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I just joined the english.stackexchange.com and I am thrilled to meet you all!

I have a question to pose concerning the use of the verb "enact". I would like to know how do we use this verb to express that something has been established by law. Do we say "enacted by law" or "enacted in law". The reason I'm asking is because I have seen the phrase "enacted in law" and I am thinking about it ever since.

Thank you in advance.

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  • In common use in the US it's the law that's "enacted".
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Mar 24, 2015 at 12:58
  • Enacted into law.
    – TimR
    Commented Mar 24, 2015 at 13:02
  • Depends on context and what precisely is intended. Grammatically both are correct.
    – Kris
    Commented Mar 24, 2015 at 13:20

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Like Tim Romano said, "enacted into law" is probably what you're looking for.

You might want to check out Google Ngrams for questions like this.

enacted into law vs enacted in law vs enacted by law

According to that, the most common usage is "enacted into law", with "enacted by law" being a distant second. "Enacted to law" doesn't even show up in the search results.

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  • Always avoid drawing conclusions from nGrams. Use them to gain an insight, support an argument, or otherwise benefit from in a study. Also, I am not sure if nGrams could be an "adequate, reliable" form of a canonical answer to a question on ELU.
    – Kris
    Commented Mar 24, 2015 at 13:17
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    @Kris I am supporting Tim Romano's argument.
    – Kevin Workman
    Commented Mar 24, 2015 at 13:25
  • I don't know if Tim is an authority, whose word can be taken for a quasi-canonical answer. :)
    – Kris
    Commented Mar 24, 2015 at 13:27
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    I don't know why this was downvoted; it's the right answer.
    – phenry
    Commented Mar 24, 2015 at 15:38

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