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Salian Law

(Encyclopedia)Salian Law: see Germanic laws.

Roman law

(Encyclopedia)Roman law, the legal system of Rome from the supposed founding of the city in 753 b.c. to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in a.d. 1453; it was later adopted as the basis of modern civil law. Most aut...

periodic law

(Encyclopedia)periodic law, statement of a periodic recurrence of chemical and physical properties of the elements when the elements are arranged in order of increasing atomic number. Such an arrangement in the for...

Stephen, Sir James Fitzjames

(Encyclopedia)Stephen, Sir James Fitzjames, 1829–94, English jurist and journalist; brother of Sir Leslie Stephen. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge and was admitted to the bar in 1854. After 1855 he wrote ma...

Feuerbach, Paul Johann Anselm von

(Encyclopedia)Feuerbach, Paul Johann Anselm von foiˈərbäkh [key], 1775–1833, German jurist; father of Ludwig Feuerbach. His work was in the field of criminal law. In Kritik des natürlichen Rechts [critique o...

Bassiouni, M. Cherif

(Encyclopedia)Bassiouni, M. Cherif (Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni), 1937–2017, Egyptian-American international criminal law jurist and human-rights advocate, b. Cairo. Bassiouni fought for Egypt in the Suez conflict (...

benefit of clergy

(Encyclopedia)benefit of clergy, term originally applied to the exemption of Christian clerics from criminal prosecution in the secular courts. The privilege was established by the 12th cent., and it extended only ...

Wharton, Francis

(Encyclopedia)Wharton, Francis, 1820–89, American clergyman and lawyer, b. Philadelphia, grad. Yale, 1839. Admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1843, he became an authority on criminal law and wrote A Treatise on ...

entrapment

(Encyclopedia)entrapment, in law, the instigation of a crime in the attempt to obtain cause for a criminal prosecution. Situations in which a government operative merely provides the occasion for the commission of ...

conspiracy

(Encyclopedia)conspiracy, in law, agreement of two or more persons to commit a criminal or otherwise unlawful act. At common law, the crime of conspiracy was committed with the making of the agreement, but present-...