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EU law is codified in treaties, but develops through de facto precedent laid down by the European Court of Justice. All legal systems deal with the same basic issues, but jurisdictions categorise and identify their legal topics in different ways. In civil law systems, contract and tort fall under a general law of obligations, while trusts law is dealt with under statutory regimes or international conventions. International, constitutional and administrative law, criminal law, contract, tort, property law and trusts are regarded as the “traditional core subjects”, although there are many further disciplines. Sociology of law is a diverse field of study that examines the interaction of law with society and overlaps with jurisprudence, philosophy of law, social theory and more specialised subjects such as criminology.

John Austin’s utilitarian answer was that law is “commands, backed by threat of sanctions, from …