Law

A law is a sentence written down by a government, that says what people are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do. If you do a thing that a law says you cannot do, the police can take you and hold you inside a building for days, or months, or years.

Who makes the laws

In some countries, the people choose the group of people who write the laws, and can change this group after some years. In other countries, one person or one small group writes the laws, and the people cannot change them. People in the first kind of country live better, most of the time.

Laws change

A thing that is allowed in one country can be not allowed in the country near it. And laws change with time: some laws from long before now look very bad to us. At one time, in many countries, the law said that a person could own another person. The law was changed — but it needed very many years, and many people died before it changed.

The small soldier who took many countries made a big group of laws, and many countries use parts of them to this day.