Symposium on Legal Considerations

What Is the Law?

Henry H. Sills, LL. B.*

An excellent one-sentence definition of law is that of Justice

Holmes: "Law is a statement of the circumstances in which the public
force will be brought to bear upon men through the courts."!
In Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language,
2nd College Ed. (1980), there are some 13 definitions of "law," some
of which are inconsistent with each other. Under Synonyms appears
this: "Law, in its specific application, implies prescription and en-
forcement by a ruling authority (the law of the land) - regulation
refers to a rule of a group or organization, enforced by authority
(military regulations); a statute is a law enacted by a legislative body;
an ordinance is a-local, generally municipal, law ..." All of which says
much and explains nothing. The explanations are found in many
shelves of books and articles, written during and since the days of
ancient Greece.
This article will attempt no more than to scratch the surface in an
effort to explain a much-used and little-understood word. It will not
deal, at any length, with the synonyms. Statutes and ordinances can
easily be found and read by non-lawyers. The volume of such
legislative enactments is continually expanding and today embraces a
vast quantity oflaw. But over the centuries, the courts have developed
rules of statutory construction to be applied to statutory language of
doubtful meaning, and for that purpose the aid oflawyers may well be
required to recognize and to resolve ambiguities. Moreover, statutes
sometimes fail to meet constitutional standards; in this case, they must
either be construed at least to be consistent with those standards or
else ruled invalid.
So it is with regulations issued by a governmental agency or
commission. Under modem practice, when properly adopted and
published, they may have the force of statutes. In such situations, both
legislative and executive authority is said to be delegated to the
agency or commission, which, of course, is required to act within the
limits of the authority delegated. As the agencies and commissions
proliferate at federal and state levels, more and more law is found in
their rules and regulations.
*Private Practitioner, Detroit Michigan

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