Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Fourteenth Amendment, addition to the U.S. Constitution, adopted 1868. The amendment comprises five sections. Section 2 provides for apportionment of membership in the House of Representatives on th...

(Encyclopedia) Tariff Commission, United States: see International Trade Commission, United States. ...

(Encyclopedia) census, periodic official count of the number of persons and their condition and of the resources of a country. In ancient times, among the Jews and Romans, such enumeration was mainly for taxation an...

(Encyclopedia) Slaughterhouse Cases, cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1873. In 1869 the Louisiana legislature granted a 25-year monopoly to a slaughterhouse concern in New Orleans for the stated purpose of...

(Encyclopedia) Burton, Harold Hitz, 1888–1964, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1945–58), b. Jamaica Plain (now part of Boston), Mass. Admitted to the bar in 1912, he built a prosperous law practice ...

(Encyclopedia) fine. 1 In criminal law, sum of money exacted by a lawful tribunal as punishment for a crime. In the case of misdemeanors and minor infractions of the law, convicted persons ordinarily have the altern...

(Encyclopedia) capital punishment, imposition of a penalty of death by the state. Since the 1970s almost all capital sentences in the United States have been imposed for homicide. There has been intense debate reg...

(Encyclopedia) United States Government Printing Office and United States Government Publishing Office: see Government Publishing Office, United States. ...

(Encyclopedia) police court, court with jurisdiction limited to minor offenses, chiefly the least grave misdemeanors and breaches of municipal ordinances. In practice the trial is usually held before a judge sitting...

(Encyclopedia) Martin, François Xavier fräNswäˈ zävyāˈ märtăNˈ [key], 1762–1846, American jurist, b. Marseilles, France. He emigrated to the United States (c.1786) and was admitted to the North Carolina ...