Types of Law

[Vernon King Avaritt III]

Types of Law

These are the different categories of law in the modern United States. I included Superhuman Law and Mutant Law because I run a modern superhero campaign. Let me know if you have any ideas.

International Law
Public International Law
Private International Law or Conflict of Laws
European Union Law
Constitutional and Administrative Law
Criminal Law
Contract Law
Torts
Property Law
Equity and Trusts
Labour Law
Civil Rights
Civil Procedure
Criminal Procedure
Evidence
Immigration Law and Nationality Law
Social Security
Family Law
Transactional Law
Company Law
Commercial Law
Admirality Law
Intellectual Property Law
Restitution
Unjust Enrichment
Space Law
Tax Law
Banking Law
Water Law
Energy Law
Gas Law
Telecomm Law
Competition Law
Consumer Law
Environmental Law
Superhuman Law
Mutant Law
Canon Law
Sharia Law

[Vernon King Avaritt III]

Public International Law, Private International Law, European Union Law are all part of International Law.

[whswhs]

If you're going to include shariah, shouldn't you also have Jewish religious law?

[Vernon King Avaritt III]

It's Talmudic Law and you're right

[trooper6]

In high school I worked for a lawyer whose specialties were: Probate Law, Conservatorship Law, and Juvenile Law.

[The Colonel]

Aren't some of those subdivisions of the others?
As I understand it, if US law is anything like the English law that it was based on, you should divide primarily into Criminal and Civil law (one to do with punishing offences against the state and the other to do with mediating disputes between individuals) and between Statute law (based on legislation) and Common law (based on precedent and custom).

Religious law is a different kettle of fish altogether...

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Vernon King Avaritt III

Types of Law

...

Clearly it's a big subject.

But more seriously, your list mismatches items that are not the same category. For example, evidence is a subject in law school, but it's not an area of practice on its own but is used by lawyers in any kind of litigation practice. Your best bet would be to look at the practice categories defined by a major bar association.

[Icelander]

Note that if each of these is a separate Law speciality (as GURPS Basic seems to assume), lawyers become about as expensive in terms of point value as martial artists. Which is a bit strange, as most specialities of Law aren't all that useful in adventuring terms and physicists, biologists, computer scientists or sociologists are all much cheaper in point value.

[Ternas]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Note that if each of these is a separate Law speciality (as GURPS Basic seems to assume), lawyers become about as expensive in terms of point value as martial artists..

Yeah, but when you need to argue your way out of a horrible situation, you might want the lawyer on your side than a thick headed martial artist. You might even want both if trial by combat is allowed as a last resort. But either way, with all those specialties, you might just be better off taking some sort of Law! wildcard skill.

[malloyd]

My rule of thumb is that Law skill is actually specialized not so much by subject as by court, though in the US anyway the same court can hear cases under such different rules (e.g. Federal District courts have different procedures for civil, criminal and admiralty cases) as to be effectively different courts.

It's true that most really specialized courts are specialized by subject matter these days, but certainly in the past which lord's court was hearing the case might well matter more than what law he was technically supposed to be using to decide the issue.