Portal:Law

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Law Portal

Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the art of justice. State-enforced laws can be made by a legislature, resulting in statutes; by the executive through decrees and regulations; or by judges' decisions, which form precedent in common law jurisdictions. An autocrat may exercise those functions within their realm. The creation of laws themselves may be influenced by a constitution, written or tacit, and the rights encoded therein. The law shapes politics, economics, history and society in various ways and also serves as a mediator of relations between people.

Legal systems vary between jurisdictions, with their differences analysed in comparative law. In civil law jurisdictions, a legislature or other central body codifies and consolidates the law. In common law systems, judges may make binding case law through precedent, although on occasion this may be overturned by a higher court or the legislature. Religious law is in use in some religious communities and states, and has historically influenced secular law.

The scope of law can be divided into two domains: public law concerns government and society, including constitutional law, administrative law, and criminal law; while private law deals with legal disputes between parties in areas such as contracts, property, torts, delicts and commercial law. This distinction is stronger in civil law countries, particularly those with a separate system of administrative courts; by contrast, the public-private law divide is less pronounced in common law jurisdictions. (Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected article

Execution by elephant, or Gunga Rao, was a method of capital punishment in South and Southeast Asia, particularly in India, where Asian elephants were used to crush, dismember, or torture captives during public executions. The animals were trained to kill victims immediately or to torture them slowly over a prolonged period. Most commonly employed by royalty, the elephants were used to signify both the ruler's power of life and death over his subjects and his ability to control wild animals.

The sight of elephants executing captives was recorded in contemporary journals and accounts of life in Asia by European travellers. The practice was eventually suppressed by the European colonial powers that colonised the region in the 18th and 19th centuries. While primarily confined to Asia, the practice was occasionally used by European and African powers, such as ancient Rome and ancient Carthage, particularly to deal with mutinous soldiers. (Full article...)

See all selected articles

Selected biography

Scipio Africanus Jones (August 3, 1863 – March 2, 1943) was an American educator, lawyer, judge, philanthropist, and Republican politician from the state of Arkansas. He was most known for having guided the appeals of the twelve African-American men condemned to death after the Elaine Massacre of October 1919. More than one hundred African Americans were indicted in the aftermath of the riot, although an estimated one hundred to two hundred Black Americans were killed in the county, along with five whites. No whites were prosecuted by the state. The case was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which in Moore v. Dempsey (1923) set a precedent of reviewing the conduct of state criminal trials against the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Born into slavery in Smith Township near Tulip in Dallas County in south Arkansas, Jones became a successful and powerful businessman. Jones was the first lawyer in Arkansas to raise the question that African Americans had not been permitted to serve on grand juries and petit juries. In 1915, Jones broke a color barrier when he was appointed to serve as acting judge of the Little Rock police court, presiding over a case in which all the parties were blacks, as were the witnesses and attorneys except the city attorney, who supported having a Negro judge preside at this particular trial. Jones also represented Negro Shriners as part of a successful defense against efforts to keep them from using the name and paraphernalia of the Shriners organization. (Full article...)

See all selected biographies

Selected statute

A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative body, a stage in the process of legislation. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. Statutes are laws made by legislative bodies; they are distinguished from case law or precedent, which is decided by courts, regulations issued by government agencies, and oral or customary law.^{[better source needed]} Statutes may originate with the legislative body of a country, state or province, county, or municipality. (Full article...)

The Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 are two Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which form part of the constitution of the United Kingdom. Section 2(2) of the Parliament Act 1949 provides that the two Acts are to be construed as one.

The Parliament Act 1911 (1 & 2 Geo. 5. c. 13) asserted the supremacy of the House of Commons by limiting the legislation-blocking powers of the House of Lords (the suspensory veto). Provided the provisions of the Act are met, legislation can be passed without the approval of the House of Lords. Additionally, the 1911 Act amended the Septennial Act 1716 to reduce the maximum life of a Parliament from seven years to five years. The Parliament Act 1911 was amended by the Parliament Act 1949 (12, 13 & 14 Geo. 6. c. 103), which further limited the power of the Lords by reducing the time that they could delay bills, from two years to one.

The Parliament Acts have been used to pass legislation against the wishes of the House of Lords on seven occasions since 1911, including the passing of the Parliament Act 1949. Some constitutional lawyers had questioned the validity of the 1949 Act. These doubts were rejected in 2005 when members of the Countryside Alliance unsuccessfully challenged the validity of the Hunting Act 2004, which had been passed under the auspices of the Act. In October 2005, the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords dismissed the Alliance's appeal against this decision, with an unusually large panel of nine Law Lords (out of then-existing twelve) holding that the 1949 Act was a valid Act of Parliament. (Full article...)

More selected statutes

Did you know...

... that The Urban Lawyer is the largest circulating government law journal in the world?

... that prior to the Recreational Charities Act 1958, the English courts refused to accept any charities involving recreational activities as valid?

... that, according to a US Supreme Court decision, the Fourth Amendment does not always apply to searches at the border?

... that their loss in Watson v British Boxing Board of Control forced the British Boxing Board of Control to move to Wales?

... that the professors of the law school of Beirut drafted parts of the Corpus Juris Civilis, a fundamental work in Roman jurisprudence?

... that John Verney became a Member of Parliament to gain contacts to help him in his career as a barrister?

... that the Bartley-Fox Law mandated a one-year prison sentence for anyone convicted of illegally carrying a firearm in Massachusetts?

More did you know facts

Selected images

Image 1Statue of Lady Justice holding scales
Image 2The Constitution of India
Image 3Signing of the Magna Carta
Image 4Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States as of October 2020
Image 5Jawaharlal Nehru at the Allahabad High Court
Image 6Legal systems of the world
Image 7The defendants sitting in the dock during the Nuremberg Trials
Image 8Chief Justice John Marshall (1755 – 1835), an American statesman and jurist who greatly influenced constitutional law'
Image 9King Hammurabi receiving the code of laws from the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash
Image 10The first Supreme Court of Puerto Rico
Image 11A courtroom in Tokyo, Japan
Image 12Painting of a jury deliberating
Image 13Jeremy Bentham's writings influenced law for generations.
Image 14The Langdell Library of Harvard Law School
Image 15Emperor Justinian I (527–565) of the Byzantine Empire who ordered the codification of Corpus Juris Civilis.

Selected case

Case law, also used interchangeably with common law, is a law that is based on precedents, that is the judicial decisions from previous cases, rather than law based on constitutions, statutes, or regulations. Case law uses the detailed facts of a legal case that have been resolved by courts or similar tribunals. These past decisions are called "case law", or precedent. Stare decisis—a Latin phrase meaning "let the decision stand"—is the principle by which judges are bound to such past decisions, drawing on established judicial authority to formulate their positions. (Full article...)

Government of NCT of Delhi versus Union of India & Another [C. A. No. 2357 of 2017] is a civil appeal heard before the Supreme Court of India by a five-judge constitution bench of the court. The case was filed as an appeal to an August 2016 verdict of the Delhi High Court that ruled that the lieutenant governor of Delhi exercised "complete control of all matters regarding National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi", and was heard by the Supreme Court in November and December 2017.

The supreme court pronounced its judgment on 4 July 2018; it said the lieutenant governor of Delhi had no independent decision-making powers and was bound to follow the "aid and advice" of the Delhi chief-minister-headed council of ministers of the Government of Delhi on all matters except those pertaining to police, public order and land. The verdict was positively received almost unanimously by politicians from multiple parties. (Full article...)

More selected cases
See also: Lists of case law

More Did you know (auto-generated)

... that no one laughed at the worst joke in legal history?
... that an Australian High Court case found a hotel chain to have used third-party contractors to avoid paying employees their required benefits?
... that the Israeli song "HaSela haAdom", about illegal trips to Petra, was banned in Israel?
... that an animal rendering and recycling plant dumped illegal amounts of ammonia, phosphorus, and fecal bacteria into the Transquaking River?
... that Utah state representative Charles Redd successfully proposed the legalization of horse racing and betting in 1925, only to successfully propose making it illegal again two years later?
... that the legal battle over awarding channel 9 in Orlando, Florida, the longest case in FCC history at the time, filled 55 volumes?

Legal news

Wikinews Crime and law portal

Related portals

General images

The following are images from various law-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Oliver Wendell Holmes was a self-styled legal realist. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 2Mill believed law should create happiness. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 3The Constitution of India is the longest written constitution for a country, containing 444 articles, 12 schedules, numerous amendments and 117,369 words (from Legal history)
Image 4King John of England signs the Magna Carta (from Legal history)
Image 5Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens (from Jurisprudence)
Image 6Lady Justice (Latin: Justicia), symbol of the judiciary. Statue at Shelby County Courthouse, Memphis, Tennessee (from Judiciary)
Image 7Bentham's utilitarian theories remained dominant in law until the twentieth century. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 8Thomas Aquinas was the most influential Western medieval legal scholar. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 9Corpus Iuris Civilis, 1607 (from Judiciary)
Image 10Aristotle, by Francesco Hayez (from Jurisprudence)
Image 11Image of pages from the Decretum of Burchard of Worms, an 11th-century book of canon law (from Canon law)
Image 12Philosophers of law ask "what is law, and what should it be?" (from Jurisprudence)
Image 13"With law shall land be built", from the Code of Jutland (1241) above the Copenhagen Court House, Denmark (from Legal history)
Image 14Gratian (from Judiciary)
Image 15The Supreme Court Building houses the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. (from Judiciary)

Topics

Quality content

Extended content

This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Law}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.