Free Legal Encyclopedia: Good behaviour to Health Insurance - Further Readings
Albert Arnold Gore Jr.
Gore was born in Washington, D.C., on March 31, 1948. His father, Albert Gore Sr., at the time served as a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee. The senior Gore was to serve in the House and the Senate for nearly three decades. His mother was Pauline LaFon Gore. She had the distinction of being one of the first women to graduate from the law school at Vanderbilt Un…
Government National Mortgage Association - Further Readings
The Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA), also known as Ginnie Mae, is a corporation wholly owned by the federal government. Created by the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, 825 Stat. 491, GNMA is designed to support the federal government's housing programs by establishing a secondary market for the sale and purchase of residential mortgages. During the late 1960s, the …
Government Printing Office - Further Readings
The GPO is overseen by the Congressional Joint Committee on Printing. The head of the GPO works under the title public printer and is appointed by the president of the United States with the consent of the Senate. The public printer is also legally required to be a "practical printer versed in the art of bookbinding" (44 U.S.C.A. § 301). The GPO uses a variety of printing and …
Grand Jury - Hearsay Evidence: Admissible Before A Grand Jury?, Should The Grand Jury Be Abolished?, Further Readings
A panel of citizens that is convened by a court to decide whether it is appropriate for the government to indict (proceed with a prosecution against) someone suspected of a crime. The grand jury was considered important enough to be incorporated into the U.S. Constitution, and has remained largely unchanged. Grand juries are used in the federal and most state courts. Federal grand juries use a sta…
Grandfather Clause
A portion of a statute that provides that the law is not applicable in certain circumstances due to preexisting facts. Grandfather clauses, which were originally intended to prevent black people from voting, were named for provisions adopted by the constitutions of some states. Such amendments sought to interfere with an individual's right to vote by setting forth difficult requirements. Fo…
Granger Movement
In 1867, the American farmer was in desperate straits. Needing better educational opportunities and protection from exorbitant prices charged by middlemen, the farmers decided to form an independent group to achieve their goals. An 1873 Granger promotional poster printed in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Granger Movement experienced rapid growth following the Panic of 1873 and peaked by 1875. LIBRARY …
Ulysses Simpson Grant
Ulysses Simpson Grant, originally known as Hiram Ulysses Grant, was a U.S. general, the commander of the Union army during the last part of the Civil War, and the president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. During his presidency Grant's reputation was tarnished by political corruption and scandal in his administration. Though he was never personally involved with any scandal, his fail…
Gratuity
Money, also known as a tip, given to one who provides services and added to the cost of the service provided, generally as a reward for the service provided and as a supplement to the service provider's income. Legend suggests that the term "tip" originated from an innkeeper's sign, "To Insure Promptness." Traditionally, patrons gave gratuity to those prov…
Horace Gray - Further Readings
Horace Gray. ARCHIVE PHOTOS, INC. Gray attended Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1848 he entered Harvard Law School; he received his law degree one year later. After two years of working in various law offices, Gray opened his own firm in Boston, where he practiced law until 1864. In addition to practicing law, Gray worked as reporter and editor of the Massachusetts Reports…
John Chipman Gray
John Chipman Gray served as a member of the Harvard Law School faculty for more than four decades. He was an expert on the law of real property, and his works are still cited as persuasive authority today. When he was still a young boy, Gray's father experienced a financial setback. This did not, however, discourage Gray from seeking higher education. After attending Boston Latin School, he…
Gray Panthers
In the late 1990s, the Gray Panthers launched a national campaign that targeted jobs and workers' rights and universal health care. In 2001 the organization launched "Stop Patient Abuse Now" (SPAN) a coalition of more than 125 national, state, and local organizations representing A member of the Gray Panthers takes part in a 1984 Boston rally calling for the elimination of…
William Herbert Gray III
William H. Gray III. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS Africa. He helped create and pass laws that imposed harsh sanctions on South Africa for its policies of apartheid. William Herbert Gray III was born August 20, 1941, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His father was a clergyman and an educator who served as president of Florida Normal and Industrial College in St. Augustine and of Florida A&M Colleg…
Great Society
Johnson chose John Gardner to head the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). Gardner, who was sworn in on July 27, 1965, was a psychologist, an authority on education, and had previously been head of the Carnegie Corporation. Widely respected by members of both parties (he was a Republican) Gardner helped carry out Johnson's goals and agenda; in some circles he was known as th…
Green Party
The Green Party blossomed as an outgrowth of the environmental and conservation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1970, Charles Reich published The Greening of America, a popular extended essay that effectively inserted environmentalism into politics. Reich, along with anarchist Murray Bookchin, helped inspire a worldwide environmental movement. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, environmental acti…
Jack Greenberg
Greenberg was born December 22, 1924, in New York City. His parents, Bertha Rosenberg and Max Greenberg, were immigrants from Eastern Europe who stressed the importance of education for their children. Although they were not involved in Civil Rights or politics, they inculcated in their children a deep concern for disadvantaged people. This early awareness of the plight of society's less fo…
Greenmail - Further Readings
A corporation's attempt to stop a takeover bid by paying a price above market value for stock held by the aggressor. The increase in corporate mergers in the 1980s made the hostile corporate takeover a familiar event. Before the decade's multi-billion-dollar takeovers, corporate mergers usually involved a mutual agreement. In contrast, hostile takeovers ignore the target corporation&…
Gregg v. Georgia
Having disposed of the threshold issue, Stewart examined the Georgia statutory framework. He found the framework constitutional, as each element worked to prevent the arbitrary and disproportionate death sentences criticized in Furman. Gregg had argued that other elements undercut the statutory framework. These included prosecutorial discretion, plea-bargaining and executive clemency. Stewart reje…
Thomas Watt Gregory
It is fitting that Gregory's service to the United States came in a time of war. Born November 6, 1861, in Crawfordsville, Mississippi, he was, in many ways, a child of war. His father, Francis Robert Gregory, a physician and Confederate army captain, was killed during the early days of the Civil War. His mother, Mary Cornelia Watt Gregory, a delicate woman mourning the loss of her first ch…
Robert Cooper Grier
Grier was born March 5, 1794, in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Dickinson College in 1812 and was admitted to the bar in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1817. A year later, he relocated to Danville, Pennsylvania, and established a successful law practice. In 1833, he was appointed judge of the Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, district court, where he remained until 1846. Dred Scott…
John William Griggs
Griggs was born July 10, 1849, near Newton, Sussex County, New Jersey. His father, Daniel Griggs, descended from the colonial founders of Griggstown, New Jersey. His mother, Emeline Johnson Griggs, also had early roots in New Jersey; she descended from militiaman and Revolutionary War soldier Henry Johnson. As a young man, Griggs attended the Collegiate Institute, in Newton. He later entered Lafay…
Griswold v. Connecticut
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510 (1965), was a landmark Supreme Court decision that recognized that a married couple has a right of privacy that cannot be infringed upon by a state law making it a crime to use contraceptives. Two Connecticut statutes provided that any person who used, or gave information or assistance concerning the use of, contraceptives was…
William Slocomb Groesbeck - Further Readings
Groesbeck was born July 24, 1815, in Schenectady, New York, and studied law at Miami University, in Ohio. After graduating in 1834, he began practicing at the age of 19 in Cincinnati. As a liberal Republican, he served in Congress from 1857 to 1859, but then lost his bid for reelection. He remained active in party politics as a leader of the Union Democrats, served as a delegate at the fruitless p…
Gross Negligence
An indifference to, and a blatant violation of, a legal duty with respect to the rights of others. …
Hugo Grotius
Grotius was born April 10, 1583, in Delft, Netherlands. A brilliant student, Grotius attended the University of Leiden, received a law degree at the age of fifteen, and was admitted to the bar and began his legal practice at Delft in 1599. It was at this time that he became interested in international law, and, in 1609, wrote a preliminary piece titled Mare liberum, which advocated freedom of the …
Ground Rent
Perpetual consideration paid for the use and occupation of real property to the individual who has transferred such property, and subsequently to his or her descendants or someone to whom the interest is conveyed. Ground rent agreements have sometimes required the payment of rent for a term of ninety-nine years, with renewal at the option of the party who pays it. In this type of agreement, the le…
Group Legal Services
Legal services provided under a plan to members, who may be employees of the same company, members of the same organization, or individual consumers. These trends cleared the way for a broad expansion of group legal services. The chief benefit of such plans is discounted legal fees. Legal advice is often expensive. As in group health insurance, volume produces savings: the buying power of a large …
Felix Grundy
Grundy was born September 11, 1777, in Berkeley County, Virginia (now West Virginia). His family moved to Kentucky in 1780. Although he had little early formal education, he studied law and was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1797. An able advocate, he soon developed a reputation as an outstanding criminal lawyer. In 1799 he was elected a delegate to the Kentucky state constitutional convention, w…
Guardian Ad Litem - Further Readings
Guardians are adults who are legally responsible for protecting the well-being and interests of their ward, who is usually a minor. A guardian ad litem is a unique type of guardian in a relationship that has been created by a court order only for the duration of a legal action. Courts appoint these special representatives for infants, minors, and mentally incompetent persons, all of whom generally…
Guardian and Ward - Persons For Whom A Guardian Is Appointed, Selection Of A Guardian, Factors In Choosing A Guardian
The legal relationship that exists between a person (the guardian) appointed by a court to take care of and manage the property of a person (the ward) who does not possess the legal capacity to do so, by reason of age, comprehension, or self-control. The term guardian refers to a person appointed by a court to manage the affairs of another person who is unable to conduct those affairs on his or he…
Guest Statutes
The first guest statutes appeared in 1927, in Connecticut and Iowa (1927 Conn. Pub. Acts 4404, ch. 308, § 1 [repealed 1937]; Iowa Code Ann. § 321.494 [Supp. 1983]). Coinciding with a burst in manufacturing that increased the number of automobiles produced, the laws arose to meet the growing number of suits resulting from car accidents. By 1939, the last year in which a guest statute …
Gun Control - Take That! And That! The Gun Control Debate Continues, Further Readings
Government regulation of the manufacture, sale, and possession of firearms. To many, the language of the amendment appears to grant to the people the absolute right to bear arms. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the amendment merely protects the right of states to form a state militia (United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 59 S. Ct. 816, 83 L. Ed. 1206 [1939]). Even before the Miller…
Habeas Corpus - Rubin "hurricane" Carter, Further Readings
[Latin, You have the body.] A writ (court order) that commands an individual or a government official who has restrained another to produce the prisoner at a designated time and place so that the court can determine the legality of custody and decide whether to order the prisoner's release. A writ of habeas corpus directs a person, usually a prison warden, to produce the prisoner and justif…
Hague Tribunal
The Hague Tribunal was established by the Hague Peace Conference in 1899 to provide a permanent court accessible at all times for the resolution of international differences. The court was granted jurisdiction over all arbitration cases, provided the parties thereto did not decide to institute a special tribunal. In addition, an international bureau was established to act as a registry for the tri…
Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer
Hamer was born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She was the twentieth and youngest child of Jim Townsend and Lou Ella Townsend, who were sharecroppers in rural Mississippi. Hamer grew up in a tar paper shack and slept on a cotton sack stuffed with dry grass. She first went into the cotton fields to work when she was six years old, picking thirty pounds of cotton a week. By the t…
Alexander Hamilton - Further Readings
Hamilton was born January 11, 1757, on Nevis Island, in the West Indies. His parents never married. His father, the son of a minor Scottish noble, drifted to the West Indies early in his life and worked odd jobs throughout the Caribbean. His mother died in the Indies when he was eleven. Hamilton spent his early years in poverty, traveling to different islands with his father. At the age of fourtee…
Hammer v. Dagenhart
Justice Day was troubled by the expansive reading of the Commerce Clause by Congress. If the Court had upheld this law, "all manufacture intended for interstate shipment would be brought under federal control." He concluded that the framers of the Constitution would never have envisioned such a broad grant of authority, for it undercut the power of the states to regulate commerce wit…
Billings Learned Hand - Further Readings
Learned Hand served as a U.S. district court judge from 1909 to 1924 and on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals from 1924 to 1951. Although he was a great and respected legal figure, he was never appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Hand cannot be classified as a liberal or conservative because he did not allow his personal biases to affect his judicial positions. He was careful to base his decision…
George Harding
George Harding is known as the greatest U.S. patent attorney of the late nineteenth century. Harding was born in Philadelphia on October 26, 1827. He was the son of Jesper Harding, publisher of the Pennsylvania Inquirer. Harding attended public schools and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1846. After graduating, he worked as an intern for John Cadwalader, who later became a U.S. di…
Warren Gamaliel Harding
Warren Gamaliel Harding served as the twenty-ninth president of the United States, from 1921 to 1923. Harding, who also served one term in the U.S. Senate, presided over an administration that achieved little and that was tainted by political corruption. Harding was born November 2, 1865, on a farm at Caledonia (now Blooming Grove), Morrow County, Ohio, the eldest of eight children. He attended Oh…
John Marshall Harlan - Further Readings
Harlan was born in Boyle County, Kentucky, on June 1, 1833. The son of a prominent lawyer and politician, Harlan graduated from Centre College and then studied law at Transylvania University, both located in Kentucky. He was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1853. As a young man, Harlan sought his own political career. He was elected a county judge in 1858, but relocated to Louisville in 1861 to est…
John Marshall Harlan II
On his return to the United States, Harlan was hired by Root, Clark, Buckner, and Howard, a prominent New York City law firm. Emory Buckner, a partner in the firm and its chief litigator, encouraged Harlan to attend law school. Harlan graduated from New York Law School in 1924 and was admitted to the bar in 1925. Harlan returned to Root, Clark in 1927. During the 1930s, he emerged as the law firm&…
Harmless Error - Further Readings
The legal doctrine of harmless error is found in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, extensive case law, and state statutes. It comes into use when a litigant appeals the decision of a judge or jury, arguing that an error of law was made at trial that resulted in an incorrect decision or verdict. The appellate court then must decide whether the error was serious enough to strike down the deci…
Judson Harmon - Further Readings
Harmon was born February 3, 1846, in Newton, Hamilton County, Ohio, the oldest of eight children of Benjamin Franklin Harmon and Julia Bronson Harmon. Because his father was a teacher, the young Harmon was schooled at home. Later, when his father entered the ministry, Harmon attended public schools. An apt student, he was enrolled at Denison University by the age of sixteen, and he graduated in 18…
Benjamin Harrison
Harrison was born August 20, 1833, in Ohio. After graduating from Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, he moved to Indianapolis to practice law. There he became involved in Republican politics, serving as city attorney, secretary of the Republican state committee, and supreme court reporter for Indiana. During the Civil War, he joined the Union Army. Within a month he was promoted to colonel and com…
Robert Hanson Harrison
Harrison was born in 1745, in Charles County, Maryland. Though little has been written about his upbringing and education, it is known that he established a successful law practice in Alexandria, Virginia, where Washington became a client and close friend. Harrison later served as Washington's personal secretary throughout much of the Revolutionary War. He resigned from this post in March 1…
William Henry Harrison
William Henry Harrison was the ninth president of the United States. He served the shortest term of any U.S. president, dying just a month after assuming office. Harrison rose quickly through the ranks of the military, becoming a lieutenant in 1792 and acting as aide-de-camp to Major General Anthony ("Mad Anthony") Wayne, who was responsible for pacifying the Ottawa, Chippewa, Shawne…
William Henry Hastie
William H. Hastie. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS Hastie was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on November 17, 1904. In 1916 his family moved to Washington, D.C., so that he could attend Dunbar High School. Thus began an education at the same schools Houston had attended before him. Hastie graduated from Dunbar as class valedictorian in 1921 and went on to distinguish himself at Amherst College, where h…
Hatch Act - Further Readings
Congress increased the scope of the Hatch Act in 1940 by extending its restrictions to employees of state and local governments that receive federal funds (Act of July 19, 1940, ch. 640, 54 Stat. 767), although it cut back certain applications of this measure in 1974. At various times it has also increased or decreased the penalties for Hatch Act violations—notably, by including suspension …
Hate Crime - Do Hate-crime Laws Restrict First Amendment Rights?, Further Readings
A crime motivated by racial, religious, gender, sexual orientation, or other prejudice. Hate crimes are based, at least in part, on the defendant's belief regarding a particular status of the victim. Hate-crime statutes were first passed by legislatures in the late 1980s and early 1990s in response to studies that indicated an increase in crimes motivated by prejudice. Approximately 30 stat…
Hawkers and Peddlers
A hawker is an individual who sells wares by carrying them through the streets. The person's ordinary methods of attracting attention include addressing the public, using placards, labels, and signs, or displaying merchandise in a public place. A peddler is defined as a retail dealer who brings goods from place to place, exhibiting them for sale. The terms are frequently defined in state st…
George E. C. Hayes
Hayes was born July 1, 1894, in Richmond, and lived most of his life in Washington, D.C., where he attended public schools. He graduated from Brown University, in Providence, in 1915 and received his law degree from Howard University in 1918. While at Howard, he attained one of the highest academic averages on record there. Hayes had open and sometimes bitter differences with the younger, more mil…
Rutherford Birchard Hayes - Further Readings
Rutherford B. Hayes. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Hayes was born October 4, 1822, in Delaware, Ohio. His father, Rutherford Hayes, died before Hayes was born and Hayes was raised by his mother, Sophia Birchard Hayes, with the help of his uncle, Sardis Birchard, a bachelor. Hayes was enrolled at Norwalk Academy, a Methodist school in Ohio, in the spring of 1836. The next year he joined Isaac Webb&#x…
Haymarket Riot
In the Haymarket Riot of May 4, 1886, the police clashed violently with militant anarchists and labor movement protesters in Chicago. Seven policemen and several protesters were killed, leading to murder convictions for seven The Haymarket Riot took place in Chicago on May 4, 1886. Seven policemen and several protesters were killed, and the event led to the execution of four radicals. LIBRARY…
Clement Furman Haynsworth Jr.
Clement Furman Haynsworth Jr. was a controversial judge on a federal appellate court who was nominated for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court but failed to win confirmation. Reaction to Haynsworth's nomination was mixed. Some commentators thought him to be a competent nominee, if not particularly distinguished, whereas others expressed disappointment at his conservative judicial views. No U.S…
William Harrison Hays - Further Readings
At this time a widely reported series of sex scandals contributed to a growing perception that the movie industry was out of control and out of step with U.S. society. With more than thirty state legislatures considering bills to censor movies, producers intervened to repair their image. In March 1922 they hired Hays, known as a teetotaler and an elder in the Presbyterian Church, to head the Motio…
Margaret Austin Haywood
Margaret Haywood is a senior judge for the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. She also was the first African–American woman to attain a top leadership position in a biracial U.S. church, the United Church of Christ. Haywood was always an independent decision maker. While she was in high school, her teachers encouraged her to become a teacher, the best career option for black women …
William Dudley Haywood
Labor leader Bill Haywood was regarded as a radical in the growing labor movement in the United States. A public figure throughout most of his life, Haywood was the central figure in two famous court cases. Haywood was born in 1869 in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1896, Haywood, a coal miner, became an active participant in the Western Federation of Miners. He rapidly rose to prominence in the federati…
Head of Household
The designation head of household, also termed head of family, is applied to one whose authority to exercise family control and to support the dependent members is founded upon a moral or legal obligation or duty. …
Headnote
A brief summary of a legal rule or a significant fact in a case that, among other headnotes that apply to the case, precedes the full text opinion printed in the reports or reporters. A syllabus to a reported case that summarizes the points decided in the case and is placed before the text of the opinion. Each jurisdiction usually determines whether headnotes are part of the law or only an editori…
Health and Human Services Department - Office Of The Secretary, Administration On Aging, Administration For Children And Families, Medicare And Medicaid
The HHS originated in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), which was created in 1953. In 1980, the Department of Education Organization Act (20 U.S.C.A. § 3508) redesignated HEW the Department of Health and Human Services. …
Health Insurance - Further Readings
Health insurance originated in the Blue Cross system that was developed between hospitals and schoolteachers in Dallas in 1929. Blue Cross covered a pre-set amount of hospitalization costs for a flat monthly premium and set its rates according to a "community rating" system: Single people paid one flat rate, families another flat rate, and the economic risk of high hospitalization bi…