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The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects against imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishments. This amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the United States Bill of Rights. The amendment serves as a limitation upon the federal government to impose unduly harsh penalties on criminal defendants before and after a conviction. This limitation applies equally to the price for obtaining pretrial release and the punishment for crime after conviction. The phrases in this amendment originated in the English Bill of Rights of 1689.
The terms moot, mootness and moot point are used in both in English and American law, although with different meanings.
John Doe (masculine) and Jane Doe (feminine) are multiple-use placeholder names that are used in the United States when the true name of a person is unknown or is being intentionally concealed. In the context of law enforcement in the United States, such names are often used to refer to a corpse whose identity is unknown or unconfirmed. These names are also often used to refer to a hypothetical "everyman" in other contexts, in a manner similar to John Q. Public or "Joe Public". There are many variants to the above names, including John Roe, Richard Roe, Jane Roe, Baby Doe, and Janie Doe/Johnny Doe.
Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court case deciding on the issue of silent school prayer.
A legal fiction is a fact assumed or created by courts, which is then used in order to help reach a decision or to apply a legal rule. The concept is used almost exclusively in common law jurisdictions, particularly in England and Wales.
The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions. Legally ill-defined, the term has different meanings depending on context. It is used to designate the monarch in either a personal capacity, as Head of the Commonwealth, or as the king or queen of their realms. It can also refer to the rule of law; however, in common parlance 'The Crown' refers to the functions of government and the civil service. Thus, in the United Kingdom, the government of the United Kingdom can be distinguished from the Crown and the state, in precise usage, although the distinction is not always relevant in broad or casual usage.
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's freedom of speech protections limit the ability of American public officials to sue for defamation. The decision held that if a plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit is a public official or candidate for public office, not only must they prove the normal elements of defamation—publication of a false defamatory statement to a third party—they must also prove that the statement was made with "actual malice", meaning the defendant either knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether it might be false. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan is frequently ranked as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the modern era.
In law, ex parte is a Latin term meaning literally "from/out of the party/faction of", thus signifying "on behalf of (name)". An ex parte decision is one decided by a judge without requiring all of the parties to the dispute to be present. In English law and its derivatives, namely Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, South African, Indian, and U.S. legal doctrines, ex parte means a legal proceeding brought by one party in the absence of and without representation of or notification to the other party.
Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court ruling that a prosecutor's use of a peremptory challenge in a criminal case—the dismissal of jurors without stating a valid cause for doing so—may not be used to exclude jurors based solely on their race. The Court ruled that this practice violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case gave rise to the term Batson challenge, an objection to a peremptory challenge based on the standard established by the Supreme Court's decision in this case. Subsequent jurisprudence has resulted in the extension of Batson to civil cases and cases where jurors are excluded on the basis of sex.
In personam is a Latin phrase meaning "against a particular person". In a lawsuit in which the case is against a specific individual, that person must be served with a summons and complaint (E&W known as Particulars of Claim to give the court jurisdiction to try the case, and the judgment applies to that person and is called an "in personam judgment".
Demise is an Anglo-Norman legal term for the transfer of an estate, especially by lease. It has an operative effect in a lease, implying a covenant "for quiet enjoyment."
Ejectment is a common law term for civil action to recover the possession of or title to land. It replaced the old real actions and the various possessory assizes where boundary disputes often featured. Though still used in some places, the term is now obsolete in many common law jurisdictions, in which possession and title are sued by the actions of eviction and quiet title, respectively.
Textualism is a formalist theory in which the interpretation of the law is primarily based on the ordinary meaning of the legal text, where no consideration is given to non-textual sources, such as intention of the law when passed, the problem it was intended to remedy, or significant questions regarding the justice or rectitude of the law.
Asset freezing is a form of interim or interlocutory injunction which prevents a defendant to an action from dealing with or dissipating its assets so as to frustrate a potential judgment. It is widely recognised in other common law jurisdictions and such orders can be made to have world-wide effect. It is variously construed as part of a court's inherent jurisdiction to restrain breaches of its process.
A docket in the United States is the official summary of proceedings in a court of law. In the United Kingdom in modern times it is an official document relating to delivery of something, with similar meanings to these two elsewhere. In the late nineteenth century the term referred to a large folio book in which clerks recorded all filings and court proceedings for each case, although use has been documented since 1485.
Disgorgement is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as "the act of giving up something on demand or by legal compulsion."
In law, ignorantia juris non excusat, or ignorantia legis neminem excusat, is a legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law merely by being unaware of its content.
George Washington Stone was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama from 1856 to 1864, and then again from 1876 to 1884; and was then Chief Justice of that court from 1884 to 1894.
This page is a glossary of law.
References
- ↑ Mack, W.; Hale, W.B.; Kiser, D.J. (1921). Corpus Juris: Being a Complete and Systematic Statement of the Whole Body of the Law as Embodied in and Developed by All Reported Decisions. Vol. 23. American Law Book Company. p. 277. Retrieved 2015-03-27.
- ↑ Black, H.C. (1995). A Law Dictionary Containing Definitions of the Terms and Phrases of American and English Jurisprudence, Ancient and Modern... Lawbook Exchange. p. 351. ISBN 9781886363106 . Retrieved 2015-03-27.
- ↑ Abbott, B.V. (1879). Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American Or English Jurisprudence. Vol. 1. Little, Brown. p. 449. Retrieved 2015-03-27.
- ↑ Alabama. Supreme Court (1917). Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Alabama. Vol. 197. p. 566. Retrieved 2015-03-27.
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