James Bryce, also known as the Viscount Bryce of Dechmont, was born May 10, 1838, in Belfast, Ireland. He attended Glasgow and Heidelberg Universities and received a bachelor of arts degree from Oxford University in 1862. Bryce entered Parliament in 1880 and remained a member until 1907. During this time, he also performed diplomatic duties—serving as undersecretary of foreign affairs in 18…
James Buchanan achieved prominence as a statesman and as the fifteenth president of the United States. Buchanan became unpopular in 1854 with his involvement in the creation of the Ostend Manifesto, which provided for the purchase by the United States of Cuba from Spain; if Spain refused to sell, the manifesto gave the United States the right to seize the country forcibly. Cuba would then become a…
Born November 2, 1938, in the nation's capital, Buchanan was the third of nine children of William Baldwin Buchanan and Catherine E. Crum Buchanan. He grew up under the resolute influences of Catholicism and conservatism, both the hallmarks of his father, a certified public accountant. Buchanan's brilliance at the Jesuit Gonzaga College High School earned him the honor of class valed…
In 1924 the state of Virginia passed a law that provided for the sterilization of "mental defectives" and "feeble-minded" persons who were confined to certain state institutions, when, in the judgment of the superintendents of those institutions, "the best interests of the patients and of society" would be served by their being made incapable of producing …
A series of ordinances enacted by a state or local governmental entity, establishing minimum requirements that must be met in the construction and maintenance of buildings. Building codes have been used by governmental units for centuries to ensure that buildings remain safe and sanitary. Early settlements in the United States drafted codes for such purposes as restrictions on the use of wooden ch…
The organization was established in 1915 by building officials from nine states and Canada. Their purpose was to provide a forum for the exchange of knowledge and ideas about building safety and construction regulation. In 1950, BOCA published the BOCA Basic Building Code. This was the organization's first model code. Within one year, the BOCA code had been adopted by fifty cities. BOCA cur…
A sale of all or most of the materials, supplies, merchandise, or other inventory of a business at one time that is not normally done in the ordinary course of the seller's business. A bulk transfer is not the same as a secured transaction. …
The onus on a party to refute or to explain evidence presented in a case. The burden of going forward, also called the burden of producing evidence, burden of production, or the burden of proceeding, requires a party in a lawsuit to refute or explain each item of evidence introduced that damages or discredits his or her position in the action, as a trial progresses. Suppose a person is charged wit…
The duty of a party to plead a matter to be heard in a lawsuit. The onus on the defendant to introduce or raise the defense for consideration in the lawsuit. This concept is also referred to as burden of allegation. …
A duty placed upon a civil or criminal defendant to prove or disprove a disputed fact. Burden of proof can define the duty placed upon a party to prove or disprove a disputed fact, or it can define which party bears this burden. In criminal cases, the burden of proof is placed on the prosecution, who must demonstrate that the defendant is guilty before a jury may convict him or her. But in some ju…
Warren Earl Burger was a self-made man who rose from modest origins to become the fifteenth chief justice of the U. S. Supreme Court. Burger was admitted to the Minnesota bar in 1931, then entered private practice in St. Paul with Boyesen, Otis, and Faricy. He became a partner in 1935, and the firm was renamed Faricy, Burger, Moore, and Costello. Burger concentrated his practice in corporate law, …
Edmund Burke was an orator, philosophical writer, political theorist, and member of Parliament who helped shape political thought in England and the United States during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Burke was born January 12, 1729, in Dublin, Ireland, to a Protestant father and a Roman Catholic mother. His father, a prosperous Dublin attorney, was cold and authoritarian, and…
Aaron Burr was a soldier, lawyer, and politician and the third vice president of the United States. Burr was born February 6, 1756, in Newark, New Jersey. His family traced its ancestry to the Pilgrims and through hundreds of years of English gentry with many members who were prominent in government and politics. Both his parents died when he was young and he and his sister were raised in comforta…
Burton was born June 22, 1888, in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. He attended Bowdoin College, where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated summa cum laude in 1909. He then entered Harvard Law School where he received his bachelor of laws degree in 1912. He married Selma Florence Smith and the couple set out to take advantage of opportunity in the burgeoning Midwest. They settled in Cleveland …
Born June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts, Bush was the son of Prescott Sheldon Bush, an international banker and U.S. senator from Connecticut, and Dorothy Walker Bush, the daughter of a wealthy St. Louis businessman. Both parents had a tremendous influence on Bush, who was unpretentious and hardworking despite his privileged background. As a young boy, Bush attended Greenwich Country Day Scho…
Bush's biggest oil venture, however, proved controversial. During the late 1970s, he built a small, thriving company called Bush Exploration. When the energy market turned soft in the early 1980s, Bush Exploration, like many oil enterprises, floundered. In 1983, Bush merged his outfit with Spectrum 7; three years later Spectrum 7 was bought by Harken Energy. Bush's supporters said th…
A commercial venture or an occupation that has become subject to governmental regulation by virtue of its offering essential services or products to the community at large. A business affected with a public interest remains the property of its owner, but the community is considered to have such a stake in its operation that it becomes subject to public regulation to the extent of that interest. …
The law requires employers with one hundred or more employees to provide their workers with sixty days' layoff notice when fifty or more workers at a single site will lose their jobs and when affected workers will constitute at least one-third of that site's work force. If 500 or more employees are laid off, however, such notice is required regardless of the percentage of site worker…
The directors and officers of a corporation are responsible for managing and directing the business and affairs of the corporation. They often face difficult questions concerning whether to acquire other businesses, sell assets, expand into other areas of business, or issue stocks and dividends. They may also face potential hostile takeovers by other businesses. To help directors and officers meet…
The Business Roundtable is an association of chief executive officers (CEOs) representing the top corporations in the United States, joined together to examine and advocate for public policy that will "foster vigorous economic growth and a dynamic global economy." Established in 1972 by 200 leading executives from major U.S. corporations, the Roundtable was founded upon the idea that…
An unincorporated business organization created by a legal document, a declaration of trust, and used in place of a corporation or partnership for the transaction of various kinds of business with limited liability. A business trust is similar to a traditional trust in that its trustees are given legal title to the trust property to administer it for the advantage of its beneficiaries who hold equ…
Benjamin Franklin Butler achieved prominence as a politician and military officer. Butler was born November 5, 1818, in Deer-field, New Hampshire. After graduating in 1838 from Waterbury College, now known as Colby College, Butler was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1840. Elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1853 and the Massachusetts Senate in 1859, he also served a tour …
Charles Henry Butler served as the Supreme Court reporter of decisions from 1902 to 1916. While reporter, Butler edited and published volumes 187 to 241 of the United States Reports, the official publication of the opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court. During his tenure with the Court, he also was a delegate to the Hague Peace Conference in 1907. He later authored A Century at the Bar of the Supreme…
Many of Butler's later views were shaped by his frontier childhood. Butler was born on St. Pierce Butler. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Patrick's Day, March 17, 1866, in a log cabin in Dakota County, Minnesota. His parents had emigrated from County Wicklow, Ireland, to escape the potato famine of 1848, and eventually established their farm only a few miles from Carleton College, in Nor…
An example of bylaws Despite these significant contributions, Byrnes was not happy on the Court. He wanted to be more actively involved in the country's war effort. In October 1942, after only sixteen months on the Court, Byrnes resigned his seat. He left the Court at the request of President Roosevelt to become director of the newly created Office of Economi…
An abbreviation for cost, freight, and insurance that is used in a sales contract to indicate that the purchase price quoted for the goods by the seller includes the expense incurred by the seller for shipment of such goods and for insurance of the goods against loss or destruction until their arrival at the destination named by the buyer. The abbreviation C.F.&I. is synonymous with the abb…
C-SPAN was established by Brian P. Lamb as a nonprofit venture in 1977. On March 19, 1979, C-SPAN began live and unedited television broadcasts of proceedings in the U.S. House of Representatives. On June 2, 1986, C-SPAN II broadcast, for the first time, proceedings on the floor of the U.S. Senate. C-SPAN also broadcasts congressional hearings; call-in programs with elected officials, policy maker…
The cable TV industry exploded from modest beginnings in the 1950s into a service that by 2003 reached 69 percent of all U.S. households that had television. Cable was initially a response to a need for improved transmission in areas where signals were weak or nonexistent. By the 1960s, consumers began to demand not only better reception but also more signals. This demand fueled the exponential gr…
Edmond Nathaniel Cahn was the author of numerous publications including The Sense of Injustice (1949), The Moral Decision (1955), and The Edmond Cahn Reader (1966). After his admission to the Louisiana bar in 1927 and the New York bar in 1928, Cahn established a law firm in New York City where he practiced law from 1927 to 1950. He extended his career interests to the field of education and taught…
In 1808, Calhoun entered politics, beginning as a member of the South Carolina legislature. Three years later, he began his career in federal government, representing South Carolina in the House of Representatives until 1817. During his tenure, he performed the duties of acting chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and in 1811 was a member of the War Hawks, a group that advocated war with E…
Developments in the 1970s changed the picture. Technology had improved, making TV cameras far less disruptive, and the electronic media was demanding the same access to trials enjoyed by the print media. The ABA became much more tentative about its hard-line position. Its Committee on Fair Trial-Free Press recommended that the ABA revise its standards. Encouraged to experiment, a number of states …
In 1992, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a rancher, teacher, judo champion, and jewelry designer became the first Native American to serve in the U.S. Senate in more than 60 years. Campbell was born April 13, 1933, in Auburn, California, the son of Albert Valdez Campbell, who was part Northern Cheyenne Indian, and Mary Vierra, a Portuguese immigrant. His mother was a patient and occasional employee at a …
John Campbell, also known as First Baron Campbell, was born September 15, 1779, in Scotland. He was admitted to the bar in 1806 and pursued a career in British law and politics. As an author, Campbell is famous for Lives of the Lord Chancellors, published from 1845 to 1847, and for Lives of the Chief Justices, published from 1849 to 1857. Campbell died June 23, 1861, in London, England. …
John Archibald Campbell was a politician, a statesman, and an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court during the turbulent years preceding the outbreak of the Civil War. Born June 24, 1811, in Washington, Georgia, the son of a prominent landowner and lawyer, Campbell was a child of exceptional intellectual ability. He entered Franklin College (now the University of Georgia) at the age of eleve…
When he was named to the federal bench at age thirty-five in 1940, William J. Campbell was the youngest judge ever appointed; at the time of his death, he was the longest-tenured federal judge in the United States, with almost fifty years of service to his credit. Shortly after passing the bar in 1927, Campbell partnered with a longtime friend to open the law firm of Campbell and Burns. The new fi…
On the administrative level it created a temporary body for resolving disputes, the binational Extraordinary Challenge Committee, which was given a seven-year commission to hear appeals. Not surprisingly, this issue had been the most troublesome during the negotiations preceding the FTA; it proved slightly problematic in practice, too, with the United States generally losing its complaints. Noneth…
Artificial channels for the conveyance of water, used for navigation, transportation, drainage, or irrigation of land. As a general rule, states supervise the construction and operation of canals by private canal companies. The site of the canal is selected by the state. State law determines the manner of acquiring property used for construction or maintenance of canals. Condemnation or appropriat…
A plaintiff is entitled to have an instrument canceled only if he or she has acted equitably in dealings with the defendant. The principles of equity apply to any case in which this equitable remedy is sought. …
Any church's or religion's laws, rules, and regulations; more commonly, the written policies that guide the administration and religious ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church. Since the fourth century, the Roman Catholic Church has been developing regulations that have had some influence on secular (non-church-related) legal procedures. These regulations are called canons and are c…
Canon law is the set of rules a church or religion establishes for itself in order to make administrative and ecclesiastical (religious) decisions. The Roman Catholic Church has an elaborate body of canon law that has been evolving since the fourth century and which has played a historical role in the development of public law. The society's written opinions are advisory only and carry no a…
The ability, capability, or fitness to do something; a legal right, power, or competency to perform some act. An ability to comprehend both the nature and consequences of one's acts. Capacity relates to soundness of mind and to an intelligent understanding and perception of one's actions. It is the power either to create or to enter into a legal relation under the same conditions or …
The lawful infliction of death as a punishment; the death penalty. Capital punishment continues to be used in the United States despite controversy over its merits and over its effectiveness as a deterrent to serious crime. A sentence of death may be carried out by one of five lawful means: electrocution, hanging, lethal injection, gas chamber, and firing squad. As of 2003, 38 states employed capi…
All shares constituting ownership of a business, including common stock and preferred stock. The amount of shares that a corporate charter requires to be subscribed and paid, or secured to be paid, by shareholders. The amount of stock that a corporation may issue; the amount actually contributed, subscribed, or secured to be paid on. The liability of the corporation to its shareholders after credi…
Capone was born January 17, 1899, in Naples, Italy. His family emigrated from Naples, Italy, to New York and Capone was raised in the Brooklyn slums. During his early years in New York he made strong gangland contacts and in 1920, he became a member of the John Torrio gang. Torrio, originally from New York, relocated his operation to Chicago, with Capone at his side. An appeal was pursued and Capo…
Benjamin Nathan Cardozo was a New York state court judge, an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, and an influential legal scholar. In 1913, after twenty-three years in private practice, Cardozo was nominated and elected as a judge on the New York Supreme Court, the state's trial-level bench. Only six weeks later, he was designated to serve temporarily as an associate judge on the C…
In the law of negligence, the standard of reasonable conduct determines the amount of care to be exercised in a situation. The care taken must be proportional to the apparent risk. As danger increases, commensurate caution must be observed. Slight care is the care persons of ordinary prudence generally exercise in regard to their personal affairs of minimal importance. Reasonable care, also known …
The criminal taking of a motor vehicle from its driver by force, violence, or intimidation. Carjackers are often thought by the public to target older persons, women, and tourists—groups of conspicuous vulnerability. However, statistics from 1992 to 1996 show that individuals between the ages of 25 and 49 were more likely to be the victims of such a crime (3.6 out of every 10,000 persons) t…
Carmichael was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on June 29, 1941. Two years later, he was placed in a private school, as his father, mother, and two sisters immigrated to the United States. At school he earned the nickname Little Man for his quick intelligence and precocious awareness, traits that had him urging his aunt to vote when he was turned away from polling booths at the age of seven. He r…
Colloquial term used to describe northern judges during the post-Civil War era who traveled to the South to serve on southern courts, typically for personal gain. "Carpetbag" refers to the judges's practice of carrying their possessions with them in carpetbags. Threatened with impeachment, many of these judges left the bench. Not all the charges against the carpetbag judges we…
The right of an individual or organization that publicly advertises itself for hire for the transportation of goods to keep possession of the cargo it has delivered to a destination until the person who is liable to pay the freight charges plus any other expenses incurred by its shipment has done so. Not all carriers are automatically entitled to have a lien for nonpayment of freight charges. A pr…
Individuals or businesses that are employed to deliver people or property to an agreed destination. The two main types of carriers are common carriers and private carriers. A common carrier, such as a railroad, airline, or business that offers public transportation, customarily transports property and individuals from one location to another, thus offering its services for the hire of the general …
Edward Codrington Carrington was born April 10, 1872, in Washington, D.C. He was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1894 and established his legal practice in Baltimore, specializing in corporation law. Carrington initiated proceedings in Maryland to combine the Progressives once again with the Republicans, and in 1914 he was nominated by the Republicans for a seat in the U.S. Senate, but was defeate…
The Carrington Report represented the combined efforts of a committee of legal scholars, but Professor Carrington, due to his role as chairperson, was instrumental in compiling the report. It aroused some controversy among legal educators and commentators at the time of its publication because of the extensiveness of its proposed changes in legal education, particularly in terms of revisions of la…
Carswell also suffered a reputation as a legal lightweight. His opponents noted that a dismal 58 percent of Carswell's judicial decisions had been overruled by higher courts. In a vote of no confidence, the Ripon Society, a Republican group, rated Carswell's performance as a federal judge well below the average level of competence. A slim majority of senators refused to support a jur…
In war, an agreement between two hostile powers for the delivery of prisoners or deserters, or authorizing certain nonhostile intercourse between each other that would otherwise be prevented by the state of war, for example, agreements between enemies for intercommunication by post, telegraph, telephone, or railway. Although illegal in the United States, foreign cartels influence prices within the…
James Coolidge Carter was a lawyer and leading legal scholar and philosopher of the late nineteenth century. Born into a poor family on October 14, 1827, in Lancaster, Massachusetts, Carter attended Derby Academy in Hingham, Massachusetts. In 1846 he entered Harvard College. An outstanding student, he graduated fourth in his class in 1850. He then moved to New York City to work as a private tutor …
Carter's ambition was naval service. Preparing to enter the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, he studied mathematics at Georgia Southwestern College and then the Georgia Institute of Technology. In 1943, he Jimmy Carter. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS entered Annapolis; he graduated in the top tenth of his class with a bachelor of sciences degree. Soon he married a long-time acquainta…