Law School

In the law of contracts, the mirror image rule, also referred to as an unequivocal and absolute acceptance requirement, states that an offer must be accepted exactly with no modifications. The offeror is the master of their own offer. An attempt to accept the offer on different terms instead creates a counter-offer, and this constitutes a rejection of the original offer. United States. In the United States, this rule still exists at common law. However, the Uniform Commercial Code ("UCC") dispenses with it in § 2-207. (but it can also be argued that § 2-207(1) enforces the mirror image rule) Therefore, its applicability depends upon what law governs. Most states have adopted the UCC, which governs transactions in goods. Contracts for services or land, for example, would not be governed by the UCC. The 2nd restatement of contracts also provides that when parties have not agreed to an essential term, "a term which is reasonable in the circumstances is supplied by the court." However, it may not be possible for a reasonable term to be supplied by the court. England. The English common law established the concepts of consensus ad idem, offer, acceptance and counter-offer. The leading case on counter-offer is Hyde v Wrench . The phrase "Mirror-Image Rule" is rarely (if at all) used by English lawyers; but the concept remains valid, as in Gibson v Manchester City Council , and Butler Machine Tool v Excello. An invitation to treat (or invitation to bargain in the United States) is a concept within contract law which comes from the Latin phrase invitatio ad offerendum, meaning "inviting an offer". According to Professor Andrew Burrows, an invitation to treat is: "...an expression of willingness to negotiate. A person making an invitation to treat does not intend to be bound as soon as it is accepted by the person to whom the statement is addressed." A contract is a legally binding voluntary agreement formed when one person makes an offer, and the other accepts it. There may be some preliminary discussion before an offer is formally made. Such pre-contractual representations are known variously as “invitations to treat”, “requests for information” or “statements of intention”. True offers may be accepted to form a contract, whereas representations such as invitations to treat may not. However, although an invitation to treat cannot be accepted it should not be ignored, for it may nevertheless affect the offer. For example, where an offer is made in response to an invitation to treat, the offer may incorporate the terms of the invitation to treat (unless the offer expressly incorporates different terms). If, as in the Boots case (described below) the offer is made by an action without any negotiations—such as presenting goods to a cashier—the offer will be presumed to be on the terms of the invitation to treat.

Intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED; sometimes called the tort of outrage) is a common law tort that allows individuals to recover for severe emotional distress caused by another individual who intentionally or recklessly inflicted emotional distress by behaving in an "extreme and outrageous" way. Some courts and commentators have substituted mental for emotional, but the tort is the same. Rationale for classification. IIED was created in tort law to address a problem that would arise when applying the common law form of assault. The common law tort of assault did not allow for liability when a threat of battery was not imminent. A common case would be a future threat of harm that would not constitute common law assault but would nevertheless cause emotional harm to the recipient. IIED was created to guard against this kind of emotional abuse, thereby allowing a victim of emotional distress to receive compensation in situations where he or she would otherwise be barred from compensation under the common law form. According to the first doctrine articulated by common law courts, a plaintiff could not recover for physical injury from fright alone absent a physical impact from an external source ("shock without impact"), even if the fright was proven to have resulted from a defendant's negligence, with the case on point referring to the negligent operation of a railroad. Even with intentional conduct, absent material damage, claims for emotional harm were similarly barred. "Mental pain or anxiety, the law cannot value, and does not pretend to redress, when the unlawful act causes that alone. Though where a material damage occurs, and is connected with it, it is impossible a jury, in estimating it, should altogether overlook the feelings of the party interested." Courts had been reluctant to accept a tort for emotional harm for fear of opening a "wide door" to frivolous claims. A change first occurred in the Irish courts which repudiated the English railroad decision and recognized liability for "nervous shock" in the Byrne (1884) and Bell (1890) cases  In England, the idea that physical/mental shock without impact from an external source should be a bar to recovery was first questioned at the Queen's Bench in Pugh v London etcetera, Railroad Co. In the following year, the Queen's Bench formally recognized the tort, for the first time, in the case of Wilkinson v Downton, although it was referred to as "intentional infliction of mental shock". Wilkinson has been subsequently approved by both the Court of Appeal (Janvier v Sweeney) and House of Lords (Wainwright v Home Office). Citing Pugh and the Irish courts as precedent, the Wilkinson court noted the willful nature of the act as a direct cause of the harm.

In the United States of America, individuals and corporations pay U.S. federal income tax on the net total of all their capital gains. The tax rate depends on both the investor's tax bracket and the amount of time the investment was held. Short-term capital gains are taxed at the investor's ordinary income tax rate and are defined as investments held for a year or less before being sold. Long-term capital gains, on dispositions of assets held for more than one year, are taxed at a lower rate. Current law. The United States taxes short-term capital gains at the same rate as it taxes ordinary income. Long-term capital gains are taxed at lower rates shown in the table below. (Qualified dividends receive the same preference.)  unrecaptured Section 1250 gain — the portion of gains on depreciable real estate (structures used for business purposes) that has been or could have been claimed as depreciation — is capped at 25%. The income amounts ("tax brackets") were reset by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 for the 2018 tax year to equal the amount that would have been due under prior law. They will be adjusted each year based on the Chained CPI measure of inflation. These income amounts are after deductions: There is another bracket of income below that shown as $0 in the table, on which no tax is due. For 2018, this amount is at least the standard deduction, $12,000 for an individual return and $24,000 for a joint return, or more if the taxpayer has over that amount in itemized deductions. Additional taxes. There may be taxes in addition to the tax rates shown in the above table. Taxpayers earning income above certain thresholds ($200,000 for singles and heads of household, $250,000 for married couples filing jointly and qualifying widowers with dependent children, and $125,000 for married couples filing separately) pay an additional 3.8% tax on all investment income. This tax is known as the net investment income tax. Therefore, the top federal tax rate on long-term capital gains is 23.8%. State and local taxes often apply to capital gains. In a state whose tax is stated as a percentage of the federal tax liability, the percentage is easy to calculate. Some states structure their taxes differently. In this case, the treatment of long-term and short-term gains does not necessarily correspond to the federal treatment. Capital gains do not push ordinary income into a higher income bracket. The Capital Gains and Qualified Dividends Worksheet in the Form 1040 instructions specifies a calculation that treats both long-term capital gains and qualified dividends as though they were the last income received, then applies the preferential tax rate as shown in the above table. Conversely, however, this means an increase in ordinary income will withdraw the 0% and 15% brackets for capital gains taxes.

Property law in the United States is the area of law that governs the various forms of ownership in real property (land and buildings) and personal property, including intangible property such as intellectual property. Property refers to legally protected claims to resources, such as land and personal property. Property can be exchanged through contract law, and if property is violated, one could sue under tort law to protect it. United States property law is primarily an area for state law, although there are also federal laws (for example, on patents and copyright) and some local laws involved (on areas such as zoning and tenancy). Property law in the states generally originate from the common law and have been modified by statutes. The Restatements on Property gives an overview of certain areas of property law in the United States. Theory of property rights. Definition of property rights. There are two main views on the right to property in the United States, the traditional view and the bundle of rights view. The traditionalists believe that there is a core, inherent meaning in the concept of property, while the bundle of rights view states that the property owner only has a bundle of permissible uses over the property. The two views exist on a spectrum and the difference may be a matter of focus and emphasis. William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, wrote that the essential core of property is the right to exclude. That is, the owner of property must be able to exclude others from the thing in question, even though the right to exclude is subject to limitations. By implication, the owner can use the thing, unless another restriction, such as zoning law, prevents it. Other traditionalists argue that three main rights define property: the right to exclusion, use and transfer. An alternative view of property, favored by legal realists, is that property simply denotes a bundle of rights defined by law and social policy. Which rights are included in the bundle known as property rights, and which bundles are preferred to which others, is simply a matter of policy. Therefore, a government can prevent the building of a factory on a piece of law, through zoning law or criminal law, without damaging the concept of property. The "bundle of rights" view was prominent in academia in the 20th century and remains influential today in American law.

Responsibility for criminal law and criminal justice in the United States is shared between the states and the federal government. Sources of law. The federal government and all the states rely on the following. Common law. Common law is law developed by judges through legal opinions, as opposed to statutes adopted through the legislative process or regulations issued by the executive branch. A common law crime is thus a crime which was originally defined by judges. Common law crimes no longer exist at the federal level, because of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in United States v Hudson and Goodwin, (1812). The validity of common law crimes varies at the state level. Although most states have abolished common law crimes, some have enacted "reception" statutes recognizing common law crimes when no similar statutory crime exists. Statutes. All 50 states have their own penal codes. Therefore, for any particular crime somewhere, it would be necessary to look it up in that jurisdiction. However, statutes derive from the common law. For example, if a state's murder statute does not define "human being," that state's courts will rely on the common-law definition. State vs. federal. The states, since they possess the police power, have the most general power to pass criminal laws in the United States. The federal government, since it can only exercise those powers granted to it by the Constitution, can only pass criminal laws which are related to the powers granted to Congress. For example, drug crimes, which comprise a large percentage of federal criminal cases, are subject to federal control because drugs are a commodity for which there is an interstate market, thus making controlled substances subject to regulation by Congress in the Controlled Substances Act which was passed under the authority of the Commerce Clause. Gonzales v Raich affirmed Congress's power to regulate drug possession under the Controlled Substances Act under the powers granted to it by the Commerce Clause. Model Penal Code. The Model Penal Code ("MPC") was created by the American Law Institute ("ALI") in 1962. In other areas of law, the ALI created Restatements of Law, usually referred to just as Restatements. For example, there is a Restatement of Contracts and a Restatement of Torts. The MPC is their equivalent for criminal law. Many states have wholly or largely adopted the MPC. Others have implemented it in part, and still others have not adopted any portion of it. However, even in jurisdictions where it has not been adopted, the MPC is often cited as persuasive authority in the same way that Restatements are in other areas of law.

The posting rule (or mailbox rule in the United States, also known as the "postal rule" or "deposited acceptance rule") is an exception to the general rule of contract law in common law countries that acceptance of an offer takes place when communicated. Under the posting rule, that acceptance takes effect when a letter is posted (that is, dropped in a post box or handed to a postal worker). In plain English, the "meeting of the minds" necessary to contract formation occurs at the exact moment word of acceptance is sent via post by the person accepting it, rather than when that acceptance is received by the person who offered the contract. The rules of contracts by post (postal rules) include the following: 1.  An offer made by post/letter is not effective until received by the offeree. 2.  Acceptance is effective as soon as it is posted. 3.  For revocation to be effective, it must be received by the offeree before they post their letter of acceptance. One rationale given for the rule is that the offeror nominates the post office as his or her implied agent, and thus receipt of the acceptance by the post office is regarded as receipt by the offeror. The main effect of the posting rule is that the risk of acceptance being delivered late or lost in the post is placed upon the offeror. If the offeror is reluctant to accept this risk, he can always expressly require actual receipt as a condition before being legally bound by his offer.

False imprisonment or unlawful imprisonment occurs when a person intentionally restricts another person’s movement within any area without legal authority, justification, or the restrained person's permission. Actual physical restraint is not necessary for false imprisonment to occur. A false imprisonment claim may be made based upon private acts, or upon wrongful governmental detention. For detention by the police, proof of false imprisonment provides a basis to obtain a writ of habeas corpus. Under common law, false imprisonment is both a crime and a tort. Imprisonment. Within the context of false imprisonment, an imprisonment occurs when a person is restrained from moving from a location or bounded area, as a result of a wrongful intentional act, such as the use of force, threat, coercion, or abuse of authority. Detention that is not false imprisonment. Even when a person is involuntarily detained, not all acts of detention amount to false imprisonment. The law may privilege a person to detain somebody else against their will. A legally authorized detention does not constitute false imprisonment. For example, if a parent or legal guardian of a child denies the child's request to leave their house, and prevents them from doing so, this would not ordinarily constitute false imprisonment. False imprisonment requires an intentional act, and an accidental detention will not support a claim of false imprisonment. Complete restraint. 'Imprisonment is, as I apprehend, a total restraint of the liberty of the person, for however, short a time, and not a partial obstruction of his will, whatever inconvenience it may bring on him.' There must be complete restraint, therefore, if there are alternative routes that can be taken this is not false imprisonment. Such as in Bird v Jones  where the claimant wanted to walk over Hammersmith bridge but the defendant had cordoned off the public footpath, however, this did not constitute false imprisonment because, through using a longer route, the claimant could have still reached their destination. Therefore, if there is a means of escape, this is not false imprisonment. There must be no reasonable means of escape and you may be compensated for any damages caused in order for you to escape reasonably. However, if you have not taken a reasonable route of escape/reasonable action you will not be awarded damages. The claimant does not need to be aware they are being imprisoned. It is still false imprisonment even where the claimant does not know at the time. So secretly locking someone in a room is false imprisonment. It may also be false imprisonment where a person is rendered unconscious, for example, by being punched (also a battery), or when their drink is spiked by drugs (also willful harm or negligence), because their freedom of movement is thereby restricted. For example, in the case of Meering v Grahame-White Aviation  the claimant was told to stay in an office because property was going missing and if they tried to leave the office they would have been stopped. This was held to be a false imprisonment even though the claimant did not know they were being imprisoned.

In the United States of America, individuals and corporations pay U.S. federal income tax on the net total of all their capital gains. The tax rate depends on both the investor's tax bracket and the amount of time the investment was held. Short-term capital gains are taxed at the investor's ordinary income tax rate and are defined as investments held for a year or less before being sold. Long-term capital gains, on dispositions of assets held for more than one year, are taxed at a lower rate. Current law. The United States taxes short-term capital gains at the same rate as it taxes ordinary income. Long-term capital gains are taxed at lower rates shown in the table below. (Qualified dividends receive the same preference.)  unrecaptured Section 1250 gain — the portion of gains on depreciable real estate (structures used for business purposes) that has been or could have been claimed as depreciation — is capped at 25%. The income amounts ("tax brackets") were reset by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 for the 2018 tax year to equal the amount that would have been due under prior law. They will be adjusted each year based on the Chained CPI measure of inflation. These income amounts are after deductions: There is another bracket of income below that shown as $0 in the table, on which no tax is due. For 2018, this amount is at least the standard deduction, $12,000 for an individual return and $24,000 for a joint return, or more if the taxpayer has over that amount in itemized deductions. Additional taxes. There may be taxes in addition to the tax rates shown in the above table. Taxpayers earning income above certain thresholds ($200,000 for singles and heads of household, $250,000 for married couples filing jointly and qualifying widowers with dependent children, and $125,000 for married couples filing separately) pay an additional 3.8% tax on all investment income. This tax is known as the net investment income tax. Therefore, the top federal tax rate on long-term capital gains is 23.8%. State and local taxes often apply to capital gains. In a state whose tax is stated as a percentage of the federal tax liability, the percentage is easy to calculate. Some states structure their taxes differently. In this case, the treatment of long-term and short-term gains does not necessarily correspond to the federal treatment. Capital gains do not push ordinary income into a higher income bracket. The Capital Gains and Qualified Dividends Worksheet in the Form 1040 instructions specifies a calculation that treats both long-term capital gains and qualified dividends as though they were the last income received, then applies the preferential tax rate as shown in the above table. Conversely, however, this means an increase in ordinary income will withdraw the 0% and 15% brackets for capital gains taxes.

Property law is the area of law that governs the various forms of ownership in real property (land) and personal property. Property refers to legally protected claims to resources, such as land and personal property, including intellectual property. Property can be exchanged through contract law, and if property is violated, one could sue under tort law to protect it. The concept, idea or philosophy of property underlies all property law. In some jurisdictions, historically all property was owned by the monarch and it devolved through feudal land tenure or other feudal systems of loyalty and fealty. Though the Napoleonic code was among the first government acts of modern times to introduce the notion of absolute ownership into statute, protection of personal property rights was present in medieval Islamic law and jurisprudence, and in more feudalist forms in the common law courts of medieval and early modern England. Theory. The word property, in everyday usage, refers to an object (or objects) owned by a person—a car, a book, or a cellphone—and the relationship the person has to it. In law, the concept acquires a more nuanced rendering. Factors to consider include the nature of the object, the relationship between the person and the object, the relationship between a number of people in relation to the object, and how the object is regarded within the prevailing political system. Most broadly and concisely, property in the legal sense refers to the rights of people in or over certain objects or things. Non-legally recognized or documented property rights are known as informal property rights. These informal property rights are non-codified or documented but recognized among local residents to varying degrees. Justifications and drawbacks of property rights. In capitalist societies with market economies, much of property is owned privately by persons or associations and not the government. Five general justifications have been given on private property rights: 1. Private property is an efficient way to manage resources in a decentralized basis, allowing expertise and specialization to develop with regard to the property. 2. Private property is a powerful incentive for owners to put it to productive use because they stand to gain in the investment. 3. Private property allows exchanges and modifications. 4. Private property is an important source of individual autonomy, giving individuals independence and identity distinct from others. 5. Private property, being dispersed, allows individuals to exercise freedom, against others or against the government. Arguments in favor of limiting private property rights have also been raised: 1. Private property can be used in a way that is harmful to others, such as a factory owner causing loud noises in nearby neighborhoods. In economics, this is known as a negative externality. Nuisance laws and government regulations (such as zoning) have been used to limit an owners' right to use the property in certain ways. 2. Property can lead to monopolies, giving the owner the power to unfairly extract advantages from others. Because of this, there are often laws on competition and antitrust. 3. Property can lead to the commodification of certain domains which people would prefer not to be commodified, such as social relations. There is debate in certain countries, for example, on whether organ sales or sex services should be legal. 4. Private property gives individuals power, which can exacerbate over time and lead to too much inequality within a society. The propensity for inequality is justification of wealth redistribution.

Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It prescribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and moral welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal law is established by statute, which is to say that the laws are enacted by a legislature. Criminal law includes the punishment and rehabilitation of people who violate such laws. Criminal law varies according to jurisdiction, and differs from civil law, where emphasis is more on dispute resolution and victim compensation, rather than on punishment or rehabilitation. Criminal procedure is a formalized official activity that authenticates the fact of commission of a crime and authorizes punitive or rehabilitative treatment of the offender. History. The first civilizations generally did not distinguish between civil law and criminal law. The first written codes of law were designed by the Sumerians. Around 2100 thru 2050 BC Ur-Nammu, the Neo-Sumerian king of Ur, enacted written legal code whose text has been discovered: the Code of Ur-Nammu although an earlier code of Urukagina of Lagash ( 2380 thru 2360 BC ) is also known to have existed. Another important early code was the Code of Hammurabi, which formed the core of Babylonian law. Only fragments of the early criminal laws of Ancient Greece have survived, e.g. those of Solon and Draco. In Roman law, Gaius's Commentaries on the Twelve Tables also conflated the civil and criminal aspects, treating theft (furtum) as a tort. Assault and violent robbery were analogized to trespass as to property. Breach of such laws created an obligation of law or vinculum juris discharged by payment of monetary compensation or damages. The criminal law of imperial Rome is collected in Books 47 thru 48 of the Digest. After the revival of Roman law in the 12th century, sixth-century Roman classifications and jurisprudence provided the foundations of the distinction between criminal and civil law in European law from then until the present time. The first signs of the modern distinction between crimes and civil matters emerged during the Norman Invasion of England. The special notion of criminal penalty, at least concerning Europe, arose in Spanish Late Scholasticism (see Alfonso de Castro), when the theological notion of God's penalty (poena aeterna) that was inflicted solely for a guilty mind, became transfused into canon law first and, finally, to secular criminal law. The development of the state dispensing justice in a court clearly emerged in the eighteenth century when European countries began maintaining police services. From this point, criminal law formalized the mechanisms for enforcement, which allowed for its development as a discernible entity.