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Renault, Louis

(Encyclopedia)Renault, Louis lwē rənōˈ [key], 1843–1918, French jurist, professor of international law at the Univ. of Paris. Renault was one of the founders of the scientific study of international law in Fr...

Noether, Emmy

(Encyclopedia)Noether, Emmy (Amalie Emmy Noether) ämälˈyə ĕmˈē nöˈtər [key], 1882–1935, German mathematician, b. Erlangen, Germany, grad. Univ. of Erlangen (Ph.D. 1908). She made important contributions...

Burger, Warren Earl

(Encyclopedia)Burger, Warren Earl, 1907–95, American jurist, 15th chief justice of the United States (1969–86), b. St. Paul, Minn. After receiving his law degree in 1931 from St. Paul College of Law (now Mitche...

natural rights

(Encyclopedia)natural rights, political theory that maintains that an individual enters into society with certain basic rights and that no government can deny these rights. The modern idea of natural rights grew ou...

treason

(Encyclopedia)treason, legal term for various acts of disloyalty. The English law, first clearly stated in the Statute of Treasons (1350), originally distinguished high treason from petit (or petty) treason. Petit ...

custom

(Encyclopedia)custom, habitual group pattern of behavior that is transmitted from one generation to another and is not biologically determined. Since societies are perpetually changing, no matter how slowly, all cu...

Inns of Court

(Encyclopedia)Inns of Court, collective name of the four legal societies in London that have the exclusive right of admission to the bar. These societies—Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, the Inner Temple, and the Middl...

inertia

(Encyclopedia)inertia ĭnûrˈshə [key], in physics, the resistance of a body to any alteration in its state of motion, i.e., the resistance of a body at rest to being set in motion or of a body in motion to any c...

orphan drug

(Encyclopedia)orphan drug, drug developed under the U.S. Orphan Drug Act (1983) to treat a disease that affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. The orphan drug law offers tax breaks and a seven-year...

McReynolds, James Clark

(Encyclopedia)McReynolds, James Clark məkrĕnˈəldz [key], 1862–1946, U.S. Attorney General (1913–14) and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1914–41), b. Elkton, Ky. He received his law degree fro...