Born in St. Louis, Missouri on July 8, 1943, Wattleton was the only child of George Wattle-ton, a factory employee, and Ozie Garret Wattle-ton, a seamstress and a Fundamentalist minister in the Church of God. Wattleton credits her parents for developing in her a strong social conscience and a will to succeed. She excelled in school and was only 16 years old when she enrolled in Ohio State Universi…
James M. Wayne. ARCHIVE PHOTOS, INC. elected mayor of Savannah. His local political career soon gave way to a judicial one. In 1819 he was elected judge of the Savannah Court of Common Pleas, and in 1822 he became a judge of the superior court. Southerners detested Wayne's decision to remain on the Court during the war. Yet even as he was denounced as a traitor and his property…
A comprehensive term for all instruments of offensive or defensive combat, including items used in injuring a person. The term weapons includes numerous items that can cause death or injury, including firearms, explosives, chemicals, and nuclear material. Because weapons pose a danger to the safety and well-being of individuals and communities, federal, state, and local statutes regulate the posse…
Max Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who is best known for his theory of the development of Western capitalism that is based on the "Protestant Ethic." In addition, Weber wrote widely on law and religion, including groundbreaking work on the importance of bureaucracy in modern society. He also worked to establish the discipline of sociology based on an objective…
Daniel Webster. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS With these accomplishments to his credit, Webster returned to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1822, where he represented Massachusetts for the next five years. In the House he chaired the Judiciary Committee and opposed the 1824 tariff, believing that it would injure the merchant class. Following his election to the U.S. Senate in 1826, however, Web…
Weddington was born on February 5, 1945 in Abilene, Texas. She earned a bachelor's Sarah R. Weddington. ARCHIVE PHOTOS, INC. degree from McMurray College in 1965 and a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1967. She was admitted to the Texas bar in 1967. Weddington continued to be an ardent defender of abortion rights in the 1990s, and often debated those who att…
The trier of fact in a civil or criminal trial, whether a judge or a jury, must review the evidence presented, evaluate it, and determine if it meets the standard of proof. If it meets this standard, the trier of fact must return a verdict in favor of the plaintiff in a civil suit and must convict a defendant in a criminal trial. If the evidence does not meet the standard of proof, the trier of fa…
A comprehensive legal term for uniform standards ascribed to the quantity, capacity, volume, or dimensions of anything. The regulation of weights and measures is necessary for science, industry, and commerce. The importance of establishing uniform national standards was demonstrated by the drafters of the U.S. Constitution, who gave Congress in Article 1, Section 8, the power to "fix the St…
For more than a quarter of a century, Jack Bertrand Weinstein has championed the fight for an independent judiciary. As a federal district judge—and later chief judge—for the Eastern District of New York, he has written, lectured, and testified about the importance of fostering strong, free-thinking jurists in the U.S. courts. As a young judge, he exerted his independence by eschewin…
In March 1989, senior federal appeals court judge Joseph Francis Weis Jr. was handed the awesome task of chairing a congressional committee to examine issues and problems facing U.S. courts and to develop a long-range plan for the future of the federal judiciary. Though segments of the U.S. court system had been examined and fine-tuned throughout U.S. history, the formation of the Federal Courts S…
Joseph Nye Welch represented the U.S. Army in the Army-McCarthy hearings held in the U.S. Senate in April through June 1954. Welch was born in Primghar, Iowa, on October 22, 1890, the youngest of seven children born in a poor farm family. Welch's mother encouraged him to succeed in school. He was intrigued by the law even as a boy and enjoyed watching trials whenever he could. After clerkin…
Government benefits distributed to impoverished persons to enable them to maintain a minimum standard of well-being. Providing welfare benefits has been controversial throughout U.S. history. Since the colonial period, government welfare policy has reflected the belief that the indigent are responsible for their poverty, leading to the principle that governmental benefits are a privilege and not a…
Born July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells-Barnett was the oldest of eight children of James Wells and Elizabeth Warrenton Wells. After the Civil War, her father was a carpenter and a leader in local Reconstruction activities. Wells-Barnett attended Shaw University (later renamed Rust College), an African American school for all grade levels established in Holly Springs in 1866 by Fr…
A 1970 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Welsh v. United States, 398 U.S. 333, 90 S. Ct. 1792, 26 L. Ed. 2d 308, held that a person could be exempted from compulsory military service based solely on moral or ethical beliefs against war. Elliot A. Welsh II speaks to reporters on June 15, 1970, shortly after learning of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in his favor that a person could be exempted from m…
Wesley was born in 1892 in Houston, Texas. He received a bachelor's degree from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1917 and a law degree from Northwestern University in 1922. He practiced law in Muskogee, Oklahoma, with John Atkins, but the pair moved to Houston in 1927 to engage in additional business opportunities, including a real estate firm, an insurance company, and a newspap…
Many observers believed that the Court would strike down the law because of its decision in Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 525, 43 S. Ct. 394, 67 L. Ed. 785 (1923), which invalidated a minimum wage law for women and children. The Court in Adkins had reiterated that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment barred states from interfering with the freedom of employees to neg…
WLD updates its profiles daily on WEST-LAW and FindLaw, and quarterly on CD-ROM. WLD information may be searched in the WLD database, or in component databases. Component databases, such as WLD-MN, WLD-TAX, and WLD-JUDGE, allow users to narrow their search to legal directories designed for particular geographic locations, practice areas, or professional titles. WLD may be searched using the Terms …
The laws of the West Saxons, who lived in the southern and western counties of England, from Kent to Devonshire, during the Anglo-Saxon period. Before the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Anglo-Saxon rulers of England employed a set of laws to govern their kingdom. The collection of laws, called the West Saxon lage, helped support the structure of early English society. Ine, the Anglo-Saxon king of th…
WESTLAW subscribers purchase a software package that allows them to dial through their personal computers or over a telephone line into a central mainframe located in Eagan, Minnesota. The mainframe stores information in more than 16,700 databases that can be searched individually or in combination. For example, a tax attorney may choose to limit a search to an individual database containing only …
The statute also contained a declaration to enforce the enactment of Magna Charta, the charter granted by King John to the barons at Runnymede on June 15, 1215. Magna Charta regulated the administration of justice, defined the jurisdictions of church and state, limited taxation, and secured the personal liberty of the subjects and their rights of property. The statute prohibited excessive fines, w…
Westminster Hall contained the King's Bench, the Court of Chancery, and the Court of Common Pleas. Until the eighteenth century, it had no partitions or screens to divide the courts from the open hall. The hall was part of Westminster Palace, which, except for the hall and St. Stephen's Chapel, was destroyed by fire in 1834. The houses of Parliament were constructed next to the hall …
In 1285 King Edward I summoned the great lords and councillors of England to a parliament in Westminster to consider changes in how land could be conveyed. The result was the enactment of the Second Statute of Westminster, which is sometimes referred to as the Statute de Donis Conditionalibus (Latin, "concerning conditional gifts"). It converted estates in fee simple conditional into…
The hunting of whales for food, oil, or both. During the nineteenth century, the U.S. whaling fleet dominated the world industry. Most of the seven hundred U.S. ships sailed out of New Bedford and Nantucket, Massachusetts. However, the industry went into a steep decline with the discovery and exploitation of petroleum during the late nineteenth century. Though new uses for sperm oil were developed…
Cities located on lakes, rivers, and oceans usually have at least one wharf, where ships can deliver and pick up passengers and load and unload various types of goods. The law regarding wharves deals with access to wharves, rates that may be charged, and liability issues surrounding the use of these facilities. There are public and private wharves. Public wharves, which can be used with or without…
Wheaton was born on November 27, 1785, in Providence, Rhode Island. He graduated from Rhode Island College (today known as Brown University) and then studied law in France in 1802. Upon his return that year he established a law practice in Providence. Wheaton attended court sessions, accurately reported oral arguments and the written decisions of the Court, collected the decisions, and then publis…
Peters denied that the publication infringed any copyright Wheaton claimed to possess. In addition, Peters asserted that Wheaton did not have a valid copyright because he failed to satisfy all the federal statutory requirements that were essential for the creation of copyright. The trial court agreed with Peters and dismissed the lawsuit. Wheaton then appealed to the Supreme Court. During the tria…
On the contrary, although, when in fact. An introductory statement of a formal document. The term whereas is used two ways in the law. It is derived from Middle English and can mean "on the contrary," as in the sentence, The orange juice can label said "fresh squeezed," whereas the contents were made from orange juice concentrate. In the law the term whereas also is use…
Whig Party was a name applied to political parties in England, Scotland, and America. Whig is a short form of the word whiggamore, a Scottish word once used to describe people from western Scotland who opposed King Charles I of England in 1648. In the late 1600s, Scottish and English opponents of the growing power of royalty were called Whigs. The Whigs maintained a strong position in English poli…
Congress established the excise tax in 1791 to help reduce the $54 million national debt. The tax was loathed across the country. For a small group of farmers west of the Allegheny Mountains, the federal excise tax was singularly detestable. Bartering was the chief means of exchange in this frontier economy, and distilled spirits were the most commonly traded commodity. Cash was a disfavored curre…
The disclosure by a person, usually an employee in a government agency or private enterprise, to the public or to those in authority, of mismanagement, corruption, illegality, or some other wrongdoing. Persons who act as whistleblowers are often the subject of retaliation by their employers. Typically the employer will discharge the whistleblower, who is often an at-will employee. An at-will emplo…
Born on June 8, 1917, in Fort Collins, Colorado, White was the son of working class parents. As a youth, he picked beets in the poor community, but he excelled in athletics and scholastics. He attended the University of Colorado on an academic scholarship and, in 1937, became the premier running back in college football. So accomplished was "Whizzer" White on the gridiron that when h…
Over the years, numerous regulations covering other areas of business have been enacted by both state and federal government. With more laws on the books violations have led to more prosecutions. The hallmark of many white-collar crimes, however, is sophistication. Perpetrators have specialized knowledge that allows them to commit complex transactions that are often difficult to identify. Law enfo…
The origin of White's political and judicial careers reflected the spoils systems of late nineteenth century politics. In the 1870s White served as a lieutenant to Louisiana Governor Francis T. Nicholls. Nicholls appointed him to the state supreme court in 1878, a post which lasted only until the governor's electoral defeat in 1880. But after the governor battled back into office in …
A legal device once employed by some Southern states to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote in a meaningful way. Beginning in the late 1920s the Supreme Court reviewed a series of cases involving the white primary. In Nixon v. Herndon, 273 U.S. 536, 47 S. Ct. 446, 71 L. Ed. 759 (1927), the Court ruled that the state could not formally endorse the white primary, but in Gro…
Organizations that believe the Caucasian race is superior to all other races and therefore seek either to separate the races in the United States or to remove all non-Caucasians from the nation. The Klan reemerged in 1915, adding new enemies to its list. The revitalized organization drew upon anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, antiSemitic, and anti-Communist prejudices, believing that the ethnic chara…
Whiteman had a strong interest in, and knowledge of, inter-American affairs. She played a major role in many Pan-American conferences and proposed the idea of consultation for the inter-American system. In 1948 she took part in the conference at Bogotá, Colombia, which drafted the charter of the Organization of American States. all matters of international law arising in the conduct of…
Whitewater is the name of a failed resort development on the White River in the Ozark Mountain region of Arkansas. In 1978 Bill Clinton, then Arkansas attorney general, and Hillary Clinton joined a partnership with James and Susan McDougal to form Whitewater Development Corporation, a real estate development firm that built vacation homes near the White River. When Clinton was elected governor tha…
Born on February 22, 1901, in Troy, Kansas, Whittaker was the son of farmers. As a teenager, he knew that he wanted to be a lawyer: the ambitious high school student enrolled in law school during his senior year. Graduating in 1923 from the University of Kansas City Law School, where he was recognized for his talents as an orator, he passed the state bar and immediately began practicing for the la…
The report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement led to police reform efforts in many municipalities. These efforts were reinforced by volume fourteen, The Police, which called for professional police departments, staffed by more highly qualified police officers and insulated from political pressures. …
Wickersham was born on September 19, 1858, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He attended Lehigh University from 1873 to 1875 and received a bachelor of laws degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1880. Before he graduated, he was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar. He practiced for two years in Philadelphia before moving to New York City where he joined the established law firm of Strong and Cadwa…
John Henry Wigmore ranks as one of the most important legal scholars in U.S. history. A law professor and later dean of Northwestern University Law School from 1901 to 1929, Wigmore was a prolific writer in many areas of the law. He is renowned for his ten-volume Treatise on the Anglo-American System of Evidence in Trials at Common Law—usually referred to as Wigmore on Evidence—origi…
The Supreme Court ruled in Emporium Capwell Co. v. Western Addition Community Organization, 420 U.S. 50, 95 S. Ct. 977, 43 L. Ed. 2d 12 (1975) that when wildcat strikers bargain separately, they are not protected by the Wagner Act. Most lower courts have applied Emporium Capwell broadly, holding that all wildcat strikers are unprotected. Therefore, even when wildcat strikers have not attempted to …
Oscar Wilde was a nineteenth-century Irish poet, novelist, and playwright who mocked social conventions and outraged English society with his unconventional ideas and behavior. Wilde's relevance to the law is based on his 1895 criminal trial, in which he was convicted of committing homosexual acts and was sentenced to two years in prison. Historians of law and sexuality regard the trial as …
Roy Ottoway Wilkins was born August 30, 1901, in St. Louis, Missouri. He was abandoned by his father shortly after his mother died and was taken in by an uncle who lived in Duluth, Minnesota. Wilkins later moved to St. Paul and graduated from the University of Minnesota. In 1923, he went to work as a journalist for the Kansas City Call, a newspaper published by and for the African-American communi…
A document in which a person specifies the method to be applied in the management and distribution of his estate after his death. A will serves a variety of important purposes. It enables a person to select his heirs rather than allowing the state laws of descent and distribution to choose the heirs, who, although blood relatives, might be people the testator dislikes or with whom he is unacquaint…
Will was among the first to use pretrial scheduling conferences, pretrial orders, and standardized pretrial order forms to organize and supervise the course of a trial from the outset. His aversion to lengthy and costly trials caused him to be, at times, an outspoken critic of the U.S. trial lawyers. He was a longtime crusader for higher professional standards and better practice skills within the…
Intentional; not accidental; voluntary; designed. There is no precise definition of the term willful because its meaning largely depends on the context in which it appears. It generally signifies a sense of the intentional as opposed to the inadvertent, the deliberate as opposed to the unplanned, and the voluntary as opposed to the compelled. After centuries of court cases, it has no single meanin…
The Williams Act of 1968 amended the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 (15 U.S.C.A. § 78a et seq.) to require mandatory disclosure of information regarding cash tender offers. When an individual, group, or corporation seeks to acquire control of another corporation, it may make a tender offer. A tender offer is a proposal to buy shares of stock from the stockholders for cash or some type …
In 1961, Williams became special assistant to Sargent Shriver, who helped to establish the Peace Corps. In 1963, Williams served as director of the African regional division. In the same year, Williams became the first African-American to serve as U.S. representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Williams returned to New York City after leaving his diplomatic post. He headed t…
After Williams lost his Senate seat, President Grant appointed Williams attorney general in 1871. His term as attorney general was unremarkable, but his reputation was damaged by the events surrounding his failed nomination as chief justice in 1873. There were allegations that Williams had participated in fraudulent activities involving voting in Oregon, but the organized bar on the East Coast als…
Samuel Williston was a noted law professor and the primary authority on contract law in the United States during the early twentieth century. A professor of law at Harvard Law School from 1890 to 1938, his works The Law Governing Sales of Goods at Common Law and Under the Uniform Sales Act (1909) and The Law on Contracts (1920) are recognized as leading treatises. Williston was born on September 2…
Wilmot was born on January 20, 1814, in Bethany, Pennsylvania. He studied the law with an attorney and became a member of the Pennsylvania bar in 1834. He established a law practice in Towanda and was soon recognized as an able lawyer. However, politics drew Wilmot's interest. He became active in the Democratic Party and in 1845 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Wilmot st…
The proviso injected the controversial slavery issue into the funding debate, but the House approved the bill and sent it to the Senate for action. The Senate, however, adjourned before discussing the issue. The creation of the Republican Party in 1854 was based on an antislavery platform that endorsed the Wilmot Proviso. The prohibition of slavery in any new territories became a party tenet, with…
Lawyer, author, theorist, and justice, James Wilson helped write the U.S. Constitution and served as one of the first justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Wilson emigrated from Scotland in the mid 1760s, studied law, and quickly gained prominence and success in Philadelphia. As a Federalist, Wilson believed in strong central government. This theme pervaded the pamphlets he wrote in the 1770s and 17…
Wilson taught government at Harvard University from 1961 until 1987. He then taught management and public policy at UCLA from 1985 to 1997. In the early 2000s Wilson was the Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy. Wilson has served on a number of national commissions related to public policy. In 1966 he was chair of the White House Task F…
Woodrow Wilson. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Wilson's foreign-affairs policies encountered serious difficulties. In Mexico, which was in the throes of upheaval, the arrest of U.S. military personnel precipitated a U.S. invasion. U.S. troops also retaliated when Mexican revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa invaded New Mexico. Wilson ordered troops to pursue him into Mexico. Re…
The last phase in the dissolution of a partnership or corporation, in which accounts are settled and assets are liquidated so that they may be distributed and the business may be terminated. The dissolution of a corporation or a partnership culminates in the wind up of all legal and financial affairs of the business. State statutes govern the dissolution process for both types of business organiza…
A form of electronic eavesdropping accomplished by seizing or overhearing communications by means of a concealed recording or listening device connected to the transmission line. Police departments began tapping phone lines in the 1890s. The placing of a wiretap is relatively easy. A suspect's telephone line is identified at the phone company's switching station and a line, or …
William Wirt served as U.S. attorney general from 1817 to 1829, the longest tenure in U.S. history. Wirt is recognized as one of the most important holders of that office, as he increased its prestige, established administrative record keeping, and defined the functions and authority of the attorney general that have remained unchanged. In that same year President Monroe appointed Wirt attorney ge…
Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 17, 1905, Wisdom was a product of the old South, and he grew up accustomed to the privileges and prejudices of the white aristocracy. His father, Mortimer Norton Wisdom, had been a pall-bearer for General Robert E. Lee. His mother, Adelaide Labatt Wisdom, limited her son's youthful associations to people of his own social class and standing. It was not…
An Anglo-Saxon term that meant wise men, persons learned in the law; in particular, the king's advisers or members of his council. In England, between the sixth and tenth centuries, a person who advised an Anglo-Saxon king was called a witan, or wise man. A witan's basic duty was to respond when the king asked for advice on specific issues. A witan gave his advice in the Witenagemote…
In 1960 an Illinois jury convicted William C. Witherspoon of murder and sentenced him to death. Witherspoon challenged the constitutionality of both his conviction and his death sentence. His appeal was based on an Illinois statute that provided that in murder trials a prospective juror could be challenged for cause and removed from the jury panel if, upon examination, the prospective juror declar…
The amount legally deducted from an employee's wages or salary by the employer, who uses it to prepay the charges imposed by the government on the employee's yearly earnings. When a person is hired for a salaried job, the new employee must complete a federal W-4 form, which authorizes the employer to retain a certain amount of the employee's earnings to be forwarded to the gov…
Encompassed by, or included under, the provisions and scope of a particular law. In the U.S. legal system, a person who is charged with violating a statute must have committed actions that are specifically addressed in the law. When a person's actions comport with the language of the law, the actions are said to be "within the statute." …
A term used to describe a final ending or adjournment of a session of a legislature or a court; the English translation of the Latin phrase sine die. In addition, once a legislature makes a final adjournment, it generally cannot call itself back into special session. In this situation the governor or president is authorized to call a special session of the legislature. The legislature, however, re…
Without any loss or waiver of rights or privileges. When a lawsuit is dismissed, the court may enter a judgment against the plaintiff with or without prejudice. When a lawsuit is dismissed without prejudice, it signifies that none of the rights or privileges of the individual involved are considered to be lost or waived. The same holds true when an admission is made or when a motion is denied with…
A phrase used by an endorser (a signer other than the original maker) of a negotiable instrument (for example, a check or promissory note) to mean that if payment of the instrument is refused, the endorser will not be responsible. An individual who endorses a check or promissory note using the phrase without recourse specifically declines to accept any responsibility for payment. By using this phr…
President James Madison's appointment of Alexander Wolcott to the U.S. Supreme Court was a tribute to Wolcott's political loyalty, not his legal acumen. Nominated by Madison on February 4, 1811, Wolcott was a well-connected Republican whom Federalists and most historians regarded as unqualified for the High Court. Unable to win support even among fellow Republicans, Wolcott saw his c…
The effort to secure equal rights for women and to remove gender discrimination from laws, institutions, and behavioral patterns. …
Levi Woodbury. ARCHIVE PHOTOS, INC. order to limit the power of states to regulate business and economic matters. Woodbury left no landmark opinions. However, he occasionally dissented when he thought the Court was trampling the rights of states: He dissented from the Court's decisions to extend the boundaries of federal jurisdiction over national waters and, in the so-called Passen…
When the Civil War began, Woods volunteered for an Ohio regiment. He fought for the Union in several battles, including Shiloh and Vicksburg, and gradually rose through the ranks. By the time the war was drawing to a close, he was a commander under General William T. Sherman. Woods led Sherman's troops in the brutal march to the sea in Georgia that destroyed all the cities and towns between…
The vocabulary or terminology of a particular art, science, or profession, particularly those expressions that are peculiar to it. Though a society may share a common language, there are many specialized uses of words based on human activities. An examination of any profession, for example, will yield many expressions that are idiomatic or peculiar to it. For the person working within the professi…
A multivolume set of law books published by West Group containing thousands of judicial definitions of words and phrases, arranged alphabetically, from 1658 to the present. Words and Phrases is a legal research and reference work that is aimed primarily at lawyers. It was first published in 1940 and has been continuously updated since then. It contains words and phrases that have taken on special …
Language used in connection with a transfer of real property that identifies the grantees or designees who take the interest being conveyed by deed or will. The act or process of acquiring real property by deed or will is called taking by purchase, even though it was a gift. The person who acquires real property by deed or will is called a purchaser, even though this person may have paid nothing. …
A legal doctrine that provides that certain materials prepared by an attorney who is acting on behalf of his or her client during preparation for litigation are privileged from discovery by the attorney for the opposition party. The work product rule is an exception to the concept of sharing information. This rule is based on the attorney-client relationship, which includes maintaining the confide…
A system whereby an employer must pay, or provide insurance to pay, the lost wages and medical expenses of an employee who is injured on the job. It is the goal of workers' compensation to return the injured employee quickly and economically to the status of productive worker without unduly harming the employer's business. A worker whose injury is covered by the workers' compe…
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, commonly referred to as the World Bank, is an international financial institution whose purposes include assisting the development of its member nations' territories, promoting and supplementing private foreign investment, and promoting long-range balanced growth in international trade. The World Bank consists of a number of separat…
The war began on July 28, 1914, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. During the late nineteenth century, European nations had negotiated military alliances with each other that called for mutual protection. The Austria-Hungary declaration of war triggered these alliance commitments, leading to the widening of the war between the Allies and Central Powers. During the next four years, the wa…
World War II began in 1939 as a conflict between Germany and the combined forces of France and Great Britain and eventually included most of the nations of the world before it ended in August 1945. It caused the greatest loss of life and material destruction of any war in history, killing 25 million military personnel and 30 million civilians. By the end of the war, the United States had become th…
For example, A deeds Blackacre to B for life, and then to the heirs of A. The effect of the doctrine is that A has a reversion (a future interest remaining with A in the property), while B has a life estate. The words to the heirs of A are words of limitation, which are required under the worthier title doctrine. If the heirs acquire the property at all, it is only after the death of the owner. If…
James Skelly Wright served as a federal district judge in Louisiana from 1949 to 1962 and as a federal court of appeals judge in Washington, D.C., from 1962 to 1986. From 1978 to 1981, he was the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court. Wright distinguished himself as a district judge during the 1950s when he forced the desegregation of the New Orleans, Louisiana, public schools and the city'…
An order issued by a court requiring that something be done or giving authority to do a specified act. The writ of prohibition is another extraordinary writ and is the opposite of a writ of mandamus, because it commands a government official not to take a specified action. The most common use of the writ is by an appellate court to a lower court, commanding the lower court to refrain from a propos…
First, Thacher challenged the authority of the Massachusetts Superior Court to issue the writ. Thacher conceded that Parliament had passed a law in 1662 granting the English Court of Exchequer the power to issue the writ in Great Britain and passed a second law in 1696 enabling customs officials to apply for the writ in America. However, Thacher argued that neither law specified which courts in Am…
A violation, by one individual, of another individual's legal rights. The idea of rights suggests the opposite idea of wrongs, for every right is capable of being violated. For example, a right to receive payment for goods sold implies a wrong on the part of the person who owes, but does not make payment. In the most general point of view, the law is intended to establish and maintain right…
A wrongful birth action was first recognized in Jacobs v. Theimer, 519 S.W.2d 846 (Tex. 1975). The case involved an action by the parents of a child born with defects caused by the mother contracting rubella in her first month of pregnancy. The claim was that the defendant was negligent in failing to diagnose the rubella in the mother. The Texas Supreme Court allowed damages, but only for expenses…
Employees may sue for wrongful discharge in almost half of the states on the basis of an express or implied promise by the employer, which constitutes a unilateral contract. In a unilateral contract, one party makes a promise and receives performance from the other party. Typically, this type of wrongful discharge action will be based on a statement by the employer that expressly or implicitly pro…
Essentially, the child alleges that because of the defect, he would have been better off not being born at all. To bring a wrongful life action, the defect must be one that could only have been averted by preventing the birth of the child; otherwise the child would bring an ordinary negligence action. Other types of defects that can be diagnosed early in pregnancy include Tay-Sachs disease, sickle…
Parents in wrongful pregnancy actions may be able to sue for damages on the basis of the cost of the unsuccessful procedure and any pain or suffering associated with the sterilization or abortion. The parents may also recover damages for the medical expenses, pain, and suffering attributable to the pregnancy, the mother's lost wages due to the pregnancy, the husband's loss of consort…
Walter Wyatt. U.S. SUPREME COURT In 1922 Wyatt took a position as law clerk with the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C. He rose from assistant to counsel to general counsel of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. From 1936 to 1946, Wyatt also served as general counsel to the federal Open Market Commission. The Supreme Court appointed Wyatt its reporter in 1946. Beca…
George Wythe. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Wythe died on June 8, 1806, in Richmond, Virginia, of poisoning. His grandnephew and heir, George Wythe Sweeney, was acquitted of the murder. At trial the only witness was an African American, who was disqualified from testifying under the laws of Virginia. …
A classification devised by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) in 1968 to designate certain films containing excessive violence or explicit sexuality. It was replaced in 1990 by the NC-17 rating (no one 17 and under admitted). The distinction between the R and the X rating was based on the overall sexual or violent content of a mo…
A legal theory that holds that a defendant's XYY chromosomal abnormality is a condition that should relieve him or her of legal responsibility for his or her criminal act. Criminologists have examined many theories as to why a person becomes a criminal. Since the nineteenth century, biological theories have been proposed that seek to link criminal behavior with innate characteristics, yet t…
Talleyrand, unwilling to risk a declared war with the United States, sought an end to the dispute. The next U.S. delegation sent to France was treated with appropriate respect, and the Treaty of Morfontaine, which restored normal relations between France and the United States, was signed in 1800. …
Roosevelt came to Yalta seeking early Soviet participation in the war against Japan. Fearing that Japan would not surrender easily, Roosevelt promised Stalin the return of territories lost following the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Stalin agreed to declare war on Japan, but only ninety days after the surrender of Germany. With the surrender of Japan in August 1945, which followed the dropping of nu…
Books of legal cases, or reporters, published annually in England from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. The compilation of Year Books ceased in 1535 during the reign of King Henry VIII, for reasons that remain unclear. Thereafter court reports were issued in a different form by named reporters. …
Current return from an investment or expenditure as a percentage of the price of investment or expenditure. The term yield is the proportionate rate that income from an investment bears to the total cost of the investment. For example, a ten dollar profit on a one hundred dollar investment represents a 10 percent yield. Thus, a yield for stock dividends or bond interest paid will be expressed as a…
A group of directives relating to uniform bills of lading and governing the settlement of maritime losses among the several interests, including ship and cargo owners. Maritime law includes international agreements, national laws on shipping, and private agreements voluntarily adhered to by the parties involved in shipping contracts. The York-Antwerp Rules of General Average are the best known exa…
Young was born on October 27, 1874, in Van Hornesville, New York. He graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1894 and earned a law degree from Boston University in 1896. He later completed a doctorate in Hebrew literature in 1923 from St. Lawrence. Young practiced law in Boston from 1896 until 1913, when he moved to New York City where he served as general counsel for the General Electric Compan…
Zenger printed the allegedly seditious articles following a legal dispute between two public officials, William Cosby and Rip Van Dam. Cosby was appointed governor of New York in 1731, but did not officially take office until 1732. During the interim, Van Dam, the current governor, continued to discharge his official responsibilities, and collect a salary. Cosby, believing that he was entitled to …
The zero-bracket amount was so named because a zero rate of taxation was applied to it. Its financial value was determined by the filing status of the taxpayer. If a taxpayer had more deductions that qualified as itemized deductions than the zero-bracket amount, she could itemize deductions, but the itemized deductions were reduced by the zero bracket amount. That figure was subtracted from the ta…
The policy of applying laws or penalties to even minor infringements of a code in order to reinforce its overall importance and enhance deterrence. Since the 1980s the phrase zero tolerance has signified a philosophy toward illegal conduct that favors strict imposition of penalties regardless of the individual circumstances of each case. Zero tolerance policies deal primarily with drugs and weapon…
Zoning ordinances divide a town, city, village, or county into separate residential, commercial, and industrial districts, thereby preserving the desirable characteristics of each type of setting. These laws generally limit dimensions in each zone. Many regulations require certain building features and limit the number and location of parking and loading areas and the use of signs. Other regulatio…