A written statement used in both civil and criminal actions that is submitted by a plaintiff or a prosecutor at the request of a defendant, giving the defendant detailed information concerning the claims or charges made against him or her. …
A declaration of individual rights and freedoms, usually issued by a national government. A list of fundamental rights included in each state constitution. A sample motion for bill of particulars The concept of a bill of rights as a statement of basic individual freedoms derives in part from the English Bill of Rights, passed in 1689 (see appendix volume for primary document). This doc…
John Armor Bingham was born January 21, 1815, at Mercer, Pennsylvania. He attended John Armor Bingham. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Franklin College and pursued legal studies before establishing a successful legal practice in Cadiz in 1840. Bingham gained fame for his participation in three significant historical events. He presided as special judge advocate at the proceedings Bingham died Mar…
Horace Binney was born January 4, 1780. He graduated from Harvard in 1797 and was admitted to the Philadelphia bar in 1800. As a counselor, Binney displayed his legal expertise in cases concerning land titles. He won a famous victory in the Girard Trust Case of 1844, which involved the legality of a charitable legacy left to Philadelphia by philanthropist Stephen Girard. Binney defended the validi…
Following graduation, Bird served a one-year term as a law clerk for the chief justice of the Nevada Supreme Court. In 1966 she joined the Santa Clara County, California, public defenders office. Bird remained in the public defenders office until 1974, serving successively as deputy public defender, senior trial deputy, and chief Rose Bird. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS public defender of the appel…
A measure or measures undertaken to prevent conception. The birth control pill is one of the most widely used forms of birth control. In the 1950s, birth control advocate Margaret Sanger raised 150,000 dollars to pay for research into the development of the birth control pill by Dr. Gregory Pincus. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS obscene materials or articles addressing or for use in the prevention o…
A body of laws, statutes, and rules enacted by southern states immediately after the Civil War to regain control over the freed slaves, maintain white supremacy, and ensure the continued supply of cheap labor. For the next several months, southern states sought a way to restore for the white majority what the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment had tried to deny them, supremacy, control, and ec…
Hugo LaFayette Black was an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court for nearly thirty-four years, serving one of the longest and most influential terms in the history of the Court. Hugo L. Black. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Healthy and vigorous well into his later life, Black was an avid tennis player who often shared the court with his law clerks. On September 17, 1971, Black resigned fr…
Jeremiah Sullivan Black was a prominent lawyer, judge, and U.S. attorney general, and also an unsuccessful nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. Black was born January 10, 1810, in Stony Creek, Pennsylvania. He was raised in rural Pennsylvania and was largely self-educated through his own reading and study of Shakespeare, the Bible, and other works of literature. He originally planned a career in me…
On May 2, 1967, armed members of the Black Panther Party enter the California state capital to protest a bill restricting the carrying of arms in public. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS the building. TV cameras followed the group's progress to the legislative chambers, where they were stopped by police officers, Seale shouting, "Is this the way the racist government works—[you] w…
Also, because the Black Power movement was never a formally organized movement, it had no central leadership, which meant that different organizations with divergent agendas often could not agree on the best course of action. The more radical groups accused the more mainstream groups of capitulating to whites, and the more mainstream accused the more radical of becoming too ready to use violence. …
Isaac Newton Blackford achieved prominence as a jurist. He was born November 6, 1786, in Bound Brook, New Jersey. A graduate of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), Blackford served as clerk and recorder of Washington County, Indiana, in 1813. The following year he became a territorial court judge. Blackford served as a member of the Indiana state house of representatives from 1…
A list of individuals or organizations designated for special discrimination or boycott; also to put a person or organization on such a list. Many types of blacklists are legal. For example, a store may maintain a list of individuals who have not paid their bills and deny them credit privileges. Similarly, credit reports can effectively function as blacklists by identifying individuals who are poo…
An unassuming and highly intelligent man, Blackmun seemed an unlikely symbol for an explosive social and political issue. Born November 12, 1908, in Nashville, Illinois, he spent his childhood in St. Paul, Minnesota, where his father ran a hardware and grocery store. Blackmun was an outstanding student and received a scholarship to Harvard University, where he graduated summa cum laude with a math…
Although the Commentaries might seem antiquated by current standards, Blackstone's work represented a tremendous advance in the study of law and played a significant role in the development of the American legal system. …
Born July 10, 1723, Blackstone was the son of Mary Blackstone and Charles Blackstone, of London. Blackstone's father, a silk merchant, died before Blackstone was born; his mother died while he was a young boy. Raised by an older brother and tutored by an uncle, Blackstone attended Charterhouse and Pembroke College, at Oxford University, where his education included a thorough exposure to ma…
Blair was born in 1732 into a wealthy, well-established Virginia family. His parents were John Blair Sr., a public official with important political connections, and Mary Munro (or Monro) Blair, whose father was a rector in Virginia's St. John's Parish. In 1754, Blair graduated from the College of William and Mary (founded by his great-uncle), and he then studied law at Oxford'…
Blatchford was born in New York City on March 9, 1820, the son of Richard Blatchford, a lawyer, and Julia Ann Mumford. He attended Columbia College (renamed Columbia University), and graduated with honors at age seventeen in 1837. Blatchford served as a trustee of Columbia from 1867 to 1893. After graduation Blatchford became the private secretary of Governor William H. Seward of New York, a famil…
There is dispute over whether the blood feud was legal under Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon law. "Devil Anse" Hatfield, pictured with members of his family. The Hatfield-McCoy feud, which lasted almost 30 years, is perhaps the most infamous example of a blood feud. BETTMANN/CORBIS During the ninth-century reign of Alfred, a feud could lawfully commence only after an attempt was made…
A state or local law that prohibits commercial activities on Sunday. In 1781, the Reverend Samuel Peters published A General History of Connecticut, in which he used the term blue laws to refer to a set of laws that the Puritans had enacted in the 1600s to control morality. He claimed that the laws were printed on blue paper, hence the terminology. Historians, however, have concluded that this cla…
Almost all states have adopted blue sky laws, regulating the sale of securities—investments in bonds, mutual funds, limited partnerships, and so forth. These laws acquired their name as early as 1917, when the Supreme Court issued a decision on "speculative schemes which have no more basis than so many feet of 'blue sky'" (Hall v. Geiger-Jones Co., 242 U.S. 539, …
A group of people comprising the governing body of a corporation. The shareholders of a corporation hold an election to choose people who have been nominated to direct or manage the corporation as a board. In the past nearly all states required that at least three directors run a corporation. The laws have changed, however, since many corporations have only one or two shareholders and therefore re…
Part of the executive branch of state government authorized to grant pardons, and restore civil and political rights, to individuals convicted of crimes. A pardon, in the legal sense, releases an individual from punishment or penalty, but does not necessarily exonerate them of guilt. Unlike the federal government, where the president possesses the power to pardon persons convicted of felonies, man…
All 50 states have governing bodies that oversee the administration of public education. A number of states call the body that administers the state college and university system the board of regents. The word regent is an English term that originally meant ruler. In the British university system, a regent presided over academic debates; this association with higher education increased over time. …
Corinne Claiborne ("Lindy") Boggs was a Democratic representative from New Orleans, the first woman from Louisiana elected to the U.S. Congress. During her 17 years in Congress her political acumen and experience made her a popular and effective politician. Boggs was born March 13, 1916, on Brunswick Plantation, in Louisiana. Her father owned a successful sugar plantation. She receiv…
Jane Matilda Bolin was the first black woman judge in the United States. Bolin was born April 11, 1908, in Poughkeepsie, New York, to Gaius C. Bolin and Matilda Emery Bolin. Her father, who was born to a Native American mother and a black father, was the first African American graduate of Williams College. He went on to become a lawyer and practiced law in Poughkeepsie for more than 50 years. Boli…
A grandson of Jerome Bonaparte, who was Napoleon's youngest brother, Charles Joseph Bonaparte was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 9, 1851. After graduating from Harvard College in 1871, he attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1874. Bonaparte returned to Baltimore and established a private practice. At the time, public corruption of elected officials was widespread in the United S…
Born on January 14, 1940, in Nashville, Tennessee, Bond was the son of black educators. His Julian Bond. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS Bond's success led to his name being placed in nomination for vice president at the 1968 Democratic Convention, a first for a black man. The nomination was symbolic; he was too young to serve and so withdrew his name. In Georgia, he served as a state represen…
Written documents by which a government, corporation, or individual—the obligor—promises to perform a certain act, usually the payment of a definite sum of money, to another—the obligee—on a certain date. The most common type of bond is the simple bond. This bond is sold with a fixed interest rate and is then redeemed at a set time. Several varieties of simple bonds exi…
The current value of an asset. The book value of an asset at any time is its cost minus its accumulated depreciation. (Depreciation reflects the decrease in the useful life of an asset due to use of the asset.) Companies use book value to determine the point at which they have recovered the cost of an asset. The calculation of book value is important in determining the value of a company that is b…
The trial of Lizzie Borden shows the effect that public opinion can have on the life of an accused person, regardless of the outcome of a fair trial. Lizzie Borden was born July 19, 1860. She was a plain, outspoken woman who lived with her father, stepmother, and sister in a house on Second Street in Fall River, a small industrial city located in southeastern Massachusetts. According to local rumo…
Robert Heron Bork, conservative legal scholar, author, and former federal appellate judge, was one of President Ronald Reagan's most controversial nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court. Robert Bork. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS In the summer of 1987 the United States witnessed the most contentious Supreme Court confirmation battle in the 200-year history of the Constitution. The battle over B…
Reva Beck Bosone was Utah's first woman judge and the first woman elected to the House of Representatives from that state. Bosone was born April 2, 1895, in American Fork, Utah, the only daughter among the four children of Christian M. Beck and Zilpha Chipman Beck. Her father was of Danish extraction, and her mother was a descendant of the 1847 Mormon pioneers and of the Mayflower pilgrims.…
The Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770, was an event that exemplified the growing tension between the American colonies and England which would subsequently result in the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. In 1767 the English Parliament had levied an import tax on tea, glass, paper, and lead. The duties were labeled the Townshend Acts—part of a series of unpopular taxes directed at the colonist…
Boudinot was a representative to the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1784. He was president of the Congress from 1782 to 1784 and was named secretary of foreign affairs. He became commissary general of prisoners in 1777 and donated a large sum of his own money to help improve prison conditions. In 1787 Boudinot played a key role in obtaining New Jersey's ratification of the new U.S. …
Natural or artificial separations or divisions between adjoining properties that show their limits. Boundaries are used to establish private and public ownership by determining the exact location of the points at which one piece of land is distinguishable from another. They are also used to mark the functional and jurisdictional limits of political subdivisions. For example, in the United States, …
Name for a category of persons who are offered a promised gratuity in return for "hunting" down and capturing or killing a designated target, usually a person or animal. Bounty hunters can be defined broadly as a category of persons who track down someone or something for money. A bounty is a subsidy that is paid to a category of persons who have performed a public service. Bounty is…
James Dale joined the Cub Scouts in 1978 at the age of eight. Three years later he became a Boy Scout and remained one until he turned 18. By all accounts, Dale was an exemplary scout, eventually achieving the status of Eagle Scout, the highest rank to which a scout can aspire. In 1989 Dale applied for adult membership and was approved. He then served as an assistant troop scoutmaster in Matawan, …
Henry Marie Brackenridge was an eminent lawyer, statesman, and author. As an author, Brackenridge wrote many publications, including Views of Louisiana (1814); History of the Late War (1816); Voyage to South America (1819); Letters to the Public, (1832); and History of the Western Insurrection in Western Pennsylvania (1859). Brackenridge died January 18, 1871, in Pittsburgh. …
Bracton's exact date of birth early in the thirteenth century is unknown. His family, whose name sometimes appears as Bratton or Bretton, owned land near Devon, England. Richard, Earl of Cornwall, the brother of King Henry III, and William de Raleigh, a prominent common-law judge, were important benefactors who helped advance Bracton's legal career. By 1240 Bracton had the job of civ…
Bradley's appointment to the Supreme Court on February 7, 1870 came shortly after the Court ruled that the Legal Tender Act was unconstitutional. In 1862, Congress had used the act to issue treasury notes as a substitute for gold in its efforts to pay off Civil War debts. Upon reviewing the legislation, the Supreme Court invalidated the issuance of the paper money, in Hepburn v. Griswold, 7…
Bradwell was born February 12, 1831, in Manchester, Vermont. After an early childhood in Portage, New York, she moved with her family to Illinois and attended the ladies seminary in Elgin, where she subsequently became a teacher. In 1852 she married James B. Bradwell, an Englishman who had immigrated to the United States and studied law in Memphis, Tennessee. The Bradwells established a private sc…
The legal arm of the Brady Center is the Legal Action Project (LAP). Its goal is to "represent gun violence victims and the public interest in the courts." For example, LAP provides free legal assistance to victims in lawsuits against gun manufacturers, dealers, and owners. And it pushes for legislation that will force the gun industry to improve the safety in gun design and to chang…
On April 19, 1995, following a 51-day standoff, federal agents raided the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. A fire, later determined to have been set by the Davidians, destroyed the compound and killed 57 of its residents. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS search and arrest warrants on members of the Branch Davidian religious cult at the apocalyptic sect's compound near Waco, Texas. Fou…
Louis Dembitz Brandeis's lifelong commitment to public service and social reform earned him the epithet the People's Lawyer. His twenty-three years on the Supreme Court were characterized by a deep respect for civil liberties and by an abiding distrust of centralized power in the hands of business and government. Brandeis was famous for his prodigious intellect and his well-crafted, …
A comprehensive term encompassing acts or conduct that seriously endanger or disturb public peace and order. Statutes commonly require that conduct constituting a breach of the peace must be clearly a type of misbehavior resulting in public unrest or disturbance. As an example, a prostitute who solicited men walking by on a public street from her window was found guilty of breaching the peace, but…
At age 19, the ambitious Breckenridge was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1780 but was not permitted to take the position because of his youth. Breckenridge served in the Virginia militia during the Revolutionary War. Afterwards he studied law under the tutelage of a Virginia lawyer, and he was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1785. Breckenridge established a law practice in Charlotte…
Sidney Breese was born July 15, 1800, in Whitesboro, New York. He graduated from Union College in Schenectady, New York, in 1818. Breese was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1820 and concentrated his career efforts in that state. In 1821, Breese was appointed postmaster of Kaskasia, Illinois. From 1822 to 1826, he served as prosecuting attorney for the Illinois Circuit Court, and from 1827 to 1829,…
William Joseph Brennan Jr. was the first Roman Catholic appointed to the Supreme Court; he served as associate justice of the Court from 1956 to 1990. His unshakable belief in the Constitution as the guardian of individual rights and liberties garnered both respect and criticism. Brennan was born April 25, 1906, in Newark, New Jersey. He was the second of eight children of William Joseph Brennan a…
David J. Brewer. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Brewer was an unusually outgoing justice who lectured frequently and wrote several books, including The Pew to the Pulpit, The Twentieth Century from Another Viewpoint, American Citizenship, and The United States: A Christian Nation. He felt strongly that judges have a moral obligation to use their lofty position to lead rather than simply observe. �…
Brewster was born in Salem County, New Jersey, on October 13, 1816. In 1834 he graduated from Princeton College. Like many other aspiring lawyers of the period, Brewster did not attend law school. Instead these aspirants "read law" by performing various clerical and administrative duties for a lawyer who had already been admitted to the bar. Brewster studied under a Philadelphia atto…
Stephen G. Breyer. REUTERS/ARCHIVE PHOTOS …
The offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of something of value for the purpose of influencing the action of an official in the discharge of his or her public or legal duties. No written agreement is necessary to prove the crime of bribery, but usually a prosecutor must show corrupt intent. Bribery charges may involve public officials or private individuals. In the world of professional sport…
Structures constructed over obstructions to highways or waterways, such as canals or rivers, in order to provide continuous and convenient passages for purposes of transportation. A bridge includes the necessary abutments and approaches that make it accessible. A public bridge that spans obstructions to a public highway is built on land owned by the state government for public use, while a private…
A brief may also contain a synopsis of the evidence and name the witnesses to be presented during the trial. Copies of briefs must be submitted to the court where the case will be heard and to the opposing party. An appellate brief is a writing that must be filed with an appellate court so that the court may evaluate whether the decision of the lower court should be reversed because of some error …
Born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1900, Briggs was one of a small group of American international lawyers in the twentieth century who did not hold a law degree. He received an A.B. from West Virginia University in Morgan-town, West Virginia, in 1921 and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1925. Over the next four years, he studied international law in Brussels, Belgium…
The bright line rule exists to bring clarity to a law or regulation that could be read in two (or more) ways. Often a bright line is established when the need for a simple decision outweighs the need to weigh both sides of a particular issue. The court arrived at this figure because it realized that to do otherwise could leave employers open to lawsuits if they replaced a worker with someone who w…
As a verb, to transmit programs or signals intended to be received by the public through radio, television, or similar means. As a noun, the radio, television, or other program received by the public through the transmission. …
James Overton Broadhead was born May 29, 1819, in Charlottesville, Virginia. He attended the University of Virginia from 1835 to 1836, studied law in St. Louis, Missouri, and received his license and established his law practice in Bowling Green, Missouri, in 1842. In 1845, Broadhead began his political career as a member of the Missouri Constitutional Convention. In the following year he particip…
An individual or firm employed by others to plan and organize sales or negotiate contracts for a commission. In order to determine whether or not an individual is acting as a broker in a transaction, the type of services that are performed must be examined. …
Henry Peter Brougham, also known as Baron Brougham and Vaux, achieved prominence as a lawyer and statesman. Brougham gained fame in 1820 as chief attorney for Queen Caroline, also known as Caroline of Brunswick. Caroline had married George, Prince of Wales, in 1795, and after giving Henry Peter Brougham. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS A leader in the field of educational reform, Brougham partici…
Henry Billings Brown was an associate justice of the Supreme Court from 1890 to 1906. Born to a wealthy family on March 2, 1836, at South Lee, Massachusetts, Brown attended private schools as a child. His father, a prosperous merchant and manufacturer, saw to it that Brown attended Yale University, where he graduated in 1856. After graduation, Brown traveled in Europe for a year, then returned to …
Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut, on May 9, 1800, to Owen and Ruth Brown. His father, a strict Calvinist, despised slavery. When Brown was five years old, the family moved to Hudson, Ohio, a locale that was steeped in anti-slavery sentiment. Brown's fervor for the anti-slavery movement never waned and grew more vehement as he got older. In 1820, Brown married Dianthe Lusk and six y…
Joseph Emerson Brown was born April 15, 1821, in Pickens District, South Carolina. He was a graduate of the Yale Law School class of 1846, and was admitted to the Georgia bar. In 1849 Brown entered politics and served in the Georgia Senate. In 1852 he was a presidential elector and in 1855 he served as a circuit judge. From 1868 to 1870 Brown again served in the judiciary, presiding as chief justi…
Ron Brown. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS The give-and-take of politics suited Brown. "What I love most," he said, "is changing minds." In 1979 Brown's association with the Democratic party got a boost when Senator Kennedy named Brown his deputy campaign manager in an unsuccessful run at the presidency. The job marked the beginning of a stellar ascent through party …
By 1939, Marshall had become head of the NAACP legal branch, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and by the early 1950s, he and his organization had argued and secured significant legal victories before the Supreme Court that helped set the stage for Brown. In Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629, 70 S. Ct. 848, 94 L. Ed. 1114 (1950), the Court sided with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund when it ruled that a sep…
Brownell was born in Peru, Nebraska, on February 20, 1904. In 1924, he graduated from the University of Nebraska and then attended Yale Law School. After receiving his law degree in 1927, Brownell was admitted to the New York State bar and worked for the noted law firm of Root, Clark, Buckner, Howland & Ballentine for two years. In 1929, he joined the law firm of Lord, Day & Lord. …
In the mid-1970s, there was no guarantee of speedy disposition of litigation in the federal courts. The courts of appeals, in particular, faced widespread crises because the volume of appeals far exceeded the capacity of the courts to decide them. The Ninth Circuit court was no exception, and, because of its enormous backlog of cases, was the subject of much discussion among scholars, Congress, an…
Orville Hickman Browning was born February 10, 1806, in Harrison County, Kentucky. He was educated at Augusta College and admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1831. In that same year, he relocated to Illinois and established his legal practice. Orville Hickman Browning. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS From 1866 to 1869 Browning served as U.S. secretary of the interior and also acted as attorney genera…
Bryan was born March 19, 1860, in Salem, Illinois. His was a devoutly religious family that prayed together three times a day and stressed strict adherence to a literal interpretation of the Bible. His parents, Silas Lilliard Bryan and Mariah Elizabeth Jennings Bryan, were firm believers in education. His mother schooled Bryan and his siblings in their home until they were old enough to be sent aw…
William Benson Bryant is a federal judge whose decisions influenced the outcomes of several famous legal battles of the 1970s. Bryant was born September 18, 1911, in Wetumpka, Alabama. He moved to Washington, D.C., with his family when he was a child and attended District of Columbia public schools. He graduated from Howard University with a bachelor of arts degree in 1932, and went on to earn his…