Statute

statute, in law, a formal, written enactment by the authorized powers of a state. The term is usually not applied to a written constitution but is restricted to the enactments of a legislature. Statute law is to be distinguished chiefly from common law, which may be defined as the body of legal rules derived from judicial decisions and custom. On most of the European continent all (or nearly all) the law is statutory and each field is subsumed by a code. In England and the United States, however, common law retains great importance, but with the expansion of government regulation there has been an immense growth in the statute law of those countries. In order to guide the courts many important statutes contain (usually in a preamble) a statement of the abuses that the legislation is intended to cure or of the general legislative intent. Statutes are classified in various ways. Public statutes (e.g., those establishing crimes) are universal in application, while private statutes (e.g., one compensating a named person for injury) are limited. Public statutes may be local, i.e., affecting only part of the area over which the legislature has authority, or general. Statutes that explain or clarify previous enactments or rules of common law are sometimes called declaratory statutes.

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statute

1. 

a. an enactment of a legislative body expressed in a formal document

b. this document

2. a permanent rule made by a body or institution for the government of its internal affairs

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Statute 

(polozhenie), in Soviet law, a normative act that summarizes, codifies, and defines the structure, functions, and competence of a state agency or system of agencies, for example, the Statute on the Supreme Court of the USSR and the General Statute on Ministries of the USSR. Statutes also regulate operational procedures of state agencies and organizations in certain cases—for example, the Statute on the Conduct of Cash Transactions by State, Cooperative, and Public Enterprises, Organizations, and Institutions—as well as all organizational, property, and labor relations pertaining to a specific question, for example, the Statute on Discoveries, Inventions, and Rationalization Proposals.

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Statute 

(1) A provision or regulation that defines the procedures of an organization and the functions of individual national and international organizations, such as the statute of the International Court of Justice (1945).

(2)Regulations that set the legal provisions of such medieval institutions as craft guilds. Valuable historical sources, guild statutes (or charters) consisted of rules based on common law that regulated the activities of guilds.

(3)Any legal regulation, for example, a statute on orders, which defines the procedures for awarding a given order, as well as the order’s description.

(4)Certain legislative acts of Great Britain’s Parliament, such as the Statute of Westminster of 1931, and of the United States Congress.