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Hart, H. L. A.

(Encyclopedia)Hart, H. L. A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart), 1907–92, British legal philosopher. A lawyer and trained philosopher—he was a legal positivist—Hart subjected legal concepts to scrutiny in such wo...

Irnerius

(Encyclopedia)Irnerius ûrˌnērˈēəs [key], c.1055–c.1130, Italian jurist and founder of the law school (c.1088) at Bologna, which became the center of legal scholarship in Europe. Though little is known of hi...

Bynkershoek, Cornelius van

(Encyclopedia)Bynkershoek, Cornelius van kôrnāˈlĭs vän bĭngˈkərs-ho͞ok [key], 1673–1743, Dutch writer on international law. His De dominio maris [on the rule of the seas] (1702, tr. 1923) is a classic on...

Boswell, James

(Encyclopedia)Boswell, James, 1740–95, Scottish author, b. Edinburgh; son of a distinguished judge. At his father's insistence the young Boswell reluctantly studied law. Admitted to the bar in 1766, he practiced ...

Stein, Karl, Freiherr vom und zum

(Encyclopedia)Stein, Karl, Freiherr vom und zum kärl frīˈhĕr fəm o͝ont tso͝om shtīn [key], 1757–1831, Prussian statesman and reformer. Rising through the Prussian bureaucracy, he became minister of commer...

Posse Comitatus Act

(Encyclopedia)Posse Comitatus Act, 1878, U.S. federal law that makes it a crime to use the military as a domestic police force in the United States under most circumstances. The law was designed to end the use of f...

ring, mathematical system

(Encyclopedia)ring, in mathematics, system consisting of a set R of elements and two binary operations, such that addition makes R a commutative group and multiplication is associative and distributes over addition...

McBain, Howard Lee

(Encyclopedia)McBain, Howard Lee, 1880–1936, American political scientist, b. Toronto, Ont., grad. Richmond (Va.) College, 1900, Ph.D. Columbia, 1907. After teaching at George Washington and Wisconsin universitie...

Ames, James Barr

(Encyclopedia)Ames, James Barr, 1846–1910, American jurist, b. Boston, grad. Harvard Law School, 1873. At Harvard he became associate professor (1873), professor (1877), and dean (1895). A disciple of C. C. Langd...

Traynor, Roger John

(Encyclopedia)Traynor, Roger John, 1900–1983, American jurist, b. Park City, Utah, grad. Univ. of California at Berkeley (A.B., 1923, Ph.D., 1926, J.D., 1927.) After teaching political science and law at the Univ...