A legal proceeding where an issue of law or fact is tried and evidence is presented to help determine the issue. Hearings resemble trials in that they ordinarily are held publicly and involve opposing parties. They differ from trials in that they feature more relaxed standards of evidence and procedure, and take place in a variety of settings before a broader range of authorities (judges, examiner…
ALJs are governed by the Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C.A. § 551 et seq. [1966]). They are appointed through a professional merit selection system that requires high test scores and, in many instances, experience in the particular regulatory program in which they wish to serve. Once appointed, ALJs may not be removed or disciplined, except for good cause. These parameters are meant t…
A statement made out of court that is offered in court as evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted. It is the job of the judge or jury in a court proceeding to determine whether evidence offered as proof is credible. Three evidentiary rules help the judge or jury make this determination: (1) Before being allowed to testify, a witness generally must swear or affirm that his or her testimo…
In the 1990s, she could be seen in John Waters's motion picture Crybaby, and heard as an off-screen caller to a radio talk show on the TV series Frasier. She had appeared on the runways of Paris as a fashion model, wearing a sequined evening gown designed by friend Thierry Mugler. Her story had been told as a movie, Patty Hearst, in which she was played by Natasha Richardson, and even as an…
In almost all cases, the reasonableness of a provocation is a decision made by a jury. …
Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel had a profound effect on modern thought. Hegel wrote his earliest work in 1807 and his groundbreaking Philosophy of Right in 1827. An idealist, he explored the nature of rationality in an attempt to create a single system of thought that would comprehend all knowledge. Among his chief contributions was developing the hegelian dialectic, a three-part proces…
The career of Jesse Alexander Helms Jr. is unique in post-World War II U.S. politics. Few legislators have fought as relentlessly, caused as much uproar, or arguably, had as much influence as the ultraconservative Republican from North Carolina. As a fiery radio editorialist in the 1960s, Helms waged a one-man war on liberalism. His notoriety helped him win an historic 1972 Senate race, a breakthr…
Henry II of England. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS court system made royal justice available throughout England. …
Patrick Henry was a leading statesman and orator at the time of the American Revolutionary War. Several of Henry's speeches have remained vivid documents of the revolutionary period, with "Give me liberty or give me death" his most remembered statement. Henry was born May 29, 1736, in Hanover County, Virginia. Though Henry attended public school for a short time, he was largel…
The Heritage Foundation is a nonpartisan, tax-exempt institution and is governed by an independent board of trustees. It relies on the private financial support of individuals, foundations, and corporations for its income and accepts no government funds and performs no contract work. Currently, it receives support from more than 200,000 contributors. Its headquarters are in Washington, D.C. The He…
A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. was an attorney, a scholar, and a federal judge. His distinguished judicial career culminated in his attaining the rank of chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Higginbotham was born February 25, 1928, in Trenton, New Jersey. Although he attended segregated public schools, his mother was determined that he would receive the same opportunities avai…
The reason for the choice lies in the Framers' approach to the larger question of impeachment. Although borrowing language from the law they knew best, they explicitly chose not to imitate the English model of impeachment. Traditionally, this approach had allowed the British Parliament to conduct a simple review of charges and then remove officials by a majority vote. Instead, the Framers i…
A main road or thoroughfare, such as a street, boulevard, or parkway, available to the public for use for travel or transportation. It is essential that a highway be established in a manner recognized by the particular jurisdiction, whether it be by extended use—prescription—or by dedication to the public by the owner of the property subject to the consent of public authorities. Prio…
In 1983, Hill decided to leave Washington, D.C., to became a law professor at Oral Roberts University. In 1986, she accepted a teaching position at the University of Oklahoma. Although full professorship and tenure are normally granted at Oklahoma after six years, Hill achieved both in just four years. During a live broadcast of the Senate hearings, Hill's personal motives, character, and p…
In August 1947, Hill ran for the Virginia House of Delegates. He lost that election by a mere 190 votes, missing an opportunity to become the first African American to occupy a seat in Virginia's general assembly since 1890. He returned to politics the following year, and on June 10, 1948, he was elected to a seat on Richmond's city council. With that victory, he became the first Afr…
Hirohito was the emperor of Japan from 1926 to 1989. His reign encompassed a period of Japanese Hirohito, emperor of Japan from 1926 to 1989, in his coronation robes. Hirohito was born in Tokyo on April 29, 1901, and was educated in Japan. He became emperor on December 25, 1926, at a time when Japanese parliamentary government suggested that democracy and international cooperation would con…
In 1948 Alger Hiss was accused of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. He was convicted in 1950 and sentenced to five years in prison. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS small way; his career had earned him the highest confidence of his government in times of crisis. But soon Hiss was swept up in a round of damaging public accusations. By the late 1940s, the U.S. House of Representatives had spent sever…
Hitler was born in Braunauam Inn, Austria, on April 20, 1889, the son of a minor government official and a peasant woman. A poor student, Hitler never completed high school. In 1907 he moved to Vienna and tried to make a living as an artist. He was unsuccessful and had to work as a day laborer to support himself. During this period Hitler immersed himself in anti-Jewish and antidemocratic literatu…
In March 1869, Hoar was named attorney general of the United States by President Grant. Hoar was popular with the public and thoroughly qualified to serve but he was also independent and outspoken. As attorney general, he severely alienated patronage-seeking senators when he insisted on filling nine new circuit judgeships with competent judges rather than using the positions as opportunities for p…
The influence of Hobbes's ideas varied dramatically over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. English politicians and clerics derided him as a heretic. But his theories eventually lent support to loyalists who wanted to preserve the Crown's control over the American colonies: Thomas Hutchinson, the last royal governor of Massachusetts, viewed the upstart challengers to royal aut…
Hoffa rose from obscure origins to stand in the national spotlight. He was born February 14, 1913, in Brazil, Indiana, where his family lived by modest means. His father, a coal driller, died of an occupational respiratory disease when Hoffa was seven. The second of four children, Hoffa, an athletic, shy B-student, quit school after the ninth grade to work full-time as a stock boy in a department …
Speed, efficiency, and the ability to juggle a wide variety of tasks simultaneously were lifelong character traits of the man who developed the rocket docket. He was born July 18, 1907, in Jersey City, New Jersey. After completing a bachelor of science degree in economics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1928, Hoffman attended the Marshall-Wythe School of Law, at the College of William and Mar…
Holmes was born March 8, 1841, in Boston. His father, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., was a well-known physician, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, an author who was widely read in England and the United States, and a founder of the Atlantic Monthly. Holmes attended private school and then Harvard College, graduating in 1861. With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Holmes enlisted as an officer…
The department's main goal is to protect U.S. citizens against terrorists. It brings together people from 22 agencies to protect the nation's borders, help state and local safety officials better respond to catastrophes, research treatments against biological threats, and coordinate intelligence on terrorists. The administration's rationale: better communication is the key to …
An individual who lacks housing, including one whose primary residence during the night is a supervised public or private facility that provides temporary living accommodations; an individual who is a resident in transitional housing; or an individual who has as a primary residence a public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.…
The dwelling house and its adjoining land where a family resides. Technically, and pursuant to the modern homestead exemption laws, an artificial estate in land, created to protect the possession and enjoyment of the owner against the claims of creditors by preventing the sale of the property for payment of the owner's debts so long as the land is occupied as a home. Homestead exemption sta…
In this context of controversy and war, the Homestead Act offered a simple plan to achieve the goals of the North. As yet not fully settled, western states would be populated with a flood of homesteaders—individual farmers whose hard work would create a new agricultural industry. On its face, the law was generous. Anyone who was at least twenty-one years of age, the head of a family, or a m…
The killing of one human being by another human being. Under the early common law, murder was a felony that was punishable by death. It was defined as the unlawful killing of a person with "malice aforethought," which was generally defined as a premeditated intent to kill. As U.S. courts and jurisdictions adopted the English common law and modified the various circumstances that cons…
An arrangement whereby property is placed in the hands of another to be used for specific noncharitable purposes where there is no definite ascertainable beneficiary—one who profits by the act of another—and that is unenforceable in the absence of statute. Trusts for the erection of monuments, the care of graves, the saying of Masses, or the care of specific animals, such as a cat, d…
After his military service, Hooks attended Howard University, in Washington, D.C., and graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1944. Hooks then traveled to Chicago to study law at DePaul University. Although Hooks wanted to enroll in a Tennessee law school, he could not do so because law schools in Tennessee refused to admit African Americans. Hooks graduated with a doctor of laws degree from …
Hoover was born August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa. His father and mother died when he was young, and he was raised by an uncle in Oregon. He entered the first first-year class at Stanford University and graduated in 1895 with a degree in mining engineering. He became an expert on managing and reorganizing mines throughout the world. He spent time in Australia and China before setting up his ow…
J. Edgar Hoover. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS chief of the department's General Intelligence Division (GID), a unit designated by Palmer to hunt down radicals. Within three months Hoover collected the names of 150,000 alleged subversives. Armed with this information, federal agents conducted nationwide dragnets, arresting more than ten thousand people. Critics argued that these Palmer Raids …
William Butler Hornblower was a noted corporate and trial lawyer who was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court but failed to win confirmation. A year before his nomination to the Court, Hornblower had been appointed to a New York City Bar Association committee convened to investigate Judge Isaac H. Maynard. Maynard was accused of improper conduct in a contested election while he was deputy attorney …
A doctrine that provides that the police may enter the premises where they suspect a crime has been committed without a warrant when delay would endanger their lives or the lives of others and lead to the escape of the alleged perpetrator; also sometimes called fresh pursuit. Hot pursuit is one such exigent circumstance. It usually applies when the police are pursuing a suspected felon into privat…
Confinement to one's home or another specified location instead of incarceration in a jail or prison. House arrest has been used since ancient times as an alternative to criminal imprisonment, often imposed upon people who either were too powerful or too influential to be placed in an actual prison. Hereditary rulers, religious leaders, and political figures, whose imprisonment might spur a…
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is the principal federal agency responsible for programs concerned with housing needs, fair housing opportunities, and improving and developing U.S. communities. Several program areas within HUD carry out the department's goals and functions. The assistant secretary for housing, who also acts as the federal housing commissioner, underwri…
Charles Hamilton Houston. FISK UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Houston was born September 3, 1895, in Washington, D.C. His father, William Houston, was trained as a lawyer and worked for a while as a records clerk to supplement the family's income; his mother, Mary Ethel Houston, worked as a hairdresser. Houston's father eventually began practicing law full-time and later became a law pro…
Benjamin Chew Howard was a lawyer who served as the Supreme Court reporter of decisions from 1843 to 1861. Benjamin C. Howard. U.S. SUPREME COURT As reporter, Howard was primarily responsible for editing, publishing, and distributing the Court's opinions. He replaced Richard Peters, who was fired after he disagreed with several of the justices about whether their opinions should be …
New York City and to probe the state's insurance industry. His work not only resulted in ground-breaking regulatory plans, later highly influential across the United States, but also catapulted Hughes into a political career. He immediately ran for governor of New York and twice won election to that office as a politician known for independence of mind and commitment to administrative …
Basic rights that fundamentally and inherently belong to each individual. Human rights are freedoms established by custom or international agreement that impose standards of conduct on all nations. Human rights are distinct from civil liberties, which are freedoms established by the law of a particular state and applied by that state in its own jurisdiction. …
In international conflicts and other crises, HRW provides current information about conflicts—focusing on the human rights situation on the ground—while the conflicts or crises are underway. The purpose of HRW is to increase the price of human rights abuse, thereby helping to decrease the incidents of such abuses. HRW is the largest human rights organization based in the United State…
Hume was born August 25, 1711, in Chirn-side, near Edinburgh, Scotland. He entered Edinburgh University when he was twelve. He left the university after several years of study and attempted to study law. He did not like the subject, and instead read widely in philosophy. In 1729 he suffered a nervous breakdown. After a prolonged recovery, he moved to France in 1734, where he wrote his first work, …
Humphrey was born in Wallace, South Dakota, on May 27, 1911. He grew up in Doland, South Dakota, where his father ran the local drugstore. He received a degree from the Denver College of Pharmacy in 1933 and helped run the family drugstore before entering the University of Minnesota. After graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1939, he earned a master's degree from Louisiana State …
Hunt was born June 14, 1810, in Utica, New York, to Montgomery Hunt and Elizabeth Stringham Hunt. He studied at the Oxford Academy, in England and the Geneva Academy, in Switzerland. In 1828 he graduated with honors from Union College, in Schenectady, New York. He attended law school in Litchfield, Connecticut. He returned to Utica to work in a local law office, and was admitted to the bar in 1831…
Elmo Bolton Hunter, a federal judge, has been a leader in national efforts to take party politics out of the state courts through the adoption of judicial merit selection programs. (Under most merit selection systems, a nonpartisan commission of lawyers and nonlawyers evaluates candidates for judicial vacancies and sends recommendations to, usually, a governor, who makes appointments.) In 1990, th…
South Dakota and Georgia illustrate the sort of hunting laws typically maintained by a state. In South Dakota hunting is regulated by Title 41 of the South Dakota Codified Laws Annotated, Section 41-1-1 et seq. Under Title 41 hunters must obtain from the game, fish, and parks commission a license for the privilege of hunting in South Dakota. Other states maintain similar commissions or boards to i…
After reviewing English treatises and numerous cases construing the term due process of law, the Court affirmed Hurtado's conviction. Only persons accused of federal crimes are entitled to a presentment or indictment of a grand jury. The Court refused to declare the proceedings that led to Hurtado's conviction under state law as violative of due process of law. Like an indictment, th…
A man and woman who are legally married to one another and are thereby given by law specific rights and duties resulting from that relationship. There is a strong public policy in favor of marriage. Because of this, a husband and wife are not always able to determine their duties and privileges toward one another; instead, these rights and responsibilities are set forth by special legal principles…