Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Story, Joseph, 1779–1845, American jurist, associate justice of the Supreme Court (1811–45), b. Marblehead, Mass. Admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1801, he practiced law in Salem and was sever...

(Encyclopedia) Cushing, Luther Stearns, 1803–56, American lawyer, b. Lunenburg, Mass., grad. Harvard Law School, 1826. His best-known work is his short Manual of Parliamentary Practice (1844; many later editions),...

(Encyclopedia) equity, principles of justice originally developed by the English chancellor. In Anglo-American jurisprudence equitable principles and remedies are distinguished from the older system that the common ...

(Encyclopedia) multiplication, fundamental operation in arithmetic and algebra. Multiplication by a whole number can be interpreted as successive addition. For example, a number N multiplied by 3 is N + N + N. In ge...

(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) Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 1959–, American legal scholar and critical race theorist, b. Canton, Ohio, J.D. Harvard University, 1984. An influential writer o...

(Encyclopedia) mass-luminosity relation, in astronomy, law stating that the luminosity of a star is proportional to some power of the mass of the star. More massive stars are in general more luminous. For stars on t...

(Encyclopedia) misdemeanor, in law, a minor crime, in contrast to a felony. At common law a misdemeanor was a crime other than treason or a felony. Although it might be a grave offense, it did not affect the feudal ...

(Encyclopedia) Deukmejian, George (Courken George Deukmejian, Jr.), 1928–2018, American political leader, b. Menands, N.Y., grad. St. Bernardine of Siena College (now Siena College), 1949, St. John's Univ. law sch...

(Encyclopedia) Diggers, members of a small English religio-economic movement (fl. 1649–50), so called because they attempted to dig (i.e., cultivate) the wastelands. They were an offshoot of the more important gro...