Sunday is more like Monday than it used to be, Places of business that used to keep daytime “business hours” are now open late into the night. And on the Internet, the hour of the day and the day of the week have become irrelevant (不相关的).A half century ago in the United States, most people experienced strong and precise dividing lines between days of rest and days of work, school time and summer time. Today the boundaries still exist, but they seem not clear.
The law in almost all states used to require stores to close on Sunday; in most, it no longer does ,It used to keep the schools open in all seasons except summer, in most, it still does. And whether the work week should strengthen its legal limits, or whether it should become more “flexible,” is often debated. How should we, as a society, organize our time? Should we go even further in relaxing the boundaries of time until we live in a world in which every minute is much like every other?
These are not easy questions even to ask. Part of the difficulty is that we rarely recognize the “law of time” even when we meet it face to face. We know as children that we have to attend school a certain number of hours, a certain number of days, a certain number of years – but unless we meet the truant officer (学监) ,we may well think that we should go to school due to social custom and parents’ demand rather than to the law. As adults we are familiar with “extra pay for overtime working,” but less familiar with the fact that what constitutes(构成) “overtime” is a matter of legal definition. When we turn the clock forward to start daylight – saving time, have we ever thought to ourselves: “Here is the law in action”? As we shall see, there is a lot of law that has great influence on how organize and use time: compulsory education law, overtime law, and daylight – saving law- as well as law about Sunday closing, holidays, being late to work, time zones, and so on. Once we begin to look for it ,we will have no trouble finding a law of time to examine and assess.

和过去一成不变相比，现在的星期天更像是星期一，过去一直恪守的白天为营业时间的商业场所，现在则营业到深夜。而且在互联网上，一天几小时，一周几星期，早已变得不再重要。半个世纪以前，大多数美国人对休息日和工作日，学期和夏令的界限划分得泾渭分明，雷打不动。今天这些界线依然存在，但他们似乎并不那么清晰了。

过去，几乎所有各州的法律均要求商店周日不营业;现在大多数州的情况已不再如此，法律只用来规定学校除夏天外须保持开放。在大多数州，这种法律还在实行。工作周是否加强法律限制？或是否应更加“灵活”，这是经常辩论的话题。作为一个社会，我们应如何组织我们的时间？如果我们再进一步放宽时间的界限，长此以往，我们势必生活在一个每一分钟都何其相似乃尔的世界上。
这些问题，甚至要提出来也并不容易。部分困难在于：我们很少承认时间法律的存在，即使我们面对面地见过。我们从孩提时就知道，我们上学要花若干小时，若干天，若干年。但是，除非我们碰上学监，否则，我们可能认为，我们应该去上学由于社会习俗和家长的要求，而不是法律的规定。作为成年人，我们熟悉加班要付加班费。但不熟悉这个事实：构成加班的是一个法律定义的问题。当我们把时钟向前拨开始采用日光-节省时间，我们可曾扪心自问：“这里就是在执行的法律”？我们将会看到，有很多的法律对如何组织时间和利用时间影响巨大：义务教育法，加班法，日光-节能法，以及关于星期天不得营业，节假日，上班迟到，时区，等等的法律。一旦我们开始寻找法律，我们将毫无困难地找到一个法律并以它为规范来作审查和评估。