New Laws

The New Laws (Spanish: Leyes Nuevas), also known as the New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians, were issued on November 20, 1542, by King Charles V of Spain and regard the Spanish colonization of the Americas. They were created to prevent the exploitation of the indigenous peoples of the Americas by the encomenderos (large enterprise landowners) by strictly limiting their power and dominion.

Blasco Núñez Vela, the first Viceroy of Peru, enforced the New Laws, resulting in a revolt of some encomenderos in which he was killed by the landowning faction led by Gonzalo Pizarro who wanted to maintain a political structure based on the pre existing Incan model. Although the New Laws were only partly successful due to the opposition of some colonists, they did result in the liberation of thousands of indigenous workers which had remained in a state of semi-slavery.

Origins

Law

Law is a system of rules that are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior. Laws can be made by a collective legislature or by a single legislator, resulting in statutes, by the executive through decrees and regulations, or by judges through binding precedent, normally in common law jurisdictions. Private individuals can create legally binding contracts, including arbitration agreements that may elect to accept alternative arbitration to the normal court process. The formation of laws themselves may be influenced by a constitution, written or tacit, and the rights encoded therein. The law shapes politics, economics, history and society in various ways and serves as a mediator of relations between people.

A general distinction can be made between (a) civil law jurisdictions (including Catholic canon law and socialist law), in which the legislature or other central body codifies and consolidates their laws, and (b) common law systems, where judge-made precedent is accepted as binding law. Historically, religious laws played a significant role even in settling of secular matters, which is still the case in some religious communities, particularly Jewish, and some countries, particularly Islamic. Islamic Sharia law is the world's most widely used religious law.

Fourth Way

The Fourth Way is an approach to self-development described by George Gurdjieff which he developed over years of travel in the East (ca. 1912). It combines what he saw as three established traditional "ways" or "schools", those of the mind, emotions and body, or of yogis, monks and fakirs respectively, and is sometimes referred to as "The Work", "Work on oneself" or "The System". The exact origins of Gurdjieff's teachings are unknown, but people have offered various sources.

The term was further used by his disciple P. D. Ouspensky in his lectures and writings. After Ouspensky's death his students published a book entitled The Fourth Way based on his lectures.

According to this system, the three traditional schools, or ways, "are permanent forms which have survived throughout history mostly unchanged, and are based on religion. Where schools of yogis, monks or fakirs exist, they are barely distinguishable from religious schools. The fourth way differs in that it is not a permanent way. It has no specific forms or institutions and comes and goes controlled by some particular laws of its own."

Law (disambiguation)

Law is a set of norms, which can be seen both in a sociological and in a philosophical sense.

Law, LAW, or laws may also refer to:

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