Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia)  Supreme Court Justices(including dates on bench) Chief Justices Associate Justices ...

(Encyclopedia) school vouchers, government grants aimed at improving education for the children of low-income families by providing school tuition that can be used at public or private schools. The idea behind schoo...

(Encyclopedia)  Text1 of the Constitution of the United States Preamble Article I Article II Article III Article IV Article V Article VI Article VII Amendment I Amendment II Am...

(Encyclopedia) police power, in law, right of a government to make laws necessary for the health, morals, and welfare of the populace. The term has greatest currency in the United States, where it has been defined b...

(Encyclopedia) obscenity, in law, anything that tends to corrupt public morals by its indecency. The moral concepts that the term connotes vary from time to time and from place to place. In the United States, the wo...

(Encyclopedia) Legal Tender cases, lawsuits brought to the U.S. Supreme Court involving the constitutionality of the Legal Tender Act of 1862, which was passed to meet currency needs during the Civil War. The act ha...

(Encyclopedia) Santería sănˌtərēˈə, sänˌ– [key], religion originating in W Africa, developed by Yoruba slaves in Cuba, and practiced by an estimated one million people in the United States. Blending Afric...

(Encyclopedia) Davis, David, 1815–86, American jurist, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1862–77), b. Cecil co., Md., grad. Kenyon College, 1832; cousin of Henry Winter Davis. In 1836 he settled as a ...

(Encyclopedia) Field, Stephen Johnson, 1816–99, American jurist, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1863–97), b. Haddam, Conn. After practicing law for several years in New York City with his brother D...

(Encyclopedia) conflict of laws, that part of the law in each state, country, or other jurisdiction that determines whether, in dealing with a particular legal situation, its law or the law of some other jurisdictio...