Jurisdiction is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, the concept of jurisdiction applies at multiple levels.
Freedom of information laws allow access by the general public to data held by national governments and, where applicable, by state and local governments. The emergence of freedom of information legislation was a response to increasing dissatisfaction with the secrecy surrounding government policy development and decision making. In recent years Access to Information Act has also been used. They establish a "right-to-know" legal process by which requests may be made for government-held information, to be received freely or at minimal cost, barring standard exceptions. Also variously referred to as open records, or sunshine laws, governments are typically bound by a duty to publish and promote openness. In many countries there are constitutional guarantees for the right of access to information, but these are usually unused if specific support legislation does not exist. Additionally, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 has a target to ensure public access to information and the protection of fundamental freedoms as a means to ensure accountable, inclusive and just institutions.
The Commerce Clause describes an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution. The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes". Courts and commentators have tended to discuss each of these three areas of commerce as a separate power granted to Congress. It is common to see the individual components of the Commerce Clause referred to under specific terms: the Foreign Commerce Clause, the Interstate Commerce Clause, and the Indian Commerce Clause.
A decree is a legal proclamation, usually issued by a head of state such as the president of a republic, or a monarch, according to certain procedures. It has the force of law. The particular term used for this concept may vary from country to country. The executive orders made by the President of the United States, for example, are decrees.
City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning the scope of Congress's power of enforcement under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case also had a significant impact on historic preservation.
Delegated legislation or secondary legislation in the United Kingdom is law that is not enacted by a legislative assembly such as the UK Parliament, but made by a government minister, a delegated person or an authorised body under powers given to them by an Act of Parliament.
A parking enforcement officer (PEO), traffic warden, parking inspector/parking officer, or civil enforcement officer is a member of a traffic control agency, local government, or police force who issues tickets for parking violations. The term parking attendant is sometimes considered a synonym but sometimes used to refer to the different profession of parking lot attendant.
Most U.S. states and territories have at least two tiers of local government: counties and municipalities. Louisiana uses the term parish and Alaska uses the term borough for what the U.S. Census Bureau terms county equivalents in those states. Civil townships or towns are used as subdivisions of a county in 20 states, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest.
In United States constitutional law, the police power is the capacity of the states to regulate behavior and enforce order within their territory for the betterment of the health, safety, morals, and general welfare of their inhabitants. Police power is defined in each jurisdiction by the legislative body, which determines the public purposes that need to be served by legislation. Under the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the powers not delegated to the Federal Government are reserved to the states or to the people. This implies that the Federal Government does not possess all possible powers, because most of these are reserved to the State governments, and others are reserved to the people.
Massachusetts shares with the five other New England states a governmental structure known as the New England town. Only the southeastern third of the state has functioning county governments; in western, central, and northeastern Massachusetts, traditional county-level government was eliminated in the late 1990s. Generally speaking, there are four kinds of public school districts in Massachusetts: local schools, regional schools, vocational/technical schools, and charter schools.
The enumerated powers of the United States Congress are the powers granted to the federal government of the United States by the United States Constitution. Most of these powers are listed in Article I, Section 8.
A local ordinance is a law issued by a local government such as a municipality, county, parish, prefecture, or the like.
Code enforcement, sometimes encompassing law enforcement, is the act of enforcing a set of rules, principles, or laws and ensuring observance of a system of norms or customs. An authority usually enforces a civil code, a set of rules, or a body of laws and compel those subject to their authority to behave in a certain way.
Law enforcement in Canada is the responsibility of police services, special constabularies, and civil law enforcement agencies, which are operated by every level of government, some private and Crown corporations, and First Nations. In contrast to the United States or Mexico, and with the exception of the Unité permanente anticorruption in Quebec and the Organized Crime Agency of British Columbia, there are no organizations dedicated exclusively to the investigation of criminal activity in Canada. Criminal investigations are instead conducted by police services, which maintain specialized criminal investigation units in addition to their mandate for emergency response and general community safety.
A bylaw enforcement officer is an employee of a municipality, county or regional district, charged with the enforcement of local ordinance—bylaws, laws, codes, or regulations enacted by local governments. Bylaw enforcement officers often work closely with police and other law enforcement agencies, but are generally not considered emergency services.
A voluntary group or union is a group of individuals who enter into an agreement, usually as volunteers, to form a body to accomplish a purpose. Common examples include trade associations, trade unions, learned societies, professional associations, and environmental groups.
The Local Government Act of Bhutan was enacted on September 11, 2009, by parliament of Bhutan in order to further implement its program of decentralization and devolution of power and authority. It is the most recent reform of the law on Bhutan's administrative divisions: Dzongkhags, Dungkhags, Gewogs, Chiwogs, and Thromdes (municipalities). The Local Government Act of Bhutan has been slightly amended in 2014.
Legal interpretation in South Africa refers to the juridical understanding of South African legislation and case law, and the rules and principles used to construct its meaning for judicial purposes. Broadly speaking there are three means by which and through which South African scholars and jurists construe their country's statutory law: linguistics or semantics, common law and jurisprudence. Although statutory interpretation usually involves a personal predisposition to the text, the goal is generally to "concretise" it: to harmonise text and purpose. This is the final step in the interpretative process. Statutory interpretation is broadly teleological, comprising as it does first the evaluation and then the application of enacted law.
South African administrative law is the branch of public law which regulates the legal relations of public authorities, whether with private individuals and organisations or with other public authorities, or better say, in present-day South Africa, which regulates "the activities of bodies that exercise public powers or perform public functions, irrespective of whether those bodies are public authorities in a strict sense." According to the Constitutional Court, administrative law is "an incident of the separation of powers under which the courts regulate and control the exercise of public power by the other branches of government."
Primary legislation and secondary legislation are two forms of law, created respectively by the legislative and executive branches of governments in representative democracies. Primary legislation generally consists of statutes, also known as 'acts', that set out broad principles and rules, but may delegate specific authority to an executive branch to make more specific laws under the aegis of the principal act. The executive branch can then issue secondary legislation, creating legally enforceable regulations and the procedures for implementing them.
