Law School

The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law. A primary motivation for this clause was to validate the equality provisions contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which guaranteed that all citizens would have the guaranteed right to equal protection by law. As a whole, the Fourteenth Amendment marked a large shift in American constitutionalism, by applying substantially more constitutional restrictions against the states than had applied before the Civil War. The meaning of the Equal Protection Clause has been the subject of much debate, and inspired the well-known phrase "Equal Justice Under Law". This clause was the basis for Brown v Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision that helped to dismantle racial segregation, and also the basis for many other decisions rejecting discrimination against, and bigotry towards, people belonging to various groups. While the Equal Protection Clause itself applies only to state and local governments, the Supreme Court held in Bolling v Sharpe (1954) that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment nonetheless imposes various equal protection requirements on the federal government via reverse incorporation.

Declarations against interest are an exception to the rule on hearsay in which a person's statement may be used, where generally the content of the statement is so prejudicial to the person making it that they would not have made the statement unless he believed the statement was true. The Federal Rules of evidence limit the bases of prejudices to the declarant to tort and criminal liability. Some states, such as California, extend the prejudice to "hatred, ridicule, or social disgrace in the community." The admissibility of evidence under the declaration against interest exception to the hearsay rule is often limited by the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment. A declaration against interest differs from a party admission because here the declarant does not have to be a party to the case, but must have a basis for knowing that the statement is true. Furthermore, evidence of the statement will only be admissible if the declarant is unavailable to testify. Res gestae (Latin "things done") is a term found in substantive and procedural American jurisprudence and English law. In American substantive law, it refers to the start-to-end period of a felony. In American procedural law, it refers to a former exception to the hearsay rule for statements made spontaneously or as part of an act. The English and Canadian version of res gestae is similar but is still recognized as a traditional exception to the hearsay rule. In the law of evidence, an implied assertion is a statement or conduct that implies a side issue surrounding certain admissible facts which have not necessarily been complied with the rules of relevance. There is varying opinion of whether hearsay evidence of implied assertions should be admissible in court to prove the issue within contents. While they are considered hearsay, they are generally considered to some extent unreliable than regular statements which are less easy to be fabricated. A present sense impression, in the law of evidence, is a statement made by a person (the declarant) that conveys his or her sense of the state of an event or the condition of something. The statement must be spontaneously made while the person was perceiving (for example, contemporaneous with) the event or condition, or "immediately thereafter." The permissible time lapse between event and statement may range from seconds to minutes, but probably not hours. The subject matter and content of the statement are limited to descriptions or explanations of the event or condition, therefore opinions, inferences, or conclusions about the event or condition are not present sense impressions. An example of present sense impression is of a person saying, "it's cold" or "we're going really fast". A learned treatise, in the law of evidence, is a text that is sufficiently authoritative in its field to be admissible as evidence in a court in support of the contentions made therein. With respect to authentication, an "ancient document" is one that may be deemed authentic without a witness to attest to the circumstances of its creation because its age suggests that it is unlikely to have been falsified in anticipation of the litigation in which it is introduced.

Legal immunity, or immunity from prosecution, is a legal status wherein an individual or entity cannot be held liable for a violation of the law, in order to facilitate societal aims that outweigh the value of imposing liability in such cases. Such legal immunity may be from criminal prosecution, or from civil liability (being subject of lawsuit), or both. The most notable forms of legal immunity are diplomatic immunity, judicial immunity, and witness immunity. One author has described legal immunity as "the obverse of a legal power" A party has an immunity with respect to some action, object, or status, if some other relevant party – in this context, another state or international agency, or citizen or group of citizens – has no (power) right to alter the party's legal standing in point of rights or duties in the specified respect. There is a wide range of legal immunities that may be invoked in the name of the right to rule. In international law, immunities may be created when states assert powers of derogation, as is permitted, for example, from the European Convention on Human Rights "in times of war or other public emergency." Equally familiar examples include the immunities against prosecution granted to representatives (MPs or councilors) and government officials in pursuit of their duties. Such legal immunities may be suspected as potential violations of the rule of law, or regarded as quite proper, as necessary protections for the officers of the state in the rightful pursuit of their duties. In criminal law, diminished responsibility (or diminished capacity) is a potential defense by excuse by which defendants argue that although they broke the law, they should not be held fully criminally liable for doing so, as their mental functions were "diminished" or impaired. Diminished capacity is a partial defense to charges that require that the defendant act with a particular state of mind. For example, if the felony murder rule does not apply, first degree murder requires that the state prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant acted with premeditation, deliberation, and the specific intent to kill—all three are necessary elements of the state's case. If evidence exists, sufficient to create a reasonable doubt as to whether the defendant because of mental illness or "defect" possessed the capacity to premeditate, deliberate or form the specific intent to kill then the state cannot convict the defendant of first degree murder. This does not mean that the defendant is entitled to an acquittal. The defendant still might be convicted of second degree murder which only requires that the defendant act with general malice. The defense's acceptance in American jurisdictions varies considerably. The majority of states have adopted it by statute or case decision, and a minority even recognize broader defenses such as "irresistible impulse". Some U.S. states restrict the defense to the charge of murder only where a successful defense will result in a manslaughter conviction instead of murder. Until recently, the Republic of Ireland did not accept the partial defense. The Irish Supreme Court had rejected the existence of the defense in DPP v O'Mahony. The case was recently abrogated, however, by enactment of the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act 2006, effective June 1, 2006. The act, in pertinent part, specifically adopted the partial defense for the charge of murder where a successful defense will result in a manslaughter conviction instead of murder.

A trust is a legal relationship in which the legal title to property is entrusted to a person or legal entity with a fiduciary duty to hold and use it for another's benefit. In the Anglo-American common law, the party who entrusts the property is known as the "settlor", the party to whom the property is entrusted is known as the "trustee", the party for whose benefit the property is entrusted is known as the "beneficiary", and the entrusted property itself is known as the "corpus" or "trust property". With the strategic and legal use of Trusts, individuals can ensure that their children and grandchildren or chosen beneficiaries are able to benefit completely from the inheritance they want them to receive. A testamentary trust is created by a will and arises after the death of the settlor. An inter vivos trust is created during the settlor's lifetime by a trust instrument. A trust may be revocable or irrevocable; in the United States, a trust is presumed to be irrevocable unless the instrument or will creating it states it is revocable, except in California, Oklahoma, and Texas, in which trusts are presumed to be revocable unless the instrument or will creating them states they are irrevocable. An irrevocable trust can be "broken" (revoked) only by a judicial proceeding. The trustee is the legal owner of the property in trust, as fiduciary for the beneficiary or beneficiaries who is/are the equitable owner(s) of the trust property. Trustees thus have a fiduciary duty to manage the trust to the benefit of the equitable owners. They must provide a regular accounting of trust income and expenditures. Trustees may be compensated and be reimbursed their expenses. A court of competent jurisdiction can remove a trustee who breaches his/her fiduciary duty. Some breaches of fiduciary duty can be charged and tried as criminal offences in a court of law. A trustee can be a natural person, a business entity or a public body. A trust in the United States may be subject to federal and state taxation. A trust is created by a settlor, who transfers title to some or all of his or her property to a trustee, who then holds title to that property in trust for the benefit of the beneficiaries. The trust is governed by the terms under which it was created. In most jurisdictions, this requires a contractual trust agreement or deed. It is possible for a single individual to assume the role of more than one of these parties, and for multiple individuals to share a single role. For example, in a living trust it is common for the grantor to be both a trustee and a lifetime beneficiary while naming other contingent beneficiaries.

A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a lawful proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions. Jury trials are used in a significant share of serious criminal cases in many but not all common law judicial systems. The majority of common law jurisdictions in Asia (such as Singapore, Pakistan, India, and Malaysia) have abolished jury trials on the grounds that juries are susceptible to bias. Juries or lay judges have also been incorporated into the legal systems of many civil law countries for criminal cases. Only the United States makes routine use of jury trials in a wide variety of non-criminal cases. Other common law legal jurisdictions use jury trials only in a very select class of cases that make up a tiny share of the overall civil docket (like malicious prosecution and false imprisonment suits in England and Wales), but true civil jury trials are almost entirely absent elsewhere in the world. Some civil law jurisdictions, however, have arbitration panels where non-legally trained members decide cases in select subject-matter areas relevant to the arbitration panel members' areas of expertise. The use of jury trials, which evolved within common law systems rather than civil law systems, has had a profound impact on the nature of American civil procedure and criminal procedure rules, even if a bench trial is actually contemplated in a particular case. In general, the availability of a jury trial if properly demanded has given rise to a system in which fact finding is concentrated in a single trial rather than multiple hearings, and appellate review of trial court decisions is greatly limited. Jury trials are of far less importance (or of no importance) in countries that do not have a common law system.

In United States constitutional law, a Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibits arbitrary deprivation of life, liberty, or property by the government except as authorized by law. The U.S. Supreme Court interprets these clauses broadly, concluding that they provide three protections: procedural due process (in civil and criminal proceedings); substantive due process, a prohibition against vague laws; and as the vehicle for the incorporation of the Bill of Rights. Text. The clause in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. The clause in Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: ...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. Background. Clause 39 of Magna Carta provided: No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. The phrase "due process of law" first appeared in a statutory rendition of the Magna Carta in 1354 during the reign of Edward III of England, as follows: No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken (taken to mean arrested or deprived of liberty by the state), nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law. Drafting. New York was the only state that asked Congress to add "due process" language to the U.S. Constitution. New York ratified the U.S. Constitution and proposed the following amendment in 1788: o Person ought to be taken imprisoned or disseized of his freehold, or be exiled or deprived of his Privileges, Franchises, Life, Liberty or Property but by due process of Law. In response to this proposal from New York, James Madison drafted a due process clause for Congress. Madison cut out some language and inserted the word without, which had not been proposed by New York. Congress then adopted the exact wording that Madison proposed after Madison explained that the due process clause would not be sufficient to protect various other rights: Although I know whenever the great rights, the trial by jury, freedom of the press, or liberty of conscience, come in question in that body, the invasion of them is resisted by able advocates, yet their Magna Carta does not contain any one provision for the security of those rights, respecting which the people of America are most alarmed.

An excited utterance, in the law of evidence, is a statement made by a person in response to a startling or shocking event or condition. It is an unplanned reaction to a "startling event". It is an exception to the hearsay rule. The statement must be spontaneously made by the person (the declarant) while still under the stress of excitement from the event or condition. The subject matter and content of the statement must "relate to" the event or condition. The statement could be a description or explanation (as required for present sense impression), or an opinion or inference. Examples include: "Look out! We're going to crash!" or "I think he's crazy. He's shooting at us!" The basis for this hearsay exception is the belief that a statement made under the stress is likely to be trustworthy and unlikely to be a premeditated falsehood. Compared to present sense impressions, excited utterance is broader in scope for permitting a longer time lapse between event and statement, and a wider range of content in the statement. Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, an excited utterance is a hearsay exception, and is admissible to prove the truth of the statement itself (for example, in the case of the first quotation above, to prove that the vehicle the declarant was riding in was, in fact, about to crash). To prove the truth of the statement means to persuade the finder of fact to believe the affirmative sense of the statement. "Truth" here does not mean truth from the subjective point of view of the declarant or from the objective point of view of a reasonably prudent person. It simply refers to the affirmative assertion of the statement. In the law of evidence, a dying declaration is testimony that would normally be barred as hearsay but may in common law nonetheless be admitted as evidence in criminal law trials because it constituted the last words of a dying person. The rationale is that someone who is dying or believes death to be imminent would have less incentive to fabricate testimony, and as such, the hearsay statement carries with it some reliability. The business records exception to the U.S. hearsay rule is based on Rule 803(6) of the Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE). It is sometimes referred to as the business entry rule. Rationale. The basic rationale for the exception is that employees are under a duty to be accurate in observing, reporting, and recording business facts. The underlying belief is that special reliability is provided by the regularity with which the records are made and kept, as well as the incentive of employees to keep accurate records (under threat of termination or other penalty). The exception functions to allow the record to substitute for the in-court testimony of the employees, but it can only substitute for what the employee could testify about. The availability of the declarant (the employee whose testimony is being replaced by the record) is immaterial for the purposes of this exception. The party admission, in the law of evidence, is a type of statement that appears to be hearsay (an out of court statement) but is generally exempted (excluded) from the definition of hearsay because it was made by a party to the litigation adverse to the party introducing it into evidence.

A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two people, with matched weapons, in accordance with agreed-upon rules. Duels in this form were chiefly practiced in early modern Europe with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period (18th to late 19th centuries, if not beyond) especially among military officers. During the 17th and 18th centuries (and earlier), duels were mostly fought with swords (the rapier, and later the small sword), but beginning in the late 18th century in England, duels were more commonly fought using pistols. Fencing and pistol duels continued to co-exist throughout the 19th century. The duel was based on a code of honor. Duels were fought not so much to kill the opponent as to gain "satisfaction", that is, to restore one's honor by demonstrating a willingness to risk one's life for it, and as such the tradition of dueling was originally reserved for the male members of nobility; however, in the modern era, it extended to those of the upper classes generally. On occasion, duels with pistols or swords were fought between women. Legislation against dueling goes back to the medieval period. The Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) outlawed duels, and civil legislation in the Holy Roman Empire against dueling was passed in the wake of the Thirty Years' War. From the early 17th century, duels became illegal in the countries where they were practiced. Dueling largely fell out of favor in England by the mid-19th century and in Continental Europe by the turn of the 20th century. Dueling declined in the Eastern United States in the 19th century and by the time the American Civil War broke out, dueling had begun to wane even in the South. Public opinion, not legislation, caused the change. Research has linked the decline of dueling to increases in state capacity.

In the law of property, a pretermitted heir is a person who would likely stand to inherit under a will, except that the testator (the person who wrote the will) did not include the person in the testator's will. Omission may occur because the testator did not know of the omitted person at the time the will was written. A will may contain a clause that explicitly disinherits any heirs unknown at the time that the will is executed, or any heirs not named in the will. While such a clause will not necessarily prevent a claim against an estate by a pretermitted heir, it may make it more difficult to succeed in such an action. Forced heirship is a form of testate partible inheritance whereby the estate of a deceased is separated into (1) an indefeasible portion, the forced, passing to the deceased's next-of-kin, and (2) a discretionary portion, or free estate, to be freely disposed of by will. Forced heirship is generally a feature of civil-law legal systems which do not recognize total freedom of testation. Normally, the deceased's estate is in-gathered and wound up without discharging liabilities, which means accepting inheritance includes accepting the liabilities attached to inherited property. The forced estate is divided into shares which include the share of issue (legitime or child's share) and the spousal share. This provides a minimum protection that cannot be defeated by will. The free estate, on the other hand, is at the discretion of a testator to be distributed by will on death to whomever he or she chooses. Takers in the forced estate are known as forced heirs. The expression comes from Louisianan legal language and is ultimately a calque of Spanish sucesión forzosa.

A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a lawful proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions. Jury trials are used in a significant share of serious criminal cases in many but not all common law judicial systems. The majority of common law jurisdictions in Asia (such as Singapore, Pakistan, India, and Malaysia) have abolished jury trials on the grounds that juries are susceptible to bias. Juries or lay judges have also been incorporated into the legal systems of many civil law countries for criminal cases. Only the United States makes routine use of jury trials in a wide variety of non-criminal cases. Other common law legal jurisdictions use jury trials only in a very select class of cases that make up a tiny share of the overall civil docket (like malicious prosecution and false imprisonment suits in England and Wales), but true civil jury trials are almost entirely absent elsewhere in the world. Some civil law jurisdictions, however, have arbitration panels where non-legally trained members decide cases in select subject-matter areas relevant to the arbitration panel members' areas of expertise. The use of jury trials, which evolved within common law systems rather than civil law systems, has had a profound impact on the nature of American civil procedure and criminal procedure rules, even if a bench trial is actually contemplated in a particular case. In general, the availability of a jury trial if properly demanded has given rise to a system in which fact finding is concentrated in a single trial rather than multiple hearings, and appellate review of trial court decisions is greatly limited. Jury trials are of far less importance (or of no importance) in countries that do not have a common law system.