Portal:Law

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

Three dark-haired men wearing dark clothing. The man on the left is wearing a checkered shirt with a rain jacket. The man in the middle is wearing a printed tee with a rain jacket. The man on the right is wearing a black sweater.

Convicted computer criminals are people who are caught and convicted of computer crimes such as breaking into computers or computer networks. Computer crime can be broadly defined as criminal activity involving information technology infrastructure, including illegal access (unauthorized access), illegal interception (by technical means of non-public transmissions of computer data to, from or within a computer system), data interference (unauthorized damaging, deletion, deterioration, alteration or suppression of computer data), systems interference (interfering with the functioning of a computer system by inputting, transmitting, damaging, deleting, deteriorating, altering or suppressing computer data), misuse of devices, forgery (or identity theft) and electronic fraud.Convictions of computer crimes, or hacking, began as early as 1984 with the case of The 414s from the 414 area code in Milwaukee. In that case, six teenagers broke into a number of high-profile computer systems, including Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Security Pacific Bank. On May 1, 1984, one of the 414s, Gerald Wondra, was sentenced to two years of probation. In May 1986, the first computer trespass conviction to result in a jail sentence was handed down to Michael Princeton Wilkerson, who received two weeks in jail for his infiltration of Microsoft, Sundstrand Corp., Kenworth Truck Co. and Resources Conservation Co. (Full article...)

See all selected articles

Selected biography

Sherman "Shay" Minton (October 20, 1890 – April 9, 1965) was an American politician and jurist who served as a U.S. senator from Indiana and later became an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; he was a member of the Democratic Party.

After attending college and law school, Minton served as a captain in World War I, following which he launched a legal and political career. In 1930, after multiple failed election attempts, and serving as a regional leader in the American Legion, he became a utility commissioner under the administration of Paul V. McNutt, Governor of Indiana. Four years later, Minton was elected to the United States Senate. During the campaign, he defended New Deal legislation in a series of addresses in which he suggested it was not necessary to uphold the United States Constitution during the Great Depression. Minton's campaign was denounced by his political opponents, and he received more widespread criticism for an address that became known as the "You Cannot Eat the Constitution" speech. As part of the New Deal Coalition, Minton championed President Franklin D. Roosevelt's unsuccessful court packing plans in the Senate and became one of his top Senate allies.

After Minton failed in his 1940 Senate reelection bid, Roosevelt appointed him as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. After Roosevelt's death, President Harry S. Truman, who had developed a close friendship with Minton during their time together in the Senate, nominated him to the Supreme Court. He was confirmed by the Senate on October 4, 1949, by a vote of 48 to 16, 15 Republicans and one Democrat (Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia) voting against him. He served on the Supreme Court for seven years. An advocate of judicial restraint, Minton was a regular supporter of the majority opinions during his early years on the Court; he became a regular dissenter after President Dwight Eisenhower's appointees altered the court's composition. In 1956, poor health forced Minton to retire, after which he traveled and lectured until his death in 1965. As of 2023, he is the last member of the United States Congress to be named to the Supreme Court. (Full article...)

See all selected biographies

Selected statute

A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative body; a law enacted by a legislature. Typically, statutes declare, command or prohibit something. Statutes are distinguished from court law and unwritten law (otherwise known as common law) in that they are the expressed will of a legislative body, whether that be on the behalf of a country, state or province, county, municipality, or so on. Depending on the legal system, a statute may also be referred to as an "act." (Full article...)

The Representation of the People Act 1832 (also known as the Reform Act 1832, Great Reform Act or First Reform Act) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (indexed as 2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 45), enacted by the Whig government of Prime Minister Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, introducing major changes to the electoral system of England and Wales, expanding the electorate in the United Kingdom. The legislation granted the right to vote to a broader segment of the male population by standardizing property qualifications, extending the franchise to small landowners, tenant farmers, shopkeepers, and all householders who paid a yearly rental of £10 or more. The act also reapportioned constituencies to address the unequal distribution of seats. The act of England and Wales was accompanied by the Scottish Reform Act 1832 and Irish Reform Act 1832, respectively.

Before the reform, most members of Parliament nominally represented boroughs. However, the number of electors in a borough varied widely, from a dozen or so up to 12,000. The criteria for qualification for the franchise also varied greatly among these boroughs, from the requirement to own land, to merely living in a house with a hearth sufficient to boil a pot. (Full article...)

More selected statutes

Did you know...

... that the Franklin County Courthouse (pictured) incorporates the walls and columns left after Confederate forces burned the previous courthouse during the American Civil War?

... that a bipartisan commission was established by law in 2003 with the mandate to study prison rape in the United States?

... that T. Muthuswamy Iyer was the first Indian judge of the Madras High Court?

... that a grand jury found Arizona Territory's "Thieving Thirteenth" legislature exceeded a US$4,000 legal limitation for operating expenses by US$46,744.50?

... that English gynaecologist Margaret Puxon, who started studying law to prevent boredom while on maternity leave, eventually became a barrister?

... that the Stephen Downing case, also known as the Bakewell Tart murder, has been described as the longest miscarriage of justice in British legal history?

... that John B. Creeden was a founder of both Boston College Law School and Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service?

More did you know facts

Selected images

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

Greene v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2004] EWCA Civ 1462 is a case of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales that governs the use of injunctions against publication in alleged defamation cases. Greene, a businesswoman, sought an injunction against Associated Newspapers Ltd to prevent them publishing alleged links with Peter Foster; while they claimed to have emails showing links, she asserted that they were false. The test at the time for a preliminary injunction in defamation cases was Bonnard v Perryman, where it was established that the applicant has to show "a real prospect of success" at trial. The Human Rights Act 1998 established that judges should consider whether applicants are "more likely than not" to succeed at trial, a test applied to confidentiality cases in Cream Holdings Ltd v Banerjee and the Liverpool Post and Echo Ltd. Greene claimed that the Cream test should be applied rather than the Bonnard test.

The case first went to the High Court of Justice, where it was heard by Fulford J; he decided that he did not have the authority to overrule Bonnard, and passed the case on to the Court of Appeal after granting a temporary injunction. In the Court of Appeal, the case was heard by May, Dyson and Brooke LJJ, with Brooke delivering the judgment on 5 November 2004. In it, Brooke judged that defamation, the subject of Greene, was significantly different from breach of confidentiality, the subject in Cream. While the damage from a breach of confidentiality can never be undone, justifying a simple test for issuing injunctions, a defamation case that is won vindicates the injured party. Making it easier to grant injunctions in defamation cases would damage the delicate balance between freedom of the press and the right to privacy; as such, despite the Human Rights Act, Bonnard is still a valid test. (Full article...)

More selected cases
See also: Lists of case law

More Did you know (auto-generated)

... that in 2012, a "stylish but illegal monkey" was seen wandering a Toronto-area IKEA?
... that many African countries provide for legal abortion in their reproductive health laws, but such laws have been passed without grounds for legal abortion in Madagascar and in Senegal?
... that The Bootleggers portrays the illegal alcohol trade during the Prohibition era of the Roaring '20s?
... that the detention of Mahmoud Khalil raises constitutional questions similar to a 1945 court case?
... that O-Zone threatened legal action over Haiducii's cover of "Dragostea din tei", which became a hit on charts at the same time as the original?
... 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 1Gratian (from Judiciary)
Image 2Corpus Iuris Civilis, 1607 (from Judiciary)
Image 3Bentham's utilitarian theories remained dominant in law until the twentieth century. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 4The Supreme Court Building houses the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. (from Judiciary)
Image 5Mill believed law should create happiness. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 6Thomas Aquinas was the most influential Western medieval legal scholar. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 7Aristotle, by Francesco Hayez (from Jurisprudence)
Image 8Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens (from Jurisprudence)
Image 9Image of pages from the Decretum of Burchard of Worms, an 11th-century book of canon law (from Canon law)
Image 10Lady Justice (Latin: Justicia), symbol of the judiciary. Statue at Shelby County Courthouse, Memphis, Tennessee (from Judiciary)
Image 11King John of England signs the Magna Carta (from Legal history)
Image 12Philosophers of law ask, "What is law, and what should it be?" (from Jurisprudence)
Image 13Oliver Wendell Holmes was a self-styled legal realist. (from Jurisprudence)
Image 14"With law shall land be built", from the Code of Jutland (1241) above the Copenhagen Court House, Denmark (from Legal history)
Image 15The 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)

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.