and of more remote progenitors. Ob- serve the more or less in the statement. 'There is no such qualification in the law of gravitation. Hence while the latter is a law in the strictest scientific sense of the term, the law of heredity is a law only in a very loose sense. Such laws are called empirical laws. Experience suggests the existence of a causal connection, but science has not yet succeeded in isolating and defining the relation. Empirical laws are the raw ma- terial from which scientific laws are elaborated by exact observation, by experiment, and by more guarded generalizations, and especially by cor- relation with other laws with which they may be related as particular to i)articular under a common universal. J. S. :Mill's account of em- pirical laws differs somewhat from that just given, but it is really the starting-point of more recent investigations into the differences between scientific and empirical laws. On this account, it is worth while to quote it: "Scientific inquirers