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Introduction

Iustitia ("Lady Justice") is a symbolic personification of the coercive power of a tribunal: a sword representing state authority, scales representing an objective standard, and a blindfold indicating that justice should be impartial.

Law is a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior. Law is a system that regulates and ensures that individuals or a community adhere to the will of the state. State-enforced laws can be made by a collective legislature or by a single legislator, resulting in statutes, by the executive through decrees and regulations, or established by judges through precedent, normally in common law jurisdictions. Private individuals can create legally binding contracts, including arbitration agreements that may elect to accept alternative arbitration to the normal court process. The formation of laws themselves may be influenced by a constitution, written or tacit, and the rights encoded therein. The law shapes politics, economics, history and society in various ways and serves as a mediator of relations between people.

A general distinction can be made between (a) civil law jurisdictions, in which a legislature or other central body codifies and consolidates their laws, and (b) common law systems, where judge-made precedent is accepted as binding law. Historically, religious laws played a significant role even in settling of secular matters, and is still used in some religious communities. Islamic Sharia law is the world's most widely used religious law, and is used as the primary legal system in some countries, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.

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Selected article

Convicted computer criminals are people who are caught and convicted of computer crimes such as breaking into computers or computer networks. Computer crime can be broadly defined as criminal activity involving information technology infrastructure, including illegal access (unauthorized access), illegal interception (by technical means of non-public transmissions of computer data to, from or within a computer system), data interference (unauthorized damaging, deletion, deterioration, alteration or suppression of computer data), systems interference (interfering with the functioning of a computer system by inputting, transmitting, damaging, deleting, deteriorating, altering or suppressing computer data), misuse of devices, forgery (or identity theft) and electronic fraud.

Convictions of computer crimes, or hacking, began as early as 1983 with the case of The 414s from the 414 area code in Milwaukee. In that case, six teenagers broke into a number of high-profile computer systems, including Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Security Pacific Bank. On May 1, 1983, one of the 414s, Gerald Wondra, was sentenced to two years of probation. In 2006, a prison term of nearly five years was handed down to Jeanson James Ancheta, who created hundreds of zombie computers to do his bidding via giant bot networks or botnets. (more...)

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Selected biography

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) was a British soldier, mathematician, lawyer and judge. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, although his studies were disrupted by his service in the First World War. He then began his legal career, distinguishing himself as a barrister and becoming a King's Counsel in 1938. He became a judge in 1944 with an appointment to the Family Division of the High Court of Justice and was made a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1948 after fewer than five years in the High Court. He became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 1957 and after five years in the House of Lords returned to the Court of Appeal as Master of the Rolls in 1962, a position he held for twenty years. One of the most publicly known judges thanks to his report on the Profumo Affair, Lord Denning was held in high regard by much of the judiciary, the Bar and the public. In retirement he wrote several books and continued to offer opinions on the state of the common law through his writing and his position in the House of Lords. During his 38 year career as a judge he made large changes to the common law, particularly while in the Court of Appeal. (more...)

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Did you know...

... that other than the Second World War, there has never been a declaration of war by Canada?

... that in Young v. Facebook, Inc., Judge Jeremy Fogel found that Facebook was not a physical place for the purpose of the Americans with Disabilities Act, despite its having "posts" and "walls"?

... DYK3

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More facts...

Selected images

The Constitution of India is the longest written constitution for a country, containing 444 articles, 12 schedules, numerous amendments and 117,369 words.
First page of the 1804 edition of the Napoleonic Code.
Providing a constitution for public international law, the United Nations system was agreed during World War II.
In civil law systems such as those of Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Greece, there is a distinct category of notary, a legally trained public official, compensated by the parties to a transaction. This is a 16th-century painting of such a notary by Flemish painter Quentin Massys.
King Hammurabi is revealed the code of laws by the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash, also revered as the god of justice.
A depiction of a 17th-century criminal trial, for witchcraft in Salem
The G20 meetings are composed of representatives of each country's executive branch.
The debating chamber of the European Parliament
Bentham's utilitarian theories remained dominant in law until the 20th century.
The Court of Chancery, London, early 19th century
The judges of the International Court of Justice in the Hague
Richard Posner, one of the Chicago School, runs a blog with Bank of Sweden Prize winning economist Gary Becker.
The "McLibel case" two were involved in the longest-running case in UK history for publishing a pamphlet criticising McDonald's restaurants.
The United Nations' New York headquarters houses civil servants that serve its 193 member states.
The famous Carbolic Smoke Ball advertisement to cure influenza was held to be a unilateral contract
A painting of the South Sea Bubble, one of the world's first ever speculations and crashes, led to strict regulation on share trading.
The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
A trial in the Ottoman Empire, 1879, when religious law applied under the Mecelle
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers
The Italian lawyer Sir Alberico Gentili, the Father of international law.
Max Weber in 1917, Weber began his career as a lawyer, and is regarded as one of the founders of sociology and sociology of law.
Iustitia ("Lady Justice") is a symbolic personification of the coercive power of a tribunal: a sword representing state authority, scales representing an objective standard, and a blindfold indicating that justice should be impartial.
A trade union protest by UNISON while on strike
King John of England signs Magna Carta
A march in Washington D.C. during the Civil Rights Movement in 1963
The New York Stock Exchange trading floor after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, before tougher banking regulation was introduced

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Selected case

The Pedra Branca dispute was a territorial dispute between Singapore and Malaysia over several islets at the eastern entrance to the Singapore Strait, namely Pedra Branca (previously called Pulau Batu Puteh and now Batu Puteh by Malaysia), Middle Rocks and South Ledge. The dispute began in 1979 and was largely resolved by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2008, which opined that Pedra Branca belonged to Singapore and Middle Rocks belonged to Malaysia.

In early 1980, Singapore lodged a formal protest with Malaysia in response to a map published by Malaysia in 1979 claiming Pedra Branca. In 1989 Singapore proposed submitting the dispute to the ICJ. Malaysia agreed to this in 1994. In 1993, Singapore also claimed the nearby islets Middle Rocks and South Ledge. In 1998 the two countries agreed on the text of a Special Agreement that was needed to submit the dispute to the ICJ. The Special Agreement was signed in February 2003, and the ICJ formally notified of the Agreement in July that year. The hearing before the ICJ was held over three weeks in November 2007 under the name Sovereignty over Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh, Middle Rocks and South Ledge (Malaysia v. Singapore). (more...)

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Selected statute

The Accurate News and Information Act was a statute passed by the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, Canada, in 1937, at the instigation of William Aberhart's Social Credit government. Aberhart and the Social Credit League had been in a stormy relationship with the press since before the 1935 election, in which they were elected to government. Virtually all of Alberta's newspapers—especially the Calgary Herald—were critical of Social Credit, as were a number of publications from elsewhere in Canada. Even the American media had greeted Aberhart's election with derision. The act would have required newspapers to print "clarifications" of stories that a committee of Social Credit legislators deemed inaccurate. It would also have required them to reveal their sources on demand. Though the act won easy passage through the Social Credit-dominated legislature, Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta John C. Bowen reserved royal assent until the Supreme Court of Canada evaluated the act's legality. In 1938's Reference re Alberta Statutes, the court found that it was unconstitutional, and it was never signed into law. (more...)