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Questions tagged [legal-terms]

Use this when questioning the meaning of legal terms.

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Why do many "No Trespassing" signs say "POSTED"?

Many "no trespassing" signs say "POSTED" in large letters at the top. Why? Obviously, the sign is posted; that's the whole purpose of a sign. To me, it makes as much sense as putting "ASKED" at the start of a Stack Exchange question or "TEXTED" at…
Someone
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Is "legalese" a thing in languages other than English?

The idea of legalese needs little introduction. An archaic professional jargon that has developed in the English-speaking world over hundreds of years, it has been largely preserved and sustained by lawyers both due to inertia and a desire to speak…
Robert Columbia
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Does "statistically significant" have a specific legal meaning?

I occasionally write expert opinions as a statistician or econometrician for legal cases in the United States. On a few different cases, I have been hired to determine whether a given sample should be considered statistically significant, usually at…
NickCHK
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Is a sign that only says "POSTED", nothing else, sufficient to be understood as "No Trespassing"?

In 2014 I hiked in the Adirondack Mountains, New York, United States of America. The trail passed a sign that had a single word on it: "POSTED". There was no other text on the sign either on the front or on the back. Not understanding what it…
gerrit
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Pretending to be from the "Freedom to Breathe Agency": impersonating an officer?

There's a woman going around claiming to be from the federal "Freedom to Breathe Agency", telling store workers that they can personally be sued for telling customers that they need to wear a mask. Multiple people have said that she should be…
Matthew Cline
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What is the significance of “moral turpitude”?

Ellis, Chesebro and Powell have all asked the court to state their crimes were not ones of “moral turpitude”. What is the significance of that expression and why is it so important to them?
Simd
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If an adult is raped by a minor, is it statutory rape?

Say an adult is raped by a minor, and does not give legally applicable consent regardless of knowledge of age of the minor. Do statutory rape charges against the adult still apply?
TheEnvironmentalist
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Is the term "evil" defined in law?

An infamous clause found occasionally in software licenses is: The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil. This clause has been discussed in many places, including Software Engineering Stack Exchange and Open Source Stack Exchange. While a lot…
Robert Columbia
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Why are there so many YouTube to MP4 and MP3 download websites online when it is illegal?

If it is illegal to download videos and audios from YouTube due to copyright reasons, why are there so many YouTube to MP4 and MP3 download websites online? For example, https://freevideotomp3.com/, one could reason about them just providing a way…
PedroD
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Is it illegal to ask someone to commit a misdemeanor? What is this called?

In my Googling, I learned that (at least in most of the U.S.) a defendant cannot be an accessory to a misdemeanor. What about someone just nagging and insisting on it?
Frungi
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What does it mean to "pirate" a game, app, or other digital resource?

I've heard the term "pirate" many times before, but I have never really understood it. How do people do it and why?
Sphinx the riddle master
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Is "Innocent until proven guilty" merely a cliche used in legal dramas?

A comment on this site says: Who says "Innocent until proven guilty"? That's a lame cliche for legal dramas. Is this true? Or is the phrase "Innocent until proven guilty" found in legal texts and judicial reasoning?
Jen
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Is it considered a breach of confidentiality if data is uploaded to a website which only makes that data available to the uploader?

I'm a developer working at a company that handles sensitive banking information and recently, I've had troubles organising my code and thus posted it in a private repository on Github, which only I can access in any way. A week later, I got a notice…
ratouney
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Is there a common name for lawyers and judges?

Lawyers and Judges, for as different as their roles may be, still work in the same system, and share many skills, even if their jobs involve vary different application of said skills. Thus, I'm curious, given these similarities, is there a common…
Tirous
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What does the long underscore in United States case citations stand for?

United States court cases are commonly cited like this: Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015) So... what is "___" here?
user556
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