> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.contracts.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Governing law

> The picker: 184 places under ten regions, search that understands cities, and more than one allowed.

Governing law is the line that says which body of law the words are read under,
if anyone ever has to settle what they mean. It is usually one sentence near the
end of a contract, it names a place, and it is the clause people skip hardest.

The picker names the place. It does not tell you what the law of that place says,
and it never will — that is legal advice, and the point of these pages is that
every line on them is checkable.

## 184 places

The catalogue holds every legal unit the door will put in a contract: countries,
states and provinces that have contract law of their own, and the financial free
zones that do too.

Four entries are **routers** — a country holding more than one system, such as
the United Kingdom. A router is a heading and not a choice: a contract names one
of the systems inside it, so the router itself cannot be picked. That leaves
**184 pickable places**.

<Note>
  **England and Wales is one unit, not two countries and not "England".** It is
  the two-country legal jurisdiction, and it wears its own pair of flags in the
  picker — St George's cross and the Welsh dragon.
</Note>

## Ten regions

A strip of regions runs across the top of the picker, each counted, so pressing
one scopes the list rather than filtering it:

| Region                          | What is in it                                                          |
| ------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Everywhere                      | All 184                                                                |
| United States                   | The states, 56 units                                                   |
| United Kingdom                  | 3 units under the router                                               |
| Europe                          | National everywhere, with the islands kept separate                    |
| Canada                          | The provinces and territories                                          |
| Australia                       | The states and territories                                             |
| Asia and the Pacific            | From Pakistan east, plus New Zealand and Fiji                          |
| Middle East                     | Including the four financial free zones with contract law of their own |
| Africa                          | North Africa included; the long tail is not here yet                   |
| Latin America and the Caribbean | The offshore islands sit with the mainland                             |

A region is a place, not a filter. Pressing one clears the search and shows what
is inside it; pressing a country opens it in place, one indent in.

## Search

Type the name, the code, or a city. The picker carries the words people actually
type, so "wilmington" finds Delaware, "san francisco" finds California and "our
London office" resolves to England and Wales.

## Popular

Four places sit above the alphabet under the heading **Popular**: England and
Wales, Delaware, California and New York.

The heading is one plain word on purpose. It used to read "Most asked for", which
is a claim about traffic we do not publish.

## More than one is allowed

This is the one thing about the control nobody would guess, so it is written
under the question rather than left to be discovered. Picked places gather as
chips under "On this contract", and the trigger shows the first and a count.

## Where it stands

The picker is one body of markup mounted in whichever surface the width calls
for, so the two cannot drift apart:

* **640 and above** — an anchored card, the same width as the composer.
* **Below 640** — a bottom sheet that rises over a scrim, with a grip and
  swipe-to-close.

Nothing is preselected, and the highlight moves only on real input. An untouched
panel announces nothing as chosen.

## A page for every place

Every place in the catalogue has a page at
[contracts.io/law](https://contracts.io/law): what sort of unit it is, the words
that resolve to it, the places near it in the picker, and an **In brief** block
of facts.

Those facts come from Wikidata, which is CC0, and every block says so and links
on to Wikipedia. There is no legal-system row on any of them — not by omission
but by proof: Wikidata has no legal-system property, and no statement links the
United Kingdom, the United States or France to "common law" or "civil law". A row
we cannot source does not render.

Facts, not advice.