Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the lawful imposition of death as punishment for crimes. Thirty-eight states, as well as the federal government, recognized capital punishment as of 1998; Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia, West Virginia, Alaska, and Hawaii did not. Lethal injection, elect…
For purposes of analysis, legal scholars have classified contracts in many different ways. The most common classifications of contracts include: "express" and "implied" contracts; "void" and "voidable" contracts; and "enforceable" and "unenforceable" contracts. Several requirements must be met for a contract to be valid and legally binding. The agreement must specifically define the terms under wh…
Criminal law is comprised of rules and statutes intended to dictate parameters of conduct that will prevent harm to society. Criminal law differs from criminal procedure. Criminal law is concerned with defining crimes and setting punishment, while criminal procedure refers to the process by which those laws are enforced. For example, substantive criminal law is used to determine whether someone ha…
Damages are a civil judicial remedy used to monetarily compensate a party for injuries caused by the wrongful conduct of another, resulting in loss, injury, or other detriment to one's person, property, or rights. Damages are awarded to a plaintiff for losses caused either by a defendant's conduct or to provide a remedy for the breach of a contractual relationship. Damages are sometimes also used …
An estimated 44 million individuals participate in the Internet, and the audience is doubling each year. On each day in 1997, 71,000 new users logged on. Sixty percent of Internet content originates in the United States Those interested in regulation efforts include the government, which swears to protect children from inappropriate material, parenting groups who are concerned about what their chi…
Juvenile law refers to that body of law dealing with juveniles, or persons who are not yet adults. The definition of a juvenile varies from state to state according to the age at which a person is deemed to reach adulthood. In at least one state (Wyoming), the age of adulthood is 19; for some legal purposes, other states set the age at 16, and still others set the age at 17 or 18. Juvenile law is …
In the free market, competition is often ruthless. Antitrust law regulates this competition in order to prevent unfairness in the conduct of business. The term antitrust refers to the industrial giants of the nineteenth century, corporations which organized themselves into jointly managed units known as trusts. Through size and strength, the trusts single-handedly controlled the nation's most impo…
The citizens of the United States expect to enjoy their privacy. Indeed, few rights are as commonly taken for granted as that of privacy in this highly individualistic society. Yet the recognition of a constitutional right to privacy is fairly recent. Only since the late twentieth century has it been explicitly recognized, protected, and ultimately expanded. This may seem ironic in light of the ma…
Sexual harassment is one form of sexual discrimination prohibited under federal law. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects employees from sexual harassment in the workplace and established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC's 1980 regulations defined sexual harassment and pronounced it as one aspect of sexual discrimination protected under the Civil Rights Act o…
Symbolic speech is a facet of free speech, which protects a persons conduct or expressions about a particular issue. A large and enduring example of symbolic speech has been the issue of flag burning. Flag burning outrages many Americans. As an extreme form of political dissent, this act strikes at the nation's most cherished symbol and, by extension, its sense of heritage and pride. It is no wond…