Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) international law, body of rules considered legally binding in the relations between national states, also known as the law of nations. It is sometimes called public international law in contrast to p...

(Encyclopedia) commercial law, the laws that govern business transactions, except those relating to the maritime transportation of goods (see maritime law). Commercial law developed as a distinct body of jurispruden...

(Encyclopedia) maritime law, system of law concerning navigation and overseas commerce. Because ships sail from nation to nation over seas no nation owns, nations need to seek agreement over customs related to shipp...

(Encyclopedia) Law, John, 1671–1729, Scottish financier in France, b. Edinburgh. After killing a man in a duel (1694) he fled to Amsterdam, where he studied banking. Returning to Scotland (1700), he proposed to Pa...

(Encyclopedia) Coulomb's law ko͞oˈlŏmz [key], in physics, law stating that the electrostatic force between two charged bodies is proportional to the product of the amount of charge on the bodies divided by the sq...

(Encyclopedia) Ohm's law ōm [key] [for G. S. Ohm], law stating that the electric current i flowing through a given resistance r is equal to the applied voltage v divided by the resistance, or i=v/r. For general app...

(Encyclopedia) Delius, Frederick dēlˈyəs [key], 1862–1934, English composer, of German parentage. Influenced by Grieg, Delius combined romanticism and impressionism in his music, which is characterized by rathe...

(Encyclopedia) parliamentary law, rules under which deliberative bodies conduct their proceedings. In English-speaking countries these are based on the practice of the British Parliament, chiefly in the House of Com...

(Encyclopedia) biogenetic law, in biology, a law stating that the earlier stages of embryos of species advanced in the evolutionary process, such as humans, resemble the embryos of ancestral species, such as fish. T...

(Encyclopedia) Palmer, Frederick, 1873–1958, American writer and war correspondent, b. Pleasantville, Pa. He began war reporting in the Greco-Turkish War (1896–97), reaching the height of his fame as a correspon...