Month: October 2020

A type of writ, meant for rare use, by which an appellate court decides to review a case at its discretion.  The word certiorari comes from Law Latin and means “to be more fully informed.”  A writ of certiorari orders a lower court to deliver its record in a case so that the higher court may review it.  The U.S. Supreme Court uses certiorari to select most of the cases it hears. The writ of certiorari is a common law writ, which may be abrogated or controlled entirely by statute or court rules.

Last updated in June of 2017 by Stephanie Jurkowski.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/writ_of_certiorari

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/643

(b)Income

For purposes of this subpart and subparts B, C, and D, the term “income”, when not preceded by the words “taxable”, “distributable net”, “undistributed net”, or “gross”, means the amount of income of the estate or trust for the taxable year determined under the terms of the governing instrument and applicable local law. Items of gross income constituting extraordinary dividends or taxable stock dividends which the fiduciary, acting in good faith, determines to be allocable to corpus under the terms of the governing instrument and applicable local law shall not be considered income.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_common_law

Federal common law is a term of United States law used to describe common law that is developed by the federal courts, instead of by the courts of the various states. The United States is the only country to combine the creation of common law doctrines with a complete federalism, wherein the national supreme court has virtually no power to review state court decisions to determine whether the state courts have followed state laws.^{[citation needed]} The High Court of Australia is sometimes said^{[by whom?]} to have^{[clarification needed]} federal common law, but because all state and territorial courts are directly appealable to the High Court, this is indistinguishable from a general common law.^{[original research?]} In contrast, the United States Supreme Court has effectively barred the creation of federal common law in areas traditionally under the authority of state courts. Nevertheless, there are several areas where federal common law continues to govern.

https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/dicta

Opinions of a judge that do not embody the resolution or determination of the specific case before the court. Expressions in a court’s opinion that go beyond the facts before the court and therefore are individual views of the author of the opinion and not binding in subsequent cases as legal precedent. The plural of dictum.

A precedent is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive for a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts.^[1][2][3] Common-law legal systems place great value on deciding cases according to consistent principled rules, so that similar facts will yield similar and predictable outcomes, and observance of precedent is the mechanism by which that goal is attained. The principle by which judges are bound to precedents is known as stare decisis (a Latin phrase with the literal meaning of “to stand in the-things-that-have-been-decided”). Common-law precedent is a third kind of law, on equal footing with statutory law (that is, statutes and codes enacted by legislative bodies) and subordinate legislation (that is, regulations promulgated by executive branch agencies, in the form of delegated legislation (in UK parlance) or regulatory law (in US parlance)).

Case law, in common-law jurisdictions, is the set of decisions of adjudicatory tribunals or other rulings that can be cited as precedent. In most countries, including most European countries, the term is applied to any set of rulings on law, which is guided by previous rulings, for example, previous decisions of a government agency. Essential to the development of case law is the publication and indexing of decisions for use by lawyers, courts, and the general public, in the form of law reports. While all decisions are precedent (though at varying levels of authority as discussed throughout this article), some become “leading cases” or “landmark decisions” that are cited especially often.

Generally speaking, a legal precedent is said to be:

• applied (if precedent is binding) / adopted (if precedent is persuasive), if the principles underpinning the previous decision are accordingly used to evaluate the issues of the subsequent case;
• distinguished, if the principles underpinning the previous decision is found specific to, or premised upon, certain factual scenarios, and not applied to the subsequent case because of the absence or material difference in the latter’s facts; or
• overruled, if the same or higher courts on appeal or determination of subsequent cases found the principles underpinning the previous decision erroneous in law or overtaken by new legislation or developments.

In contrast, civil law systems adhere to a legal positivism, where past decisions do not usually have the precedential, binding effect that they have in common law decision-making; the judicial review practiced by constitutional courts can be regarded as a notable exception.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedent

(sees-in) n. an old feudal term for having both possession and title of real property. The word is found in some old deeds, meaning ownership in fee simple (full title to real property). (See: fee simple, seized)

seized

seized (seised)

n. 1) having ownership, commonly used in wills as “I give all the property of which I die seized as follows:….” 2) having taken possession of evidence for use in a criminal prosecution. 3) having taken property or a person by force. (See: seisin, seizure)

Fee Simple

The greatest possible estate in land, wherein the owner has the right to use it, exclusively possess it, commit waste upon it, dispose of it by deed or will, and take its fruits. A fee simple represents absolute ownership of land, and therefore the owner may do whatever he or she chooses with the land. If an owner of a fee simple dies intestate, the land will descend to the heirs.

The term fee used independently is an adequate designation of this type of estate in land. The term simple is added to distinguish clearly this estate from other interests in real property.

a system whereby the government undertakes to protect the health and well-being of its citizens, especially those in financial or social need, by means of grants, pensions, and other benefits. The foundations for the modern welfare state in the US were laid by the New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

• a country practicing a welfare state system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state