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Chapter 1: Changes to Law

Key words:

Case Law/common law: a type of law developed in England that is based on the following previous judicial decisions and is common to all the people of a country.

Civil disobedience: a peaceful form of protest by which a person refuses to obey a particular law as a matter of conscience.

Crown: lawyer employed by the state to prosecute a criminal offense

Exculpating factor: a factor that clears a defendant of blame.

Lobby group: a number of people trying to influence legislators on behalf of a particular cause or interest.

Precedent: a legal decision that is taken as a guide for subsequent cases.

Royal Commission: a board of inquiry appointed by the government to investigate and report on a particular issue

Rule of law: the fundamental principle that society is governed by laws applying equally to all persons and that neither any person nor the government is above the law.

statue law: laws passed by legislatures

Chapter 2: Sources and Categories of Law

Key words:

Administrative law - the category of public law that governs relations between people on the one hand and government agencies, boards, and departments on the other

Patriate - bring decision-making powers regarding the constitution under Canadian control

Constitutional law - in Canada, the body of written and unwritten laws that set out how the country will be governed. This type of law sets out the distribution of powers between the federal government and the provinces and embodies certain important legal principles

Convention - a way of doing something that has been accepted for so long that it amounts to an unwritten rule

Criminal law - the category of public law that prohibits a punishes behaviour that injures people, property, and society as a whole

Custom - a long-established way of doing something that, over, time, has acquired the force of law

Defendant - in civil law, the party being sued; in criminal law, the person charged with an offence

Domestic law - a law that governs activities within a particular country

Estate law - the area of private law that regulates wills and probates, and determines what happens to a person's property after death

Family law - the area of private law that governs relations among members of a family

International law - a law that has jurisdiction in more than one country

Intra vires

Judicial Independence - the principle that judges function independently of the government.

Parliamentary supremacy - the principle that Parliament has the supreme of making Canadian laws.

plaintiff - in civil law, the party suing

Primary sources of law - those parts of a legal system that have the longest historical development and represent the system's cumulative values, beliefs, and principles

Private law - the body of law that regulates disputes between individuals, businesses, or organizations; sometimes called civil law

Procedural law - a law that outlines the methods or procedures that must be followed in enforcing substantive laws

Property law - the area of private law that applies primarily to the buying, selling, and renting of land and buildings and the use to which lands may be put

Public law - the area of law that regulates activities between a state and its citizens

Secondary sources of law - current laws that enshrine a society's values in written rules and regulations that have been formulated by legislators and judges

Stare decisis - (Latin) to stand by the decision

Substantive law - a law that identifies the rights and duties of a person or level of government

Tort law: the area of private law covering civil wrongs and damages that one person or company causes to another, when the wrongs or damages aride independently of a contractual relationship

Ultra vires - (Latin) beyond the power of

intra vires - (Latin) within the power of

Chapter 3: Theories and Concepts of Law

Key Words:

Dialectic - the process of clarifying an idea through discussion

Justice - in Plato's theory of natural law, he state or condition that exists when all the powers of an individual or society are working together in harmony for the good of the whole world

Legal realism - the school of legal philosophy that examines law in a realistic rather than theoretical fashion; the belief that law is determined by what actually happens in the courts as the judges interpret and apply law

Marxism - an economic and political theory that states that law is an instrument of oppression and control that the ruling classes uses against the working classes.

Natural law

Positive law

Utilitarianism

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