A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs a state, city, or county. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. The word is often used to distinguish law made by legislative bodies from case law, decided by courts, and regulations issued by government agencies. Statutes are sometimes referred to as legislation or "black letter law". As a source of law, statutes are considered primary authority (as opposed to secondary authority).

Ideally all statutes must be in harmony with the fundamental law of the land (constitutional).

This word is used in contradistinction to the common law. Statutes acquire their force from the time of their passage, however unless otherwise provided. Statutes are of several kinds; namely, Public or private. Declaratory or remedial. Temporary or perpetual. A temporary statute is one which is limited in its duration at the time of its enactment. It continues in force until the time of its limitation has expired, unless sooner repealed. A perpetual statute is one for the continuance of which there is no limited time, although it may not be expressly declared to be so. If, however, a statute which did not itself contain any limitation is to be governed by another which is temporary only, the former will also be temporary and dependent upon the existence of the latter.

Sir Stephen Charles Laws, KCB, QC, is a British lawyer and Civil Servant who has served since 2006 as the First Parliamentary Counsel.

As head of the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, Laws is responsible for the drafting of all the government legislation which is laid before Parliament. Alongside the Treasury Solicitor and the Director of Public Prosecutions, Laws is one of the three most senior lawyers in the Civil Service.

Laws undertook his LLB at Bristol University, graduating in 1972, and is thus the first non-Oxbridge graduate to hold the office. After a year lecturing at Bristol, Laws was called to the Bar at Middle Temple, and following pupillage and a brief period practising, he joined the Home Office in 1975 as a legal assistant. He transferred to the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel the next year, and excepting two secondments to the Law Commission, has stayed there since, rising first to Deputy Parliamentary Counsel in 1985, and then Parliamentary Counsel in 1991. He replaced Sir Geoffrey Bowman as First Parliamentary Counsel in 2006.