Until the early twentieth century, the rights of sailors were limited. If a sailor was injured through the negligence of another sailor or the master of the ship, the injured party could not hope to win a suit against the employer. Nor could survivors of a sailor who died in the line of service win such a suit. Under general maritime law, sailors were entitled to "maintenance and cure…
Starting in 1975, Jones spent two years working for the federal government. As a special assistant to the U.S. secretary of transportation, she helped to formulate official policies on a broad range of transportation issues. Among other accomplishments, she helped to open the doors of the U.S. Coast Guard to women. But she longed to return to her former job at the LDF. "Once you get st…
Barbara C. Jordan. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Barbara Charline Jordan, attorney, legislator, and educator, was the first African-American woman from a Southern state to win election to the U.S. Congress. Jordan was born on February 21, 1936, in Houston, Texas, the third and youngest daughter of the Reverend Benjamin Jordan and Arlyne Jordan. In 1952, she graduated at the top of her class from Phy…
To make a decision or reach a conclusion after examining all the factual evidence presented. To form an opinion after evaluating the facts and applying the law. As a verb the term judge generally describes a process of evaluation and decision. In a legal case this process may be conducted by either a judge or a jury. Decisions in any case must be based on applicable law. Where the case calls for a…
A legal adviser on the staff of a military command. A designated officer of the Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAGC) of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps. Each branch of the armed forces has a judge advocate general, an officer who is in charge of all judge advocates and who is responsible for all legal matters affecting that branch of the service. In the U.S. Army and U.S. A…
A decision by a court or other tribunal that resolves a controversy and determines the rights and obligations of the parties. A judgment is the final part of a court case. A valid judgment resolves all the contested issues and terminates the lawsuit, since it is regarded as the court's official pronouncement of the law on the action that was pending before it. It states who wins the case an…
A party to which a debt is owed that has proved the debt in a legal proceeding and that is entitled to use judicial process to collect the debt; the owner of an unsatisfied court decision. State laws provide remedies to a judgment creditor in collecting the amount of the judgment. These measures bring the debtor's property into the custody of the court in order to satisfy the debtor'…
A party against which an unsatisfied court decision is awarded; a person who is obligated to satisfy a court decision. Other protections apply to both property and wages. First, not every kind of property is subject to attachment. States provide exemptions for certain household items, clothing, tools, and other essentials. Additional provisions may protect individuals in cases of extreme hardship.…
A judgment entered by the court in favor of one party even though the jury returned a verdict for the opposing party. To be granted relief by a JNOV, a party must make a motion seeking that relief. The motion generally must be made in writing and must set forth the specific reasons entitling the party to relief. Many statutes and rules require that the moving party must have previously sought a di…
The practices, procedures, and offices that deal with the management of the administrative systems of the courts. Judicial administration, also referred to as court administration, is concerned with the day-to-day and long-range activities of the court system. Every court in the United States has some form of administrative structure that seeks to enhance the work of judges and to provide services…
The Judicial Conference of the United States formulates the administrative policies for the federal courts. The Judicial Conference also makes recommendations on a wide range of topics that relate to the federal courts. The conference is chaired by the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Other members include the chief judge of each federal judicial circuit, one district judge from each feder…
A judge's complete protection from personal liability for exercising judicial functions. Some states codify the judicial immunity doctrine in statutes. Most legislatures, including Congress, let court decisions govern the issue. Judicial immunity is a common-law concept, derived from judicial decisions. It originated in the courts of medieval Europe to discourage persons from attacking a co…
A doctrine of evidence applied by a court that allows the court to recognize and accept the existence of a particular fact commonly known by persons of average intelligence without establishing its existence by admitting evidence in a civil or criminal action. When a court takes judicial notice of a certain fact, it obviates the need for parties to prove the fact in court. Ordinarily, facts that r…
A court's authority to examine an executive or legislative act and to invalidate that act if it is contrary to constitutional principles. The power of courts of law to review the actions of the executive and legislative branches is called judicial review. Though judicial review is usually associated with the U.S. Supreme Court, which has ultimate judicial authority, it is a power possessed …
The transfer of title to and possession of a debtor's property to another in exchange for a price determined in proceedings that are conducted under a judgment or an order of court by an officer duly appointed and commissioned to do so. A judicial sale is a method plaintiffs use to enforce a judgment. When a plaintiff wins a judgment against a defendant in civil court, and the defendant doe…
The branch of government that is endowed with the authority to interpret and apply the law, adjudicate legal disputes, and otherwise administer justice. The U.S. judiciary comprises a system of state and federal courts, tribunals, and administrative bodies, as well as the judges and other judicial officials who preside over them. Every society in human history has confronted the question of how to…
The Judiciary Act of 1789 established the lower federal courts. Under Article III, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution, "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." In the Judiciary Act, the first Congress created federal trial courts and federal appeals courts …
A security issued by a corporation that is considered to offer a high risk to bondholders. A corporate bond is essentially a loan to a corporation. The loan may be secured by a lien or mortgage on the corporation's property as security for repayment. To determine the level of the default risk for potential bondholders, financial experts analyze corporations and rate them on a number of fact…
The study of law and science. Although the effect of science on law has a long history, modern developments date only to the second half of the twentieth century. Precipitating the rise of the contemporary legal practice—which relies heavily on computers to research relevant law and, in some cases, to analyze evidence—was an emphasis on logical reasoning. Leading the way in this area…
The degree awarded to an individual upon the successful completion of law school. …
The geographic area over which authority extends; legal authority; the authority to hear and determine causes of action. Jurisdiction generally describes any authority over a certain area or certain persons. In the law, jurisdiction sometimes refers to a particular geographic area containing a defined legal authority. For example, the federal government is a jurisdiction unto itself. Its power spa…
From the Latin term juris prudentia, which means "the study, knowledge, or science of law"; in the United States, more broadly associated with the philosophy of law. The second type of jurisprudence compares and contrasts law with other fields of knowledge such as literature, economics, religion, and the social sciences. The purpose of this type of study is to enlighten each field of…
A sanctioned doctrine of trial proceedings wherein members of a jury disregard either the evidence presented or the instructions of the judge in order to reach a verdict based upon their own consciences. It espouses the concept that jurors should be the judges of both law and fact. …
A reasonable and lawful ground for action. Since the 1980s a just cause standard has developed for employees not protected by an employment or a union contract. This standard is an alternative to the traditional employmentat-will doctrine. Under the latter, which has been in place since the late 1800s, employees who do not have an employment contract may be terminated at the will of the employer f…
When just compensation is assessed, all elements that can appropriately enter into the question of value are regarded. For example, the original cost of the property taken, added to the cost of reproduction or replacement, minus depreciation, can be considered when the market value of property is determined. …
As widely used, a term referring to any war between states that meets generally accepted international criteria of justification. The concept of just war invokes both political and theological ideology, as it promotes a peaceful resolution and coexistence between states, and the use of force or the invocation of armed conflict only under certain circumstances. It is not the same as, but is often c…
A judicial officer with limited power whose duties may include hearing cases that involve civil controversies, conserving the peace, performing judicial acts, hearing minor criminal complaints, and committing offenders. Justices of the peace are regarded as civil public officers, distinct from peace or police officers. Depending on the region in which they serve, justices of the peace are also kno…
Capable of being decided by a court. Not all cases brought before courts are accepted for their review. The U.S. Constitution limits the federal courts to hearing nine classes of cases or controversies, and, in the twentieth century, the Supreme Court has added further restrictions. State courts also have rules requiring matters brought before them to be justiciable. Before agreeing to hear a case…
Justinian was born circa 482 in Pauresium, Illyricum (probably south of modern Nišs, Serbia). Justinian came to the throne with the intention of reestablishing the Roman Empire as it had been before the provinces of the Western Roman Empire fell under the control of various Germanic tribes during the fifth century. To this end, he sent his armies against the Vandals in North Africa (roughly…
An area of the law that deals with the actions and well-being of persons who are not yet adults. In the law a juvenile is defined as a person who is not old enough to be held responsible for criminal acts. In most states and on the federal level, this age threshold is set at 18 years. In Wyoming a juvenile is a person under the age of 19. In some states a juvenile is a person under the age of 17, …
[Slang of U.S. origin.] An unfair, biased, or hasty judicial proceeding that ends in a harsh punishment; an unauthorized trial conducted by individuals who have taken the law into their own hands, such as those put on by vigilantes or prison inmates; a proceeding and its leaders who are considered sham, corrupt, and without regard for the law. The concept of kangaroo court dates to the early ninet…
The Lecompton Constitution of 1857 was drafted based upon the results of a Kansas election …
Immanuel Kant shook the foundations of Western philosophy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This author and professor did his most important writing between 1781 and 1790 while working at the University of Königsberg, where he spent most of his life. Kant's philosophical model not only swept aside the ideas of the so-called empiricists and rationalists who came b…
Katzenbach returned to the United States in 1949 and was admitted to the New Jersey bar in 1950. He was briefly an associate in his father's law firm before becoming in 1950 an attorney-adviser in the Office of General Counsel to the Secretary of the Air Force. During this period, Katzenbach first became acquainted with Johnson, then a senator from Texas. In 1952, Katzenbach left Washington…
Amalya Lyle Kearse is a judge with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Kearse began her legal career with the Wall Street firm of Hughes, Hubbard, and Reed. After seven years of distinguished and diligent work, she was named a partner, becoming the first black female partner in a major Wall Street firm. Her colleagues have praised her for her incisive analytical skills. When asked ab…
In May 1950 Kefauver and four other senators were named to a Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce. Because the committee's focus was interstate commerce, the hearings were held across the United States—14 cities in 15 months. Suspected and known organized crime leaders in these cities were interrogated by the five senators, which generated local int…
The Kellogg-Briand Pact, also known as the Pact of Paris, was a treaty that attempted to outlaw war (46 Stat. 2343, T.S. No. 796, 94 L.N.T.S. 57). The treaty was drafted by France and the United States, and on August 27, 1928, was signed by fifteen nations. By 1933 sixty-five nations had pledged to observe its provisions. France accepted the United States' offer, and treaty negotiations beg…
Frank B. Kellogg. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS During the latter part of his life, Kellogg acted as judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice. He died December 21, 1937, in St. Paul, Minnesota. …
Kelly was born January 30, 1944, in Washington, D.C. She was the first child of Mildred Sharon Pratt Dixon Kelly. MARVIN JONES Petticord Pratt, who died of cancer when Kelly was just four years old, and Carlisle E. Pratt, who was a lawyer and superior court judge. Family expectations were high for Kelly, whose father gave her a copy of Black's Law Dictionary as a birthday gift when …
Hans Kelsen was a European legal philosopher and teacher who emigrated to the United States in 1940 after leaving Nazi Germany. Kelsen is most famous for his studies on law and especially for his idea known as the pure theory of the law. With the rise of the Nazi government, he left Germany and emigrated to Switzerland in 1933. He taught at the Graduate Institute of International Studies of t…
Kennedy was confirmed in February 1988, with many liberal members of Congress feeling that he was too conservative, and some conservatives believing he was moderate, a compromise candidate who could survive the confirmation process. Anthony M. Kennedy. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS and lesbians "not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else," and ad…
Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy, the youngest of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was born February 22, 1932, in Brookline, Massachusetts. He started at Harvard University in 1950, then left in 1951 to serve in the U.S. Army. He returned to college in 1953 and graduated in 1956. He next attended the University of Virginia Law School, where he graduated in 19…
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the thirty-fifth president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Although his administration had few legislative accomplishments, Kennedy energized the United States by projecting idealism, youth, and vigor. Kennedy was born May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was a self-made millionaire and the so…
Born into one of the United States' most powerful political dynasties, on November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachusetts, Kennedy was the third son of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Great things were expected of the Kennedy sons, and the means were provided: $1-million trust funds, entrance to the Ivy League, and later, leverage to see that they held government positions. Ke…
Kent was born July 31, 1763, in Putnam County, New York. In 1777 he entered Yale University. The Revolutionary War periodically disrupted his studies. During one of his forced suspensions, Kent read Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–69), which led him to decide on a legal career. Following college he secured a clerkship with the attorney general of Ne…
The rioting had begun on Friday, May 1, 1970, when several students organized an on-campus demonstration to protest U.S. troops entering Cambodia. That evening, a crowd of drinking and agitated students moved off campus and began breaking windows in the center of town. Police were called in to disperse the crowd. The Kent city mayor, having heard rumors of a radical plot in the making, declared a …
A retirement account that allows workers who are self-employed to set aside a percentage of their net earnings for retirement income. Self-employed taxpayers who own a business and set up a Keogh plan for themselves are also required to set up a Keogh plan for each employee who has worked for their company for at least one thousand hours over a period of three or more years. The level of contribut…
Kevorkian became a focus of national attention in 1990, after he assisted the suicide of Janet Adkins, a 45-year-old woman who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease, a degenerative disease of the brain that causes memory loss and intellectual impairment. Adkins had heard through the media about Kevorkian's invention of a "suicide machine" that allowed individuals who w…
A system devised by West Group involving the classification of legal subjects that are organized within their publications according to specific topics and subtopics. Each topic and subtopic is given a key number which consists of one or more digits preceded by the symbol of a key assigned to each individual classification. …
An interactive, computer-assisted citatory service that allows legal researchers to verify the validity of a case and to find all references that have cited that case as authority. Every day, lawyers are asked by their clients to persuade judges to rule in their favor. One way in which they try to accomplish this task is by citing prior legal decisions, called precedent, that support their clients…
The seller's return of part of the purchase price of an item to a buyer or buyer's representative for the purpose of inducing a purchase or improperly influencing future purchases. Spiro Agnew, vice president under Richard Nixon, was accused of taking kickbacks while he was governor of Maryland and later vice president. On October 10, 1973, he resigned from office rather than fac…
The law of kidnapping is difficult to define with precision because it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Most state and federal kidnapping statutes define the term kidnapping vaguely, and courts fill in the details. A person who is convicted of kidnapping is usually sentenced to prison for a certain number of years. In some states, and at the federal level, the term of imprisonment may be …
Edward King was a lawyer whose 1844 nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court failed because of political animosity between Congress and the president who proposed him. Tyler, who had originally been a Democrat, lacked strong congressional support from either the Democrats or the Whigs. When he nominated King to the Supreme Court on June 5, 1844, the Senate voted to postpone consideration of the propos…
King was born January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. At an early age, he demonstrated the intellect and drive that would propel him to national prominence. After skipping his senior year of high school, he enrolled in Atlanta's Morehouse College, at the age of fifteen. He earned a degree in sociology from Morehouse in 1948. Since both his father and grandfather were Baptist preachers, it wa…
The 1991 beating of Rodney G. King by Los Angeles, California, police led to state and federal criminal prosecution of the law enforcement officers involved in the assault, a civil jury award of $3.8 million to King for his injuries, and major reforms in the Los Angeles police department. In addition, the April 1992 acquittal of the white police officers for the beating of King, an African America…
The highest common-law court in England until its end as a separate tribunal in 1875. The Court of the King's Bench or Court of the Queen's Bench derived from the royal court first established by William the Conqueror in the eleventh century. The royal court, called the curia regis, was not a judicial body in the modern sense. Rather, it was an assembly of English lords and noblemen …
Rising to the top of his field, Kissinger became a driving force behind Harvard's efforts Henry Kissinger. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS The two terms of Nixon's presidency elevated Kissinger's power. Named first to the position of assistant for national security affairs, a high-level post, he soon eclipsed the president's secretary of state, William P. Rogers, in visibi…
Kleindienst was born August 5, 1923, in Winslow, Arizona. He served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946 and then attended college. He graduated from Harvard University in 1947 and received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1950. He was admitted to the Arizona bar in 1950 and entered practice with a law firm in Phoenix. In 1972, Mitchell agreed to resign as attorney general and to become the…
Ernest Knaebel was an attorney who became an assistant U.S. attorney for Colorado and later a U.S. Supreme Court reporter of decisions. Knaebel served as reporter of decisions from 1916 until January 31, 1944, when he retired because of ill health. He died on February 19, 1947, in West Boxford, Massachusetts. …
The Know-Nothing movement was actually a group of secret anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish and anti-immigrant political organizations that called itself the American party. The movement, comprised principally of native-born, white, Anglo-Saxon males, came into being in the 1850s, grew rapidly, and waned almost as quickly. In the early 1800s, as immigrants continued to flow into the United States, a numbe…
Knox was born to privilege on May 6, 1853, in Brownsville, Fayette County, Pennsylvania. His banker father, David S. Knox, financed commercial activities in the region around Pittsburgh. His mother, Rebekah Page Knox, was involved in numerous philanthropic and social organizations, and she encouraged her children in community service pursuits. Knox's early education was in local private sch…
For his next phase of training, Koop and his family moved to Philadelphia. There, he took an internship at Pennsylvania Hospital, followed by a residency at University of Pennsylvania Hospital. After residency, in 1946, Koop became surgeon-in-chief of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He was 29 years old. Koop's surgeon general's reports and frequent testimony influenced th…
On June 25, 1950, North Korea, with the tacit approval of the Soviet Union, launched an attack across the thirty-eighth parallel. The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution calling for the assistance of all U.N. members to stop the invasion. Normally, the Soviet Union would have vetoed this resolution, but it was boycotting the Security Council in protest of the U.N.'s decision not to ad…
Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu, an American citizen of Japanese descent, was convicted in federal court for remaining in a designated military area in California contrary to a Civilian Exclusion Order issued by an army general that required persons of Japanese ancestry to report to assembly centers as a prelude to mass removal from the West Coast. He unsuccessfully appealed his conviction to the circui…
The Republicans who framed the Ku Klux Klan Act intended it to provide a federal remedy for private conspiracies of the sort practiced by the KKK against African Americans and others. As had become all too apparent by 1871, local and state courts were ineffective in prosecuting Klan violence. Local and state law enforcement officials, including judges, were often sympathetic to the KKK or were sub…
William M. Kunstler. ARCHIVE PHOTO/CONSOLIDATED NEWS At the age of seventy-six, Kunstler still reportedly worked fourteen-hour days in his home. Assisted by his partner, attorney Ron Kuby, he took most of his cases for free. He also did a bit of acting, appearing as a fire-breathing judge in director Spike Lee's 1992 film Malcolm X. In 1994 he published his twelfth book, My Lif…
Robert Marion La Follette was an important U.S. political leader during the first part of the twentieth century. He served as governor of and senator from Wisconsin, and was at the fore-front of the political reform movement that has been labeled Progressivism. La Follette was born in Primrose, Wisconsin, on June 14, 1855. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1879 and then s…