Statutory law or statute law is written law (as opposed to oral or customary law) set down by a legislature (as opposed to regulatory law promulgated by the executive branch or common law of the judiciary in a typical democracy/republic) or by a legislator (in the case of an absolute monarchy).

Statutes may originate with national, state legislatures or local municipalities. Statutes of lower jurisdictions are subordinate to the law of higher.

The term codified law refers to statutes that have been organized ("codified") by subject matter; in this narrower sense, some but not all statutes are considered "codified." The entire body of codified statute is referred to as a "code," such as the United States Code, the Ohio Revised Code or the Code of Canon Law. The substantive provisions of the Act could be codified (arranged by subject matter) in one or more titles of the United States Code while the "effective date" provisions—remaining uncodified—would be available by reference to the United States Statutes at Large. Another meaning of "codified law" is a statute that takes the common law in a certain area of the law and puts it in statute or code form.

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.