Legal Articles

In English law. Land, also called “charter-land,” which was held by deed under certain rents and free services, and differed in nothing from free socage land. 2 Bl. Comm. 90.

In French law. A note enumerating the purchases and sales which may have been made by a broker or stockbroker. This name is also given to the statement given to a banker with bills for discount or coupons to receive. Arg. Fr. Merc. Law, 547.

Courts of limited criminal jurisdiction, established in English boroughs under the municipal corporations act.

A certain allowance of provision from the king to his knights and servants, who attended him on any military expedition.

In French marine law. A compass; the mariner’s compass.

An ancient mode of punishment by inflicting a mark on an offender with a hot iron. It is generally disused in civil law. but is a recognized punishment for some military offenses.

Forcibly separating, parting, disintegrating, or piercing any solid substance. In the law as to housebreaking and burglary, it means the tearing away or removal of any part of a house or of the locks, latches, or other fastenings Intended to secure it, or otherwise exerting force to gain an entrance, with the intent to commit a felony; or violently or forcibly breaking out of a house, after having unlawfully entered It, in the attempt to escape. Gaddie v. Com., 117 Ky. 40S, 78 S. W. 163, 111 Am. St. Rep. 259; Sims v. State, 136 Ind. 358, 36 N. E. 278; Melton v. State, 24 Tex. App. 287, 6 S. W. 303; Mathews v. State, 36 Tex. 675; Carter v. State, 68 Ala. 98; State v. Newbegin, 25 Me. 503; McCourt v. People, 64 N. Y. 5S5. In the law of burglary, “constructive” breaking, as distinguished from actual, forcible breaking, may be classed under the following heads: (1) Entries obtained by threats; (2) when, in consequence of violence done or threatened in order to obtain entry, the owner, with a view more effectually to repel it, opens the door and sallies out and the felon enters; (3) when entrance is obtained by procuring the service of some intermediate person, such as a servant, to remove the fastening; (4) when some process of law is fraudulently resorted to for the purpose of obtaining an entrance; (5) when some trick is resorted to to induce the owner to remove the fastenings and open the door. State v. Henry, 31 N. C. 46S; Clarke v. Com., 25 Grat. (Va.) 912; Ducher v. State. 18 Ohio, 317; Johnston v. Com.. 85 Pa. 64, 27 Am. Rep. 622; Nicholls v. State, 68 Wis. 416, 32 N. W. 543, 60 Am. Rep. 870.

A writ. An original writ. A writ or precept of the king issuing out of his courts. A writ by which a person is summoned or attached to answer an action, complaint, etc., or whereby anything is commanded to be done in the courts, in order to justice, etc. It is called “breve,” from the brevity of it, and is addressed either to the defendant himself, or to the chancellors, judges, sheriffs, or other officers. Skene.

Certain writs of approved and established form which were granted of course in actions to which they were applicable, and which could not be changed but by consent of the great council of the realm. Bract, fol. 4136.

Persons chosen by the citizens, to have the care and supervision of bridges, and having certain fees and profits belonging to their office, as in the case of London Bridge.

In old English law. A legal maxim. “Brocardica Juris,” the title of a small book of legal maxims, published at Paris, 1508.

The statute 6 Geo. I. c. 18, “for restraining several extravagant and unwarrantable practices herein mentioned,” was so called. It prescribed penalties for the formation of companies with little or no capital, with the intention, by means of alluring advertisements, of obtaining money from the public by the sale of shares. Such undertakings were then commonly called “bubbles.” This legislation was prompted by the collapse of the “South Sea Project,” which, as Blackstone says, “had oeggared half the nation.” It was mostly repealed by the statute 6 Geo. IV. c. 91.

In France, the official sheet which publishes the laws and decrees; this publication constitutes the promulgation of the law or decree.

A word used in Domesday, signifying a breach of the peace in a town. Jacob.

Murder committed with the object of selling the cadaver for purposes of dissection, particularly and originally, by suffocating or strangling the victim. So named from William Burke, a notorious practitioner of this crime, who was hanged at Edinburgh in 1829. It is said that the first instance of his name being thus used as a synonym for the form of death he had inflicted on others occurred when he himself was led to the gibbet, the crowd around the scaffold shouting “Burke him!”

Those hours of the day during which, in a given community, commercial, banking, professional, public, or other kinds of business are ordinarily carried on. This phrase is declared to mean not the time during which a principal requires an employee’s services, but the business hours of the community generally. Derosia v. Railroad Co., 18 Minn. 133, (Gil. 119.)

In practice. Terms anciently used to designate actions commenced by original hill, as distinguished from those commenced by original writ, and applied in modern practice to suits commenced by capias ad respondendum. 1 Arch. Pr. pp. 2, 337; Harkness v. Harkness, 5 Hill (N. Y.) 213.

back, or plainly suggests the answer which the party wishes to get from him. People v. Slather, 4 Wend. (N. Y.) 229, 247, 21 Am. Dec. 122.

Conservator of the peace. See