Law School

In the United States, the exclusionary rule is a legal rule, based on constitutional law, that prevents evidence collected or analyzed in violation of the defendant's constitutional rights from being used in a court of law. This may be considered an example of a prophylactic rule formulated by the judiciary in order to protect a constitutional right. The exclusionary rule may also, in some circums...

Intent to steal (animus furandi). The offender must have taken the property with the intent to steal it. Traditionally intent to steal is defined as the intent to deprive the owner of the possession of the property permanently. "Permanently" means indefinitely, that is, with no plan to return the property to the rightful owner. However, intent to steal includes other states of mind such as the int...

A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class action originated in the United States and is still predominantly a US phenomenon, but Canada, as well as several European countries with civil law, have made c...

A tort is a civil wrong that causes a claimant to suffer loss or harm, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits a tortious act. Tort law can be contrasted with criminal law, which deals with criminal wrongs that are punishable by the state. While criminal law aims to punish individuals who commit crimes, tort law aims to compensate individuals who suffer harm as a result of the acti...

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization. RICO was enacted by section 901(a) of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 (enacted October 15, 1970) and is codified at 18 U.S.C. chapter 96 as 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961–196...

United States. The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right…to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense. The assistance of counsel clause includes, as relevant here, five distinct rights: the right to counsel of choice, the right to appointed counsel, the right to conflict-free counsel, the effective assistanc...

Larceny is a crime involving the unlawful taking or theft of the personal property of another person or business. It was an offense under the common law of England and became an offense in jurisdictions which incorporated the common law of England into their own law (also statutory law), where in many cases it remains in force. The crime of larceny has been abolished in England, Wales, Ireland, an...

A cause of action or right of action, in law, is a set of facts sufficient to justify suing to obtain money or property, or to justify the enforcement of a legal right against another party. The term also refers to the legal theory upon which a plaintiff brings suit (such as breach of contract, battery, or false imprisonment). The legal document which carries a claim is often called a 'statement o...

Tortious interference, also known as intentional interference with contractual relations, in the common law of torts, occurs when one person intentionally damages someone else's contractual or business relationships with a third party, causing economic harm. As an example, someone could use blackmail to induce a contractor into breaking a contract; they could threaten a supplier to prevent them fr...

A flat tax (short for flat-rate tax) is a tax with a single rate on the taxable amount, after accounting for any deductions or exemptions from the tax base. It is not necessarily a fully proportional tax. Implementations are often progressive due to exemptions, or regressive in case of a maximum taxable amount. There are various tax systems that are labeled "flat tax" even though they are signific...

United States. The availability of a trial by jury in American jurisdictions varies. Because the United States legal system separated from that of the English one at the time of the American Revolution, the types of proceedings that use juries depends on whether such cases were tried by jury under English common law at that time rather than the methods used in English courts now. For example, at t...

Copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is reproducing, distributing, displaying or performing a work, or to make derivative works, without permission from the copyright holder, which is typically a publisher or other business representing or assigned by the work's creator. It is often called "piracy". While copyright is created the instant a work is fixed, generally the copyright holder ca...

In legal terminology, a complaint is any formal legal document that sets out the facts and legal reasons that the filing party or parties (the plaintiffs) believes are sufficient to support a claim against the party or parties against whom the claim is brought (the defendants) that entitles the plaintiffs to a remedy (either money damages or injunctive relief). For example, the Federal Rules of Ci...

In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (for example, a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compensation) or criminal law (for example, a fraud perpetrator may be prosecuted and imprisoned by governmental authorities), or it may cause no loss of money...

Land value taxation (for example, property tax applied only to the unimproved value of land) has a long history in the United States dating back from Physiocratic influence on Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. It is most famously associated with Henry George and his book Progress and Poverty (1879), which argued that because the supply of land is fixed and its location value is created by co...

A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a lawful proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions. Jury trials are used in a significant share of serious criminal cases in many but not all common law judicial systems. The majority of common law jurisdictions in Asia (such as Singapore, Pakista...

Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. The modern concept of intellectual property developed in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. The term "intellectu...

In law as practiced in countries that follow the English models, a pleading is a formal written statement of a party's claims or defenses to another party's claims in a civil action. The parties' pleadings in a case define the issues to be adjudicated in the action. The Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) govern pleading in England and Wales. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure govern pleading in United Stat...

Insurance bad faith is a tort unique to the law of the United States (but with parallels elsewhere, particularly Canada) that an insurance company commits by violating the "implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing" which automatically exists by operation of law in every insurance contract. In common law countries such as Australia and the UK, the issue is usually framed in the context of a...

The United States federal state and local tax (SALT) deduction is an itemized deduction that allows taxpayers to deduct certain taxes paid to state and local governments from their adjusted gross income. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 put a $10,000 cap on the SALT deduction for the years 2018–2025. The SALT deduction reduces the cost of state and local taxes to taxpayers. It disproportionately...

In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal, which may occur before a judge, jury, or other designated trier of fact, aims to achieve a resolution to their dispute. Types by finder of fact. Where the tr...

Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the intent of winning something else of value. Gambling thus requires three elements to be present: consideration (an amount wagered), risk (chance), and a prize. The outcome of the wager is often immediate, such as a single roll of dice, a spin of a roulette w...

Criminal venue. The perceived abuse of English criminal venue law was one of the enumerated grievances in the United States Declaration of Independence, which accused George III of the United Kingdom of "transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses." Article Three of the United States Constitution provides: "Trial of all Crimes . . . shall be held in the State where the said Crim...

Restraints of trade is a common law doctrine relating to the enforceability of contractual restrictions on freedom to conduct business. It is a precursor of modern competition law. In an old leading case of Mitchel v Reynolds (1711) Lord Smith LC said, It is the privilege of a trader in a free country, in all matters not contrary to law, to regulate his own mode of carrying it on according to his...

Internet transactions. Through the Internet's history, purchases made over the Internet within the United States have generally been exempt from sales tax, as courts have followed the Supreme Court ruling from Quill Corporation v North Dakota (1992) that a state may only collect sales tax from a business selling products over the Internet if that entity has a physical location in the state. This d...