Willis: Anglo-American Law 
9 
appears to be a rule of conduct binding on the members of the common- 
wealth as such. Pollock. 
The law may be taken for every purpose, save that of strictly 
philosophical inquiry, to be the sum of rules administered by courts 
of justice. Pollock and Maitland. 
Law is a rule of conduct obtaining among a class of human beings 
and sanctioned by human displeasure. Clark. 
Law is a general rule of external human action enforced by a 
sovereign political authority. Holland. 
The law of the state or of any organized body of men is composed 
of the rules which the courts, that is, the judicial organs of that body, 
lay down for the determination of legal rights and duties. Gray. 
It will be noted at once that the above definitions do not ap- 
parently agree. Is this because they have not all been re- 
duced to the same lowest terms? Or is the apparent 
disagreement real? In order to answer this question it will 
be best to make an independent study of the subject of a cor- 
rect definition of “law”, and the best way to make such a 
study is to study the phenomena of the law. After such a 
study we may know what are the principal notions or con- 
cepts embraced in the law; and then by combining these we 
may be able to frame a general definition of law. In this way 
we shall try at least to make our definition conform to the 
facts instead of to make the facts conform to our definition. 
The phenomena of the law are a form, or device, for exter- 
nal human social control; certain growing social interests 
which mark the boundaries of this control; legal rights, 
powers, privileges, and immunities (or capacities of influ- 
ence), recognized by the law as one means of securing and 
protecting such social interests, and classified and studied as 
contracts, torts, crimes, property, equity, negotiable instru- 
ments, sales, public callings, constitutional law, damages, etc. ; 
and courts and legal procedure (including pleading, evidence, 
and practice) another means given by the law for the pro- 
tection of such social interests. 
One of the phenomena of the law is contracts. Let us ex- 
amine this for the purpose of discovering the true nature and 
scope of law. What do we have in a contract? We have a 
promise, or set of promises. But there is nothing magical in 
a promise. Most promises involve no social control. They 
have no legal consequences. But if a promise, or set of prom- 
ises, is in such form as to become a contract, they do involve 
