Abstract: A messaging system enforces compliance policies for the electronic messages. The messaging system treats a set of related messages, such as an email string between two or more people, as a message container (200) having relational references to one or more submessages (210, 212, 214). A messaging server (112) stores the messages and submessages as discrete message components within a message database (416). In addition, the messaging server (112) stores one or more compliance policies. A compliance policy describes the set of rules that apply to message components during their lifecycles and is defined in terms of a population structure, a set of rules, and a set of jobcodes. When an action occurs that involves a piece of content, the messaging system identifies the relevant compliance policy in the governance policy database (424) and applies any rules that are applicable given the population structure and jobcode.