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[ { "answer_id": 48342, "body": "<p>A warning is arguably often a form of threat (and vice versa). The words are close synonyms. A threat, however, is usually used only in connection with an action that has some sort of human (or at least, AI) agency, while a warning often made to alert someone to a mere natural consequence of an action with no human agency (e.g. a warning that an object is hot and could burn you if you touch it).</p>\n<p>But, the term &quot;warning&quot;, when used in connection with an action that involves human agency, is usually used when the action threatened would be lawful when taken (and often refers to a threat from a third-party rather than the person giving the warning), while the term &quot;threat&quot; is usually used when the action threatened would be unlawful when taken, or if the action, while lawful, is threatened for an improper purposes that amounts to blackmail (e.g. a threat to release legally taken photos showing that someone is having an affair if money is not paid). Also, a threat is generally made by the person who would take the action (or their agent), rather than a disinterested third-party.</p>\n<p>Incidentally, a threat to bring a lawsuit, since a proper purposes of a lawsuit is to secure money from someone, is not improper to connect to a demand to pay money.</p>\n", "score": 6 } ]

[ "united-states", "criminal-law", "florida" ]

[ { "answer_id": 87628, "body": "<h3>Originality requires independent creation plus a <em>modicum of creativity</em></h3>\n<p>This was answered in <em>Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co.</em>, Inc., <a href=\"https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/499/340/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">499 U.S. 340</a> (1991):</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>originality requires <em>independent creation</em> plus a <em>modicum of creativity</em>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Original, as the term is used in copyright, means only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least <em>some minimal degree of creativity</em>. To be sure, <em>the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice</em>. The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, &quot;no matter how crude, humble or obvious&quot; it might be. Originality does not signify novelty; a work may be original even though it closely resembles other works, so long as the similarity is fortuitous, not the result of copying. [Citations removed]</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This connection to creativity is explained more in the <a href=\"https://copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">United States Copyright Office's Compendium at 308.2</a>, citing entirely from <em>Feist</em>.</p>\n<p>The US Copyright Office presents eleven categories of things that &quot;do not satisfy the creativity requirement&quot;¹ (308.2; <a href=\"https://copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">313.4(A)-(K)</a>):</p>\n<ol>\n<li>mere copies</li>\n<li><em>de minimis</em> authorship: &quot;copyright protects only those constituent elements of a work that possess more than a <em>de minimis</em> quantum of creativity&quot; (citing <em>Feist</em>, p. 363); e.g. substitution of pronouns, correction of spelling, three-note sequences, are not sufficiently creative</li>\n<li>words and short phrases</li>\n<li>works consisting entirely of information that is common property; e.g. calendars, schedules of sporting events</li>\n<li>measuring and computing devices (with the exception of separable creative features distinct from what makes the article useful)</li>\n<li>listings of ingredients or contents</li>\n<li>blank forms</li>\n<li>characters</li>\n<li>scènes à faire</li>\n<li>familiar symbols and designs</li>\n<li>mere variations of coloring</li>\n</ol>\n<h3>Canada has taken a different approach</h3>\n<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/canada\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-canada-tooltip-container\">canada</a></p>\n<p>For a comparative look, Canada has rejected creativity as the hallmark of originality. In <em>CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada</em>, <a href=\"https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/2125/index.do\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2004 SCC 13</a>, the Supreme Court considered the standard from <em>Feist</em> but took a different approach:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>an “original” work under the <em>Copyright Act</em> is one that originates from an author and is not copied from another work. That alone, however, is not sufficient to find that something is original. In addition, <em>an original work must be the product of an author’s exercise of skill and judgment</em>. The exercise of skill and judgment required to produce the work must not be so trivial that it could be characterized as a purely mechanical exercise. While creative works will by definition be “original” and covered by copyright, <em>creativity is not required to make a work “original”</em>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<h3>Application</h3>\n<p>Many answers on this site apply this standard. E.g.</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://law.stackexchange.com/a/6570/46948\">Copyright of retyped public domain text</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://law.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22modicum+of+creativity%22+is%3Aanswer\">List of answers referring to a &quot;modicum of creativity&quot;</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p>You can also browse <a href=\"https://www.google.com/search?q=%22modicum+of+creativity%22+site:casetext.com\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">published decisions applying this standard</a> (a Google search of casetext.com).</p>\n<hr />\n<p>^{1. Although, I recognize for several of these categories there are additional or alternative rationales, and even statutory bars (e.g. 102(b)), for not granting copyright protection.}</p>\n", "score": 12 } ]

[ "united-states", "copyright" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91131, "body": "<p>Language-based principles of statutory interpretation work in favor of those who seek to exercise their freedom of choice within the confines of objectively-defined law. The basic principle is that laws should state clearly what is prohibited, and what the consequence of violating the law should be. The paper <a href=\"https://people.brandeis.edu/%7Eteuber/Fuller_Eight_Ways_To_Fail_To_Make_Law.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">&quot;Eight ways to fail to make law&quot;</a> by Lon Fuller briefly elaborates on negative consequences of making law unknowable to those subject to the law. If lawmakers all agree on the principle to be encoded in a law, the principle is rationally justified, and they express that agreement with complete clarity, then as long as the courts adhere to the law as written, there will be justice. But you probably noticed a lot of &quot;ifs&quot; in that formula.</p>\n<p>Various &quot;literalist&quot; i.e. textualist strains of interpretation place highest priority on the words of the law, as opposed to the motivation for the words (the intent). Even with that assumption, it is an everyday occurrence in reading laws that legal language is not unambiguous, so some additional guidelines are required in order to handle the situation - which should not arise under the 'complete clarity' premise – that laws can be interpreted in more than on way, just on the basis of plain old grammar. The 'plain meaning' rule provides an interpretive rule for narrowing down the possible interpretations of a text. The word &quot;school&quot; has a plain meaning that speakers of English know; but a legislature can write a law that redefines &quot;school&quot; <em>for a specific piece of law</em> to mean something different, such as &quot;any building of two stories constructed with state money earmarked for educational or cultural use&quot;, which is not what &quot;school&quot; ordinarily means. The rule both allows ordinary word-meanings to be usurped, yet relied on when there is no special usurpation of meaning by the legislature.</p>\n<p>The rule of lenity is a sort of last-place principle of interpretation – if there is no other higher-ranked rule of interpretation, and a statute still has two viable interpretations, then the interpretation that disfavors the defendant is rejected. The rule of lenity is <em>subordinate</em> to the plain meaning rule, which means that a contorted meaning is not available just in case a defendant can come up with some basis in an obscure art for a competing interpretation of &quot;dog&quot; (a mechanical device, not an animal, crucial to the argument that the defendant didn't violate the 'no dogs allowed' law).</p>\n<p>There are many language-based rules of interpretation, and there are as many or maybe more rules of interpretation that set aside consideration language in favor of a particular intended outcome.</p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "interpretation" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91138, "body": "<p><em>Salinas</em> describes <em>Miranda</em>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>we have held that a witness’ failure to invoke the privilege must be excused <strong>where governmental coercion</strong> makes his forfeiture of the privilege involuntary. Thus, in <em>Miranda</em>, we said that a suspect who is subjected to the “inherently compelling pressures” of an <strong>unwarned custodial interrogation</strong> need not invoke the privilege. 384 U. S., at 467–468, and n. 37. Due to the uniquely coercive nature of custodial interrogation, a suspect in custody cannot be said to have voluntarily forgone the privilege “unless [he] fails to claim [it] after being suitably warned.” <em>Murphy</em>, supra, at 429–430.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><em>Miranda</em> was about accounting for the understandable pressure to speak in the context of a custodial interrogation. In a custodial setting, speaking and thereby failing to claim a Fifth Amendment right to silence cannot be understood as waiving that right unless warned as per <em>Miranda</em>.</p>\n<p>That holding was not touched in <em>Salinas</em>.</p>\n<p>The unwarned custodial interrogation is one of three narrow exceptions to the general rule that the Fifth Amendment is not self-invoking. The circumstances in <em>Salinas</em> did not fall within one of those exceptions (all parties agreed that it was a voluntary discussion from which Salinas was free to leave).</p>\n", "score": 1 }, { "answer_id": 91143, "body": "<p>Your presumption could be correct if &quot;spirit&quot; were a clearly identifiable aspect of law. It is not unreasonable to think that the court was concerned with the fact that some people might not know the law well enough to know that they don't have to confess when arrested and interrogated. The court could have written a much broader holding, if it wanted to, but it didn't (perhaps because the members of the court did not feel that a broad prohibition against <em>any</em> use by the government of the defendant's statements was not prohibited by the constitution). <strong>If</strong> Miranda had been stated differently, <em>then</em> perhaps Salinas and prior cases would have turned out differently. Or, <strong>if</strong> the Salinas court and prior courts had been an ideologically completely different court, <em>then</em> perhaps that ruling would have come out differently. You can read <a href=\"https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/12-246\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Breyer's dissent</a> to see how 4 of 9 justices felt about the matter. Salinas doesn't roll anything back because it wasn't clearly there in the first place, it was only possibly there, and it turns out it wasn't, by a vote of 5 to 4.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "miranda-warning" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90975, "body": "<p>An insult can be slanderous when it is reasonably understood to constitute a statement of an actual, presently existing fact about a person, as opposed to being purely figurative or clearly hyperbole <em>in the context in which it is used.</em></p>\n<p>A purely literal reading isn't sufficient, even when it would be remotely possible that the literal sense of the word could be true. And, the same string of words in an insult could be slanderous when directed at one person in one setting, and not when directed at another person in another setting. The intended meaning, as the audience when it is uttered would understand it, is what matters.</p>\n<p>In close calls, we let the trier of fact decide if the statement was or implied a literal statement of a presently existing fact, or if it was not meant in that sense, following a trial if necessary.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>For instance, if Ronald calls Donald a &quot;retarded bastard son of a\nsenile crackwhore&quot;, he's (going by the literal meaning of the\nindividual members of this string of insults) claiming that Donald is\nintellectually-disabled and was born out of wedlock to a\ncrack-cocaine-addicted prostitute suffering from dementia, all of\nwhich are things that could potentially be true, even if taken\nliterally.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>If Donald is a U.S. Senator or a school teacher, this probably isn't going to be taken literally by a reasonable person hearing it. If Ronald is a guidance counselor at a school who would have reason to know the real facts and Donald is a janitor who was a former student at the school and these things aren't true, it might be slanderous.</p>\n<p>The retaliatory insults would almost surely not be slanderous no matter who said them and if the retaliation were stated in that way it would also tend to make the original statement less likely to be taken as a genuine statement of fact as opposed to a generalized insult, because Donald is not treating the insult as if it was true or might be true.</p>\n<p>Unlike the U.S., in Germany, insults of these sorts would often be actionable because under German law, gross rudeness, in and of itself, is actionable even in the absence of the fraud element required in U.S. law. This was historically the case in some circumstances in the U.S. but that basis for imposing liability, at least under the label of slander or defamation, is pretty much dead in U.S. law.</p>\n", "score": 5 } ]

[ "united-states", "england-and-wales", "any-jurisdiction", "slander" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91134, "body": "<h2>Dishonesty is a required element of fraud in all Australian jurisdictions</h2>\n<p>Being wrong is not the same as being dishonest. So, absent evidence that the person knew the tree was incorrectly shown and knowingly used that to achieve their objective, this isn’t fraud.</p>\n<p>There may be civil remedies (if harm actually happened) but no crime.</p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "real-estate", "fraud", "australia", "victoria" ]

[ { "answer_id": 23508, "body": "<p>Anyone found not guilty may apply to the judge to have his legal costs paid out of central funds; this is not automatic, but is usual if the court agrees that the charges should not have been brought. The amount payable is set out <a href=\"https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-back-costs-from-cases-in-the-criminal-courts#onorafter1oct\" rel=\"noreferrer\">by regulations</a> depending on where the case was heard; since October 2012 it has been set at legal aid rates, which are unlikely to cover a full defence team. Somebody who did not have a lawyer can charge for the time he himself spent on the case, but this is assessed at a standard rate similar to minimum wage, even if he happens to be an expensive lawyer.</p>\n\n<p>No compensation is payable for health or other problems incident on a criminal case; it is considered a part of the rule of law that charges will be brought against defendants, and that some of them will be found not guilty. It may, of course, be possible to sue the complainant for defamation or even to bring an action for <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_prosecution\" rel=\"noreferrer\">malicious prosecution</a>; a lawyer would have to advise on this, but the mere fact of acquittal is certainly not enough to found an action. </p>\n", "score": 11 } ]

[ "criminal-law", "united-kingdom", "compensation" ]

[ { "answer_id": 89956, "body": "<p>The authorities cited mean that the city attorney can't prosecute cases arising under state criminal laws.</p>\n<p>Cases in municipal court are prosecuted under municipal ordinances rather than state criminal laws, in the name of the city, rather than the People of the State of Texas. Therefore, a city attorney may prosecute ordinance violations in municipal court.</p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "texas", "rules-of-court", "municipal-bylaws" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91135, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/switzerland\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;switzerland&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;switzerland&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-switzerland-tooltip-container\">switzerland</a> <a href=\"/questions/tagged/germany\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-germany-tooltip-container\">germany</a></p>\n<p>I would say <em>if</em> anyone is at fault here, it's the film crew who did not protect the girl's privacy enough. Of course, they intended to film them nude and broadcast that, so they probably didn't really care. The nude girls would be shown to a broad audience anyway, so a few workers don't really make a difference.</p>\n<p>Stripping nude isn't a crime in most of Europe, if it's not exhibitionism. I'm assuming that was not the case, because then the film crew would actually be filming a porn movie. Nudity can get you into trouble for public harassment, but obviously, the workers weren't harassed at all. In fact, they liked it. The girls didn't like being watched, which is foremost their problem. Being ashamed is not a crime. They could just cover themselves to solve the issue.</p>\n<p>Next time, they maybe should have read the contract they where entering more closely.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "minor", "sexual-offences", "theory-of-law" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91132, "body": "<p>This may not be the answer that you're looking for, but my mother always told me the best way to take control of a conversation is to ask a question.</p>\n<p>Am I under investigation?\nDid you just try and interrogate me without reading me my Miranda Rights?\nI'm not contracted with your organization, so what are your intentions?</p>\n", "score": 4 }, { "answer_id": 90901, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/canada\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-canada-tooltip-container\">canada</a></p>\n<p>A person need not say anything. See <em>R. v. Turcotte</em>, <a href=\"https://canlii.ca/t/1lpk3#par56\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2005 SCC 50 at paras. 55-56</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>... Conduct after a crime has been committed is only admissible as “post-offence conduct” when it provides circumstantial evidence of guilt. The necessary relevance is lost if there is no connection between the conduct and guilt. The law imposes no duty to speak to or cooperate with the police. This fact alone severs any link between silence and guilt. Silence in the face of police questioning will, therefore, rarely be admissible as post-offence conduct because it is rarely probative of guilt [see <a href=\"https://canlii.ca/t/1lpk3#par48\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">paras. 48-50</a> for such examples]. <strong>Refusing to do what one has a right to refuse to do reveals nothing. An inference of guilt cannot logically or morally emerge from the exercise of a protected right. Using silence as evidence of guilt artificially creates a duty, despite a right to the contrary, to answer all police questions.</strong></p>\n<p>Since there was no duty on Mr. Turcotte’s part to speak to the police, his failure to do so was irrelevant; because it was irrelevant, no rational conclusion about guilt or innocence can be drawn from it; and because it was not probative of guilt, it could not be characterized for the jury as “post-offence conduct&quot;.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>See also <em>R. v. Powell</em>, 2021 ONCA 271 at <a href=\"https://canlii.ca/t/jfp13#par63\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">para. 63</a>, quoting <em>Turcotte</em>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It is without a doubt that <strong>an accused has a constitutional right to remain silent during any part of a police interview</strong>. This right remains intact even if the accused opts to speak to police about certain matters... <strong>An individual can provide some, none, or all of the information he or she has</strong>. A voluntary interaction with the police, even one initiated by an individual, does not constitute a waiver of the right to silence. The right to choose whether to speak is retained throughout the interaction.</p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "united-states", "police", "fifth-amendment", "never-talk-to-police" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91110, "body": "<p>No. &quot;Commercial Purposes&quot; is not defined by statute, but it is by case law and rests on the particular circumstances in each case:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In the case of <em>Laxmi Engineering Works vs. P.S.G Industrial Institute</em>, <strong>the Supreme Court held that whether goods bought by a person are for a ‘commercial purpose’ is a question of fact and it should be decided by taking into account all the facts and circumstances in each case.</strong> The Supreme Court further observed that if the goods have been used by the purchaser himself for commercial use then he would be considered to be a consumer under this Act but if that person does not use the good himself and engages some other person to operate that particular good then such person will not come under the ambit of the definition of ‘consumer’.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/blog.ipleaders.in/copra-commercial-purposes/%3famp=1\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Source</a></p>\n", "score": 6 }, { "answer_id": 91115, "body": "<p>I agree that the <a href=\"https://law.stackexchange.com/a/91110/9517\">answer from Rick</a> to this question is correct and on point. This answer expands somewhat on a point made in his answer at a more general level.</p>\n<p>In India, like most common law countries, there are virtually no legal terms have &quot;global&quot; definitions that apply in all legal contexts.</p>\n<p>A legal term can mean one thing in one context and statute or part of a statute, and something different in a different context or statute or part of a statute. The meaning of a legal term in a particular context has to be evaluated on a case by case basis each time that it appears.</p>\n<p>For example, the way a term &quot;commercial purposes&quot; is used in a treaty governing the international sale of goods may be different from the meaning it has in an Act on usury (which might depend upon the nature of the lender), which may be different in turn from an Act on fees for vehicle registrations (which may depend upon the purposes for which the vehicle is used the majority of the time), which may be different in turn from the way that the same legal term is used in a common law legal standard related to property owner liability (which may depend upon whether the property is one upon which third-party customers or hotel guests enter onto), which in turn may be different from the meaning of the term as used in a residential lease of real property (which may treat a home office use as non-commercial but a space in which customers and employees regularly occupy as commercial).</p>\n<p>India does not have something comparable to the &quot;general part&quot; of some European civil codes with definitions of legal terms that apply throughout the civil code.</p>\n<p>The better legal dictionaries acknowledge this fact by having multiple senses of words used in legal terms, and sometimes even multiple dictionary entries for identical legal terms, to capture the multiple meanings that a legal term may have in the law.</p>\n<p>I don't know if India has a similar service, but in the U.S., the Westlaw legal research products has a &quot;words and phrases&quot; product that does nothing but list every single statute and reported case opinion in which any particular term searched is defined, for someone looking for a comprehensive treatment of the issue, particularly when a legal term is used in a more obscure or less common sense.</p>\n", "score": 5 } ]

[ "legal-terms", "india", "definition" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91128, "body": "<p>The legal ground is to identify infringers of their copyright. Copyright law prohibits unauthorized copying, and Twitter alleges that there was unauthorized copying, which included downloading. They have a legal right to file legal actions against any and all infringers, and the subpoena process is a means of determining the true identity of the alleged infringers (since real identities are needed to sue them).</p>\n", "score": 3 } ]

[ "united-states", "copyright" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91125, "body": "<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Juris_Secundum\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Corpus Juris Secundum</a>, available <a href=\"https://store.legal.thomsonreuters.com/law-products/Legal-Encyclopedias/Corpus-Juris-Secundumreg/p/100001060\" rel=\"noreferrer\">here</a> for a pretty penny.</p>\n", "score": 5 } ]

[ "copyright", "intellectual-property", "legal-research", "legal-citation" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91122, "body": "<p>It would seem that the scenario you describe is the exact purpose of the document.</p>\n<p>But, there may be specific requirements that are needed to become effective. In my personal and recent experience, two letters from people &quot;licensed to practice medicine&quot; attesting to the disability were required, and one had to be from a primary care provider.</p>\n<p>Bottom line, read the document - it should tell you when and how it becomes effective.</p>\n", "score": 2 }, { "answer_id": 91124, "body": "<p>W.r.t. New Jersey law, I assume the mother properly executed <a href=\"https://www.nj.gov/health/advancedirective/documents/proxy_directive.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">this form</a> whereby she</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>appoint[s] a health care representative with the legal authority to\nmake health care decisions on my behalf and to consult with my\nphysician and others.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The directive <a href=\"https://law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/2022/title-26/section-26-2h-59/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">becomes operative</a></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>when (1) it is transmitted to the attending physician or to the health\ncare institution, and (2) it is determined pursuant to section 8 of\nthis act that the patient lacks capacity to make a particular health\ncare decision</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>but also</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Treatment decisions pursuant to an advance directive shall not be made\nand implemented until there has been a reasonable opportunity to\nestablish, and where appropriate confirm, a reliable diagnosis and\nprognosis for the patient</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Note that under <a href=\"https://%20https://law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/2022/title-26/section-26-2h-57/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">NJ. Stat. 26:2H-57(d)</a>,</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>A patient who lacks mental capacity may suspend an advance directive,\nincluding a proxy directive, an instruction directive, or both, by any\nof the means stated in paragraph (1) of subsection b. of this section.\nA patient who lacks mental capacity and has suspended an advance\ndirective may reinstate that advance directive by oral or written\nnotification to the health care representative, physician, nurse, or\nother health care professional of an intent to reinstate the advance\ndirective</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>where the simplest method is</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Notification, orally ...by any other act evidencing an intent to\nrevoke the document</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>i.e. saying &quot;I revoke your medical power of attorney&quot;.</p>\n<p>Assuming that didn't happen, there must be a <a href=\"https://law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/2022/title-26/section-26-2h-60/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">medical determination of incapacity</a>, which involves the attending physician and at least one other physician (also, neither can be the patient-selected health care representative). If the directive <em>has</em> been revoked, there would have to be a court procedure to have the son appointed as guardian.</p>\n", "score": 0 } ]

[ "united-states", "medical", "new-jersey" ]

[ { "answer_id": 33597, "body": "<p><em>Commercial</em> means related to commerce and <em>commerce</em> means the activity of buying and selling. Advertising material for a commercial event is itself commercial. If the licence restriction is for non-commercial use only then you are outside the licence. However, the licence you quote allows both.</p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "copyright", "intellectual-property", "licensing", "switzerland" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91102, "body": "<p>Some interpretive statutes are found in the national <a href=\"https://www.indiacode.nic.in/handle/123456789/2328?view_type=browse&amp;sam_handle=123456789/1362\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">General Clauses Act (1897)</a> and parallel state acts. Most of the rest is found in case law.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>does this mean it's not a settled position about how laws are ought to\nbe interpreted in India?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This question is not answered at the level of generality of &quot;how laws ought to be interpreted in India&quot;. I wouldn't even know what an answer to that question would look like.</p>\n<p>There are many guiding principles of interpretation, the starting place of which is to attempt to implement the intent of the legislature (something known as the &quot;<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rule_(law)\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Golden Rule</a>&quot; of statutory interpretation in English common law) as expressed in the language of the statute to the extent that no other stronger interpretive principles apply.</p>\n<p>But, basically, it is a problem to be worked out on a case by case basis in cases addressing alleged ambiguities in the meaning of a particular part of a particular statue. Most of the time, there is no ambiguity and so it isn't even recognized as an issue. What is ambiguous is frequently impossible to tell on the face of a statute until you are presented with facts in a case that create a context in which the meaning of a particular phrase or word or grammatical construction is unclear.</p>\n<p>Statutory interpretation is a bottom up process in a legal system like India's, not a top down process. Questions arise one case at a time and bubble to the top, the issues aren't foreseen and resolved in advance.</p>\n<p>Some of the other canons of interpretation which are buried in case law are to construe statutes in a way that makes them constitutional, to assume that there is not an intent to displace common law rules unless the text or comprehensive nature of a statute suggests otherwise, to give meaning of every part of the statute, to avoid absurd interpretations, and to consider legislative history when the proper interpretation is unclear.</p>\n<p>Ultimately, statutory interpretation is not a mechanical problem like the order of operations in a mathematics equation. It requires a judge to employ good judgment and common sense to reach an interpretation that makes sense in the relevant context.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "india", "interpretation", "statutes" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90860, "body": "<p>It is somewhat understated, because your silence can also be used against you. In <a href=\"https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/570/178/#tab-opinion-1970708\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Salinas v. Texas</a>, defendant Salinas was &quot;just talking&quot; to police, not in custody, and his silence (as opposed to shock and outrage) at the question of whether shell casings found at the crime scene would match his shotgun. This &quot;adoptive admission&quot; was introduced as evidence against him. In order to prevent your silence from being used against you, you must invoke the 5th amendment. There are two exceptions to the rule that you must invoke the 5th to be protected by it. First, a criminal defendant need not take the stand and assert the privilege at their own trial. Second, a witness’s failure to invoke the privilege must be excused where governmental coercion makes their forfeiture of the privilege involuntary (Miranda). In lieu of coercion, you must preface your silence with an invocation of your 5th amendment rights.</p>\n", "score": 22 }, { "answer_id": 90877, "body": "<p>The Miranda Warning doesn't go far enough. It clearly states that you have the right to remain silent, and anything you do say can be used against you. The statement should include the fact that you must assert your Fifth Amendment rights using the exact correct phrasing, that saying anything after the Fifth Amendment rights are invoked can invalidate the Fifth Amendment assertion, and that saying anything that may be helpful towards your case may be dismissed in court as &quot;hearsay.&quot; Law enforcement officers cannot be helpful to your case in any way, so saying things that you may think are helpful to your case will not save you in court. For more information, I recommend watching an informative video I found called <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Don't Talk to the Police</a>.</p>\n", "score": 15 }, { "answer_id": 90910, "body": "<p><strong>This depends on the relations between the police and community in your area.</strong></p>\n<p>Every interaction between the police and the public is, first and foremost, a <em>social interaction between individuals.</em> Only a small percentage of interactions leads to charges being filed, even if the member of the public has recently done things that could lead to charges. A strategy to optimize the likelihood of a positive outcome in court might also increase the likelihood that the case will go to court to start with.</p>\n<p><em>First Example:</em></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Officer: &quot;Do you know your tail light is busted?&quot;</p>\n<p>Motorist: &quot;I take the Fifth.&quot;</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><em>Second Example:</em></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Officer: &quot;Do you know your tail light is busted?&quot;</p>\n<p>Motorist: &quot;Last week it was OK. Thanks for telling me, I'll have it fixed.&quot;</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>When there are good relations between the police and community, the second motorist has a <em>much</em> better chance to be let off with a warning. Or perhaps a fine in addition to the warning. The first motorist would make the officer wonder why a driver would invoke the Fifth Amendment over an obvious technical fault. That might make the officer <em>look for</em> reasons to justify a search of the vehicle.</p>\n<p><em>Third Example:</em></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Officer: &quot;Did you shoot the victim?&quot;</p>\n<p>Gunman: &quot;I take the Fifth.&quot;</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><em>Fourth Example:</em></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Officer: &quot;Did you shoot the victim?&quot;</p>\n<p>Gunman: &quot;He was threatening me.&quot;</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>In a case like that, there is a high likelihood that the gunman will go to court, and the stakes are enormous. &quot;Lawyering up&quot; is probably a very good strategy, because any statement to the facts could be misinterpreted or taken out of context.</p>\n", "score": 10 }, { "answer_id": 90857, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/canada\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-canada-tooltip-container\">canada</a></p>\n<p>The statement is accurate in one sense: statements made out of court by a party to litigation (including by a criminal defendant) can generally be introduced at trial by the opposing party despite the hearsay nature of the statements. This is known as the &quot;party admission&quot; hearsay exception. See <em>R. v. Foreman</em>, <a href=\"https://canlii.ca/t/1chv3#par37\" rel=\"noreferrer\">2002 CanLII 6305 (Ont. C.A.) at para. 37</a>.</p>\n<p>But there are still limits to the admissibility of that evidence.</p>\n<p>First, the statement would have to be relevant, but I assume this is not the aspect you're interested in.</p>\n<p>The bigger concern is <strong>voluntariness</strong>. Statements given in custody carry the heightened risk that they are a false confession: &quot;A large body of literature has developed documenting hundreds of cases where confessions have been proven false by DNA evidence, subsequent confessions by the true perpetrator, and other such independent sources of evidence&quot; (<em>R. v. Oickle</em>, 2000 SCC 38 at <a href=\"https://canlii.ca/t/525h#par35\" rel=\"noreferrer\">para. 35</a>). False confessions &quot;almost always involve 'shoddy police practice and/or police criminality&quot; (<a href=\"https://canlii.ca/t/525h#par45\" rel=\"noreferrer\">para. 45</a>)</p>\n<p>Thus, in Canada:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>a confession will not be admissible</strong> if it is made under circumstances that raise a reasonable doubt as to voluntariness. ... If the police interrogators subject the suspect to utterly intolerable conditions, or if they offer inducements strong enough to produce an unreliable confession, the trial judge should exclude it. Between these two extremes, oppressive conditions and inducements can operate together to exclude confessions (<a href=\"https://canlii.ca/t/525h#par68\" rel=\"noreferrer\">para. 68</a>).</p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 6 }, { "answer_id": 90854, "body": "<h2>It's completely wrong</h2>\n<p>The cops can do nothing but detain you, they are the executive. But they will record whatever you say that is not to your lawyer for someone else: the state attorney.</p>\n<p>And the state attorney can use everything you say against you in the trial if they believe it will further their case against you.</p>\n", "score": 2 }, { "answer_id": 90948, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/united-kingdom\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;united-kingdom&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;united-kingdom&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-united-kingdom-tooltip-container\">united-kingdom</a></p>\n<p>I am aware that the tag on the question indicates the asker is from the US, but for the wider audience this may be of benefit. In the UK, in many circumstances if you do not tell an officer your name, address and date of birth, they may arrest you for the simple practical reason that you might be difficult to locate again later. So it is sometimes in your interest to give that information when asked. Some people believe it's better to wait until after you have been booked, I don't have the expertises to make a strong statement on that, but personally these are questions I would always answer when asked to reduce the chance of being arrested in the first place.</p>\n<p>Furthermore, when interacting with the police;</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>You do not have to say anything, but, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This is further discussed in <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence_in_England_and_Wales\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">this Wikipedia article</a>;</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 provides statutory\nrules under which adverse inferences may be drawn from silence.</p>\n<p>Adverse inferences may be drawn in certain circumstances where before\nor on being charged, the accused:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>fails to mention any fact which he later relies upon and which in the circumstances at the time the accused could reasonably be expected to mention;</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>fails to give evidence at trial or answer any question;</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>fails to account on arrest for objects, substances or marks on his person, clothing or footwear, in his possession, or in the place where he is arrested; or</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>fails to account on arrest for his presence at a place.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n<p>So, in short, if you are accused of a crime, and have a convincing defence such as an alibi, it may cause problems if you refuse to share it before going to court. I believe that this is mostly to avoid wasting court time. You are entitled to legal representation when being questioned though, so the legal representation would presumably advise you on this point.</p>\n", "score": 0 }, { "answer_id": 90950, "body": "<p>The reason for this is because of the evidentiary rules of U.S. Court. Out of court statements made by someone other than the person testifying as a witness are not permitted under the rules of hearsay with a few exceptions. One of those exceptions is a &quot;Statement against adversarial interests.&quot; That is, if your adversary witnesses Alice said something to Bob that would harm Alice's interests, Bob may testify to what Alice said because Alice is not likely to testify to it in court.</p>\n<p>Let's say that Alice invokes the &quot;Marley Defense&quot; when accused of shooting two law enforcement officers (&quot;I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.&quot;) to Officer Bob. This in fact, contains two statements by Alice of (1.) Alice shot the Sheriff AND (2.) Alice did not shoot a deputy. Statement (1.) is an admission of guilt and would be against Alice's interests in court, thus Officer Bob can testify that Alice told him she shot the Sheriff because it can be assumed Alice would not openly say that in court because it is an admission of guilt. But statement (2.) is a defense against guilt and thus it is a Statement in favor of Alice's interests (here being sentenced for the crime she did commit, not the one she didn't commit) so Officer Bob testifies to this in court, it will be a violation of hearsay and would be objectionable (Ironically, the Prosecutor would object to this answer because it hurts the prosecution. The defense would be all to happy to let it slide. And yes, witness testimony itself can be objected too.).</p>\n<p>Even if Officer Bob believed both of Alice's statements to be true, he can not make hearsay statements. It's on the defense to prove that Alice did not shoot the deputy.</p>\n", "score": 0 } ]

[ "evidence", "criminal-procedure", "fifth-amendment", "never-talk-to-police", "miranda-warning" ]

[ { "answer_id": 66625, "body": "<h2>These rights are not unrestricted</h2>\n<p>s36 says:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<ol start=\"36\">\n<li>(1) The rights in the Bill of Rights may be limited only in terms of law of general\napplication to the extent that the limitation is reasonable and justifiable in an open\nand democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom, taking into\naccount all relevant factors, including—</li>\n</ol>\n<p>(a) the nature of the right;</p>\n<p>(b) the importance of the purpose of the limitation;</p>\n<p>(c) the nature and extent of the limitation;</p>\n<p>(d) the relation between the limitation and its purpose; and</p>\n<p>(e) less restrictive means to achieve the purpose.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>South Africa has laws that allow the government to demand private information. Apple publishes a <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/za.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">report</a> on this.</p>\n<p>Whether there is such a prohibition is South Africa is hard to <a href=\"https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/400893-apple-will-not-launch-feature-to-hide-online-identity-in-south-africa-or-china.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">say</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Apple could not immediately indicate which regulations in South Africa prevented it from launching Private Relay here.</p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 1 }, { "answer_id": 67528, "body": "<p>Apple has not asserted that it is legally impossible in South Africa, they have simply said that they aren't doing it. The explanation may be that there is a credible legal concern, that is, they are not certain whether their system is consistent with South African law. The two relevant legal pieces that I know of are the <a href=\"https://popia.co.za/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Protection of Personal Information Act</a> and the <a href=\"https://www.michalsons.com/blog/national-data-and-cloud-policy-in-south-africa-draft/49239\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">National Data and Cloud Policy</a>. These are complicated pieces of law, and the comment period on the Data and Cloud Policy only recently closed, so the official policy does not yet exist. There are substantial negative consequences with failure to comply with the rules, and the rules seem to include elements of government control that do not exist in the US or the EU. Some excepts from the summary of the Data and Cloud Policy</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Government must capture all public data by default in digital format;\nGovernment will store non-sentive data in the government data centre;\nGovernment will develop a framework to enable both the public and\nprivate sector to share data with everyone fairly, equitably and\ntransparently; Government will develop governance frameworks on access\nto data, the purpose of data and data flow maps</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The official draft policy is <a href=\"https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202104/44389gon206.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">here</a>. See p. 27 for a couple of statements that would be surprising in the context of US law:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>To ensure ownership and control: Data generated in South Africa shall\nbe the property of South Africa, regardless of where the technology\ncompany is domiciled...All research data shall be governed by the\nResearch Big Data Strategy of the Department of Science and\nInnovation (DSI). All data generated from South African natural\nresources shall be co-owned by government and the private sector\nparticipant/s whose private funds were used to generate such, and a\ncopy of such data shall be stored in the HPCDPC</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>In the context of legal uncertainty, it is a reasonable business decision to seek further legal analysis. Recall how a few years ago, most people were uncertain about what GDPR required / forebade. I presume that Apple simply needs time to wait for the law to firm up, and for them to understand what the law says, in case their private relay feature turns out to impose unexpected obligations on them.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "privacy", "constitutional-law", "south-africa", "communications-law" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91114, "body": "<p>Neither of the posters in question would constitute a &quot;<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_threat\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">true threat</a>&quot; which can be subjected to legal sanctions consistent with the First Amendment. The nature of the communication, in the context provided in the question, is clearly metaphorical.</p>\n<p>The U.S. Supreme Court, incidentally, will be hearing arguments in the case of <em><a href=\"https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/counterman-v-colorado/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Counterman v. Colorado</a></em> on April 19, 2023, pertinent to this question, in which the issue presented is:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Whether, to establish that a statement is a &quot;true threat&quot; unprotected\nby the First Amendment, the government must show that the speaker\nsubjectively knew or intended the threatening nature of the statement,\nor whether it is enough to show that an objective &quot;reasonable person&quot;\nwould regard the statement as a threat of violence.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This would, however, be a far closer case under British law, as illustrated by a recent case in which a British teenager was sentenced to 11 year years in prison for inflammatory Internet postings that it was established were a major factor that pushed the people who carried out mass shootings at a Buffalo, New York grocery store and a Colorado Spring gay nightclub to carry out their attacks. As <a href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/27/uk/buffalo-shooting-daniel-harris-jailed-intl-gbr/index.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">reported by CNN</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Daniel Harris, 19, from Derbyshire in northern England, posted videos\nshared by Payton Gendron, who pleaded guilty to the shooting in\nBuffalo, as well as videos linked to Anderson Lee Aldrich, the suspect\naccused of killing five people in a mass shooting at an LGBTQ\nnightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, last November, the court\nheard, according to PA.</p>\n<p>Sentencing Harris in court in Manchester, northern England, Judge\nPatrick Field was quoted by PA as saying, “What they did was truly\nappalling but what they did was no more than you intended to encourage\nothers to do when publishing this material online.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The postings made by Daniel Harris which led to his conviction would almost certainly not have been actionable under U.S. law which has much stronger First Amendment protections than the U.K.</p>\n", "score": 4 } ]

[ "united-states", "freedom-of-speech", "politics", "threats" ]

[ { "answer_id": 78558, "body": "<p>Minor children can, in theory, sue their parents, in many countries, as long as they can prove a cognizable harm. The simplest case is where a parent commits a crime against the child, such as rape; this would also include embezzlement. &quot;Abuse&quot; is a term used in laws, for example <a href=\"https://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=26.44.020\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">RCW 26.44.020</a> (Washington state), but that sense of &quot;abuse&quot; doesn't include e.g. &quot;overbearing behavior&quot; or &quot;obnoxious politics&quot;.</p>\n<p>If a child is disabled and the parents taunt the child for that disability, it is possible that the child could sue to terminate parental rights. The case is even clearer if the parent fails in their parental obligations to the child. Lgbtqia child rights are less well-defined. The background assumption is that the parent has the exclusive right to determine the child's upbringing, which includes things such as political beliefs, religion, and matters touching no family and sex. <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Norway\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Norway</a> is one of those countries with relatively few restrictions on &quot;how you live your life&quot;, and they are considering a law against &quot;conversion therapy&quot;, but there is presently no law prohibiting a parent from denouncing their child's lifestyle. It is possible that Barnevernet (child protective services) could intervene in a particular case, but they would not sue a parent on behalf of the child unless the parents actually violated the law.</p>\n", "score": 3 }, { "answer_id": 91113, "body": "<p>Yes, children can sue their parents for certain civil causes of action, and indeed, usually, those claims would be tolled during periods of being under the age of majority when there is not guardian or conservator appointed for the child.</p>\n<p>Historically, the context where this came up was a lot less ominous: Children suing a parent driving a vehicle in which the innocent child suffered injuries in order to trigger insurance coverage for the child to pay for the child's injuries. Modern car insurance policies usually draft around that possibility.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "minor", "children", "parental-rights" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91034, "body": "<p><strong>Pardons and paroles are different things, usually.</strong></p>\n<p>A parole is the recognition that society is best served if the convict spends the remaining sentence outside prison.</p>\n<p>It is an important legal principle that people can only be imprisoned for their crimes, after being sentenced in a due process. When the prison term is up, the prisoner must be free to go. Yet changing the release date ist the most powerful tool to influence the behaviour of the prisoner while in prison. (Others are privileges like a TV set in the cell, or punishments like solitary confinement). The penal system wants to &quot;bribe&quot; an inmate to do things like vocational training, or anger therapy, which help with reintegration in society but which are not strictly required of a prisoner. So the prisoner is <strong>&quot;bribed&quot; with early release</strong> to behave &quot;better&quot; than required. That's a function of the justice system.</p>\n<p>In other cases, the legal system may believe that immediate release, <strong>under the supervision</strong> of a parole officer, is the best way to deal with a criminal. Again a function of the justice system.</p>\n<p>A pardon, on the other hand, has developed from the royal right to grant a reprieve <strong>without giving a justification.</strong></p>\n<p>This can be seen as a way to do justice when the letter of the law leads to an injustice. The judiciary is bound by laws, and laws should not be written for any one specific case. Today the power of pardon is often given to the head of government or to the head of state (note that it is often the head of state, not the head of government).</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "sentencing" ]

[ { "answer_id": 24264, "body": "<p>The court itself will do little unless there is imminent danger to the child. You are mostly responsible for finding a lawyer to file a court order, or getting other legal aid to do that, or taking actions that you can do yourself, like applying for wage and bank garnishments.</p>\n\n<p>The court (ideally) operates as a neutral party in the dispute; the court depends on prosecutors, child advocates and parents to bring the child support issues to the attention of the court where the court can weight the facts. You or a lawyer have to bring child support issues to the attention of the court for the court to make a ruling (unless a child advocate feels that the child is in danger, and then the court may be proactive). In some cases in the list (below) of actions to take, the legal entity is not the court itself, but a state agency that has the legal authority.</p>\n\n<p>There will be little difference to the court in the fact that the delinquent payee is the mother or the father; the court will make determinations on the facts of the case, i.e., income levels, lateness of payments, ability to pay, current laws, etc.</p>\n\n<p>Here is an outline of your options, taken from <a href=\"https://www.georgialegalaid.org/resource/enforcing-child-support\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Enforcing Child Support | GeorgiaLegalAid.org</a>:</p>\n\n<p><strong>File a \"Contempt Action\" in Court</strong></p>\n\n<p>A parent who is behind in child support is in contempt of the court order... and can be ordered to pay what is owed... The contempt action must be filed in the court that ordered the child support to be paid. (You will probably need the help of a lawyer for this; if you don't have one or can't afford one, contact <a href=\"https://www.georgialegalaid.org/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">GeorgiaLegalAid.org | A guide to free and low-cost legal aid, assistance and services in Georgia</a>).</p>\n\n<p><strong>Get an Income Deduction Order</strong></p>\n\n<p>An Income Deduction Order... orders the non-custodial parent's employer to withhold the amount of child support from that parent's paycheck. (See <a href=\"http://ido.georgiacourts.gov/content/faqs-0\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">FAQ's | Income Withholding Order website - georgiacourts.gov</a>).</p>\n\n<p><strong>Contact Child Support Enforcement</strong></p>\n\n<p>The Georgia Department of Human Resources has a Child Support Enforcement Division (\"CSE\"). CSE can help you get the court order enforced. CSE can also help you get a portion of the non-custodial parent's tax refund if you request it by August of each year.</p>\n\n<p>If the absent parent is receiving workers' compensation benefits, CSE can contact the Workers' Compensation Board, get information about the case and pursue collection of child support through garnishment of that parent's Workers Compensation benefits. CSE can also collect child support from the absent parent's unemployment compensation. O.C.G.A. § 34-8-198. (See <a href=\"https://childsupport.georgia.gov/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Child Support Services | Georgia Department of Human Services</a>).</p>\n\n<p><strong>Other Options:</strong></p>\n\n<p>Get a lien on property, file a garnishment of their bank account, get a wage withholding, request that the court deny or suspend his or her driver's license, professional license, hunting or fishing license. (See <a href=\"https://www.georgialegalaid.org/resource/enforcing-child-support\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Enforcing Child Support | GeorgiaLegalAid.org</a>).</p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "divorce", "children", "georgia" ]

[ { "answer_id": 30208, "body": "<p><em>Disclaimer: I don't know the specific regulations of New Jersey, so this mostly describes the general practise in the United States. However, it seems the rules are roughly similar in all states.</em></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>During a divorce proceeding the court ordered the father to pay 1xxx a\n month in child support through the court/state supervision\n arrangement.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is common in the United States - child support payments are usually not sent directly from one parent to the other, instead the paying parent sends money to a government agency (or has it taken from their wages). This agency is usually called <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Disbursement_Unit\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">State Disbursement Unit</a> - though in New Jersey the agency responsible is the <a href=\"http://www.njchildsupport.org/Services-Programs/Non-Custodial-Parents/Paying-Child-Support\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">New Jersey Family Support Payment Center (NJFSPC)</a>. So the father was probably ordered to pay via NJFSPC.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Will it harm the case if the mother retrieves the money? assuming she\n notifies the court or her attorney? Or should she refuse the money?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No, this should not harm the case. As you write, the mother should definitely inform the court and / or NJFSPC about the payment (the lawyer should know how to handle this). If the court order requires the father to pay via NJFSPC, paying directly to the mother is already a violation - so the father is likely not acting legally.</p>\n\n<p>While the accepted payment will likely count against the child support owed, it will not reduce the claim for child support in any other way - in particular it does not invalidate or reduce the court order to pay via NJFSPC.</p>\n", "score": 3 } ]

[ "court", "family-law", "children", "new-jersey", "payment" ]

[ { "answer_id": 86168, "body": "<p>Yes or no, depending. The question is investigated in <a href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/196295\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">&quot;The Status of Pregnant Women and Fetuses in US Criminal Law&quot;</a> (JAMA), which collects 23 opinion in US jurisdiction. In <a href=\"https://cite.case.law/ariz/182/190/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Reinesto v. Superior Court</a>, 182 Ariz. 190 where the court ruled that the state cannot prosecute for child abuse a woman who uses heroin during pregnancy and thereafter gives birth to a heroin-addicted child. However, in <a href=\"https://casetext.com/case/whitner-v-state-3\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Whitner v South Carolina</a>, 492 SE 2d 777 the court did find the mother criminally liable for child abuse, based on prenatal drug use. The South Carolina case is the sole example of that type, in the study (published 2003).</p>\n<p>Charges range from child endangerment/abuse, illegal drug delivery to a minor, or fetal murder/manslaughter. The general finding is that since a fetus is not legally deemed to be a person (in those jurisdictions, at that time), where was no &quot;child abuse&quot;. South Carolina, on the other hand, reasoned, here and in prior cases, that</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>We have no difficulty in concluding that a fetus having reached that\nperiod of prenatal maturity where it is capable of independent life\napart from its mother is a person.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>A different study (<a href=\"https://jaapl.org/content/jaapl/45/2/193.full.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">&quot;Criminal Charges for Child Harm from Substance Use in Pregnancy&quot;</a>, JAAPL) which included cases up to 2015, found a slightly different distribution but generally concludes that courts do not consider maternal drug use to be a legal question. That article also cites a <a href=\"https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/substance-use-during-pregnancy\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">web page</a> which at the time is purported to say that 18 states allow civil child abuse proceedings.</p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https://caselaw.findlaw.com/tx-court-of-appeals/1342066.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Chenault v. Huie</a> (Texas), the court found that</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Texas does not recognize a cause of action in tort for injuries to a\nchild that result from the mother's negligent or grossly negligent\nconduct while she was pregnant with the child</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>but according to the more current <a href=\"https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/substance-use-during-pregnancy\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Guttmacher Institute study</a>, about half of the states have such a civil cause of action.</p>\n", "score": 9 }, { "answer_id": 86167, "body": "<p><strong>Is that considered a crime?</strong></p>\n<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/england-and-wales\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"england-and-wales-container\">england-and-wales</a></p>\n<p><strong>NO</strong>, not if the baby lives</p>\n<p>The leading case is <a href=\"https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5b46f1f72c94e0775e7ef245\" rel=\"noreferrer\">CP (A Child) v First-Tier Tribunal (Criminal Injuries Compensation) [2014] EWCA Civ 1554</a> in which compensation was sought for a child on the basis that the mother's drinking was an offence under <a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/24-25/100/section/23?timeline=false\" rel=\"noreferrer\">section 23</a> Offences Against the Person Act 1861:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Whosoever shall unlawfully and maliciously administer to or cause to be administered to or taken by <strong>any other person</strong> any poison or other destructive or noxious thing, so as thereby to endanger the life of <strong>such person</strong>, or so as thereby to inflict upon <strong>such person</strong> any grievous bodily harm, shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted thereof shall be liable to be kept in penal servitude for any term not exceeding ten years.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>However, the Court of Appeal found that a feotus is not a &quot;person&quot; within the meaning of section 23 so this offence is not committed in these circumstances.</p>\n<p>The publisher <a href=\"https://www.familylaw.co.uk/news_and_comment/cp-a-child-v-first-tier-tribunal-criminal-injuries-compensation-2014-ewca-civ-1554\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Family Law</a> offers this detailed summary:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The child was born with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder as a consequence of the mother’s excessive drinking during pregnancy. An application for compensation was made to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. The application was rejected on the grounds that the child had not sustained an injury directly attributable to a crime of violence within the terms of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme 2008 [<em>CICA</em>¹].</p>\n<p>...</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><strong>YES, MAYBE</strong> if the baby dies as a result.</p>\n<p>I cannot find and caselaw for a mother being liable for her baby's death in this way, but in a related case, the <a href=\"https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5b46f1ed2c94e0775e7ee311/amp\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Attorney General's Reference (No 3 of 1994)([1997] 3 All ER 936</a>, as well making it clear that a foetus was not to be regarded as another person, injuries to one in the womb that causes death following a live birth would be manslaughter - the offender in this case stabbed the mother which injured her feotus who died soon after birth.</p>\n<hr />\n<p>¹_{The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA), is a government funded organisation that was created to provide compensation for blameless victims of violent crime. A conviction is not necessary, just enough evidence to meet the criteria for compensation.}</p>\n", "score": 7 }, { "answer_id": 86166, "body": "<p>Though there's no federal law banning the use of alcohol while pregnant, a few states consider <a href=\"https://alcohol.org/laws/serving-alcohol-to-pregnant-women/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">drinking alcohol while pregnant child abuse</a>:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Alabama</li>\n<li>Arizona</li>\n<li>Colorado</li>\n<li>Florida</li>\n<li>Georgia</li>\n<li>Illinois</li>\n<li>Indiana</li>\n<li>Kentucky</li>\n<li>Massachusetts</li>\n<li>Maine</li>\n<li>North Dakota</li>\n<li>Nevada</li>\n<li>Oklahoma</li>\n<li>Rhode Island</li>\n<li>South Carolina</li>\n<li>South Dakota</li>\n<li>Texas</li>\n<li>Utah</li>\n<li>Virginia</li>\n<li>Wisconsin</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Some of the relevant statutes are <a href=\"https://www.law.uh.edu/healthlaw/perspectives/reproductive/980623pregnant.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">cited here</a>.</p>\n<p>Substance (drug) abuse is even more restricted, with about <a href=\"https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/substance-use-during-pregnancy\" rel=\"noreferrer\">24 states and DC</a> having specific laws regarding doing it while pregnant.</p>\n<p>As for tobacco, I couldn't find any statute banning the practice.</p>\n", "score": 6 } ]

[ "united-states", "criminal-law", "children" ]

[ { "answer_id": 70594, "body": "<p>New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prosecution#United_States\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">still allow private prosecutions</a> that can result in incarceration. See also a state by state summary <a href=\"https://law.lclark.edu/live/files/26911-50-states-victim-initiated-investigation\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">here</a>.</p>\n<p>A bar on conflicts of interest (e.g. having the same lawyer pursue a private prosecution and a civil case against the same defendant) <a href=\"https://katzjustice.com/private-prosecutors-are-limited-by-virginia-law-says-fairfax-criminal-lawyer/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">greatly limit the practice in Virginia</a> (see also <a href=\"http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/opncavtx/2158963.txt\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">here</a>). <a href=\"https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1444&amp;context=wlucdj\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">There is an argument</a> that this limitation has federal constitutional force. But see, <em>Cantrell v. Commonwealth</em>, 229 Va. 387 (1985) (analysed <a href=\"https://crimlaw.blogspot.com/2014/02/private-prosecutors.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">here</a>).</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Is there anyone currently in jail/prison as a result of a private\nprosecution in one of the states which allow them? If not, when was\nthe last time this occurred.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>They are very rare, and often limited to misdemeanors. I suspect that there is currently someone in incarcerated on the basis of one, but it isn't easy to determine as there are no one who maintains statistics regarding this. Convictions in private prosecutions have resulted in appellate decisions as recently as 2020 in Virginia.</p>\n<p>A private prosecution resulting in a conviction with a one-year suspended sentence and one year of probation was <a href=\"https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ri-supreme-court/1137719.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">affirmed on appeal in 2001 in Rhode Island</a>.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/56705952.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">In many Rhode Island cases</a>, this involves prosecutions by police officers (see also <a href=\"https://theappeal.org/rhode-island-police-prosecutors/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">here</a> noting that this is also common in &quot;New Hampshire, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Virginia, where police officers can act as prosecutors throughout the entire misdemeanor process—from a defendant’s first appearance through a plea or trial&quot;).</p>\n<p>A (pay per view) <a href=\"https://www.jstor.org/stable/23058573\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2011 law review article</a> reviews the practice of victim prosecutions in New Hampshire (where incarceration may not be sought), New Jersey, and Rhode Island.</p>\n", "score": 4 } ]

[ "united-states", "criminal-law", "prosecution" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91095, "body": "<p>It isn't explicitly prohibited so long as <a href=\"https://www.tjctc.org/SRL/small-claim-plaintiff.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">the amount claimed is in the aggregate less than $20,000</a>. But, it would probably be better to file separately.</p>\n<p>First, very simple single party, single transaction cases are what small claims court is designed to do, and going against the flow often creates unforeseen confusion for the judge in the Justice Court who isn't a sophisticated civil litigation expert. The <a href=\"https://www.county.org/About-Texas-Counties/About-Texas-County-Officials/Texas-Justice-of-the-Peace\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Justices of the Peace</a> who preside over Justice Courts that handle small claims cases in Texas often aren't and don't have to be lawyers or even high school graduates.</p>\n<p>Second, if you sue as a group, and one of your group is the lead person handling the case (and that person isn't a lawyer), the lead person is at grave risk of being found to be practicing law without a license by taking actions in a lawsuit on behalf of your fellow plaintiffs.</p>\n", "score": 3 } ]

[ "texas", "small-claims-court" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91066, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/england-and-wales\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-england-and-wales-tooltip-container\">england-and-wales</a></p>\n<p>No. Reconciliation between victim and attacker has no bearing on the guilt of the attacker.</p>\n<p>It may have a bearing on the decision to prosecute: A victim can be forced to testify, but they may well not make a very convincing witness if they are. Also, in past times (when the police were the prosecutors for most crimes), they often had a &quot;least said, soonest mended&quot; approach to domestic violence.</p>\n<p>It may also have a bearing on the sentence.</p>\n<p>Note: England and Wales is a jurisdiction where prosecutions can occur without a complaint (in general).</p>\n", "score": 14 }, { "answer_id": 91086, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/germany\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-germany-tooltip-container\">germany</a></p>\n<p>German criminal code explicitly states <a href=\"https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p0250\" rel=\"noreferrer\">in §46 StGb</a> that</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>the offender’s conduct in the period following the offence, in particular efforts to make restitution for the harm caused as well as efforts at reconciliation with the victim.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>is one of the circumstances that needs to be considered when fixing the penalty. So while the offender will still be prosecuted, the penalty will typically be less harsh if the offender actively makes amends.</p>\n<p>For smaller offenses, courts will often suggest a mediated reconciliation between offender and victim (which the victim does not have to accept), which may even lead to no prosecution or no penalty at all (<a href=\"https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p0260\" rel=\"noreferrer\">§46a StGb</a>)</p>\n<p>More information about victim–offender mediation is provided by the <a href=\"https://www.bmj.de/DE/Themen/OpferschutzUndGewaltpraevention/TaeterOpferAusgleich/TaeterOpferAusgleich_node.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Federal department of Justice</a>, unfortunately, that link is in German and I wasn't able to find an English version.</p>\n", "score": 10 }, { "answer_id": 91067, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/switzerland\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;switzerland&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;switzerland&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-switzerland-tooltip-container\">switzerland</a></p>\n<p>In Switzerland, and as far as I know in most civil law systems, there's the distinction between crimes that are prosecuted &quot;ex officio&quot; (by office) and those that are only prosecuted on complaint. For bodily injury (<a href=\"https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/54/757_781_799/en\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Criminal Code</a>, Art 123), it depends on the actual crime commited (namely whether the crime was commited using some kind of weapon) and to whom the crime was commited (e.g. violence against one's own spouse or children is always prosecuted).</p>\n<p>Art 55a gives some reasons for suspending a proceeding against family members, but these are mostly exceptional, like if the judge deems that this is better for the family.</p>\n<p>So generally speaking, the prosecution cannot normally be suspended <em>particularly</em> if the victim is a close relative. This is to prevent that victims of family violence would not complain for fear of more violence. Also, victims might otherwise be forced to take back their complaints by the offender, as they threat them also with more violence.</p>\n", "score": 8 }, { "answer_id": 91097, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/united-states\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;united-states&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;united-states&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-united-states-tooltip-container\">united-states</a> and other common law countries.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Suppose someone causes grievous injury or harm to someone but the\nvictim and accused later on reconcile voluntarily. Can the accused\nstill be prosecuted for the act?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Yes.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Specifically in jurisdictions where states can take cognizance of an\noffence without a complaint, like in Malaysia, Singapore or\nIndia/Pakistan/Bangladesh? If yes then are there exceptions for\nspecial classes such as women and children?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>There are some countries, generally in civil law countries, where select offenses can be brought in the first place only with the victim's consent (although I don't know that once a charge is brought that a victim has the unilateral right to withdraw charges). I believe that Germany is one of them. This comes against the backdrop that while in common laws, prosecutors have vast discretion to decision what charges to bring against whom in an unprincipled manner, in most civil law countries, prosecutors have a duty to prosecute every substantiated crime that they believe they can obtain convictions for subject only to the limits of their office's personnel and economic resources which may require prioritization (often on a principled basis only) of different possible criminal cases to bring. Requiring victim consent, or allowing a victim veto of the bringing of criminal charges in that case serves a role similar to that of prosecutorial discretion in common law legal systems.</p>\n<p>Similarly, in Germany, like many other civil law countries, there are circumstances much broader than in common law countries, where victims can refuse to testify or cooperate in a criminal case. See, e.g., <a href=\"https://www.unafei.or.jp/publications/pdf/RS_No70/No70_07VE_Loffelmann2.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer\">STPO § 52</a> (Right to Refuse Testimony on Personal Grounds) and there are provisions for perpetrator-victim mediation which have also been tried in common law countries but give the victim more authority in civil law countries than they do in common law countries.</p>\n<p>U.S. legal scholars and courts have soundly criticized this approach in many circumstances, even though so called &quot;restorative justice&quot; programs have their place and are used in some circumstances. <em>See, e.g.</em>, Albert W. Alschuler, &quot;<a href=\"https://www.jstor.org/stable/1341209\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Mediation with a Mugger: The Shortage of Adjudicative Services and the Need for a Two-Tier Trial System in Civil Cases</a>&quot; 99(8) Harvard Law Review 1808-1859 (June 1986). <em>See also, e.g., People v. Justice</em>, <a href=\"https://cl.cobar.org/from-the-courts/people-v-justice/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">2023 CO 9</a>. The law review article's open paragraphs are quite famous and often quoted in legal scholarship:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>At about 2:30 p.m. on January 26, 1981, in a subway station in\nManhattan, three youths attacked a man who was carrying electronics\nequipment worth between $8oo and $1ooo. The victim attempted to escape\nby running up a stairway, but his attackers pursued him. They caught\ntheir victim, beat him, and shoved him into a plate glass window.\nAlthough the window did not break, a door handle hit the man in the\nchest, tearing some tissue and cartilage and causing considerable\npain. The youths continued their beating until a police officer\narrived. Then two of them fled. The third failed to notice the arrival\nof the officer and was apprehended while beating the victim.</p>\n<p>Although only sixteen, the arrested youth was wise in the ways of the\ncriminal justice system. He claimed that the man with the electronics\nequipment had attacked him and thereby provoked the incident. Because\nboth the attacker and the victim had filed complaints, the victim soon\nreceived written notice of an informal hearing at which he could\nmediate his dispute with the mugger. The victim declined the\nopportunity.</p>\n<p>The youth was ultimately punished for his crime. Although he failed to\nappear in court on the return date specified in the summons, it was\nnot long before he was arrested for a similar crime in Brooklyn. The\ntwo cases were consolidated, and after the defendant pleaded guilty to\nreduced charges, he served six months in jail. He later received a\nthree-to-nine year penitentiary sentence for additional robberies\ncommitted after his release. At last word, he was still in prison. The\nvictim of the mugging, however, was never told what had happened to\nhis attacker. He thought that the case had ended when he declined the\noffer of mediation.</p>\n<p>The victim decided that he needed a gun, and his gun became famous.\nThe victim's name was Bernhard Goetz.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>But, in countries with a common law history, like Singapore, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (I'm simply not familiar with Malaysian law one way or the other), the public prosecutor can bring any criminal charge without the consent or input of the victim or the victim's next of kin. And, the victim can't force someone to withdraw a prosecution.</p>\n<p>In a handful of U.S. states and some other common law countries, a private individual can commence a criminal case without approval from a public prosecutor, but even then, the public prosecutor has the authority to take over the case from the private prosecutor.</p>\n<p>This said, prosecutors are not insensitive to the needs and wishes of crime victims, whom they often see as their <em>de facto</em> clients most of the time, and many U.S. states expressly require that victims have a voice in the way that prosecutors handle cases involving them (although not decision-making power) in what is often called &quot;victim's rights&quot; legislation.</p>\n<p>A prosecutor will often take a victim's request to drop charges seriously, even though the prosecutor isn't require to honor a reconciled victim's request to drop charges. And, as a practical matter, it is frequently difficult or impossible to prosecute many kinds of criminal charges without the willing cooperation of the victim.</p>\n<p>On the other hand, it isn't unheard of in the United States for the prosecutor to issue a subpoena forcing a victim to testify involuntarily in a criminal prosecution, enforceable by fining or incarcerating the victim for failing to do so. While this power can, in theory, be used in a variety of cases, in practice, it is done most often in cases involve statutory rape, incest, child abuse or neglect, or domestic violence.</p>\n<p>Prosecutors press forward in these cases over a victim's objections because they know that there is often a pattern of criminal conduct by the defendant followed by repeated cycles of reconciliation, that future harm is inevitable even if the victim denies it, and that the victim's free will can be overcome by undue influence and by economic dependence, love, and family loyalty. Basically, sometimes a prosecutor decides that the defendant's conduct is so bad that society must punish it as a message to others and out of righteousness, and that future violations are inevitable and need to be prevented.</p>\n<p>This cases are very frustrating for lawyers (as I can attest as a private lawyer who has dealt with similar situations in family law and protective order cases). The lawyers can see the perpetrator's lies and certainty of repeating the misconduct, but the victim is blinded by hope and other complicated emotions.</p>\n<p>Another situation where this comes up is in fraud cases, where the victims care about compensation for themselves which can be impaired if the perpetrator is incarcerated and they want to bring civil lawsuits instead. But, the prosecutor may be more concerned that if the defendant isn't convicted of a crime that the perpetrator will be more likely harm new victims in the future with similar conduct. These cases are far less fraught emotionally and simply involve the conflict of interest that fraud victims have between their own economic restitution and protecting the public that is frequently obvious to everyone involved.</p>\n", "score": 6 } ]

[ "criminal-law" ]

[ { "answer_id": 85349, "body": "<p>As explained <a href=\"https://inforrm.org/2017/02/02/spent-convictions-in-the-law-of-privacy-and-data-protection-part-1-aidan-wills/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">here</a>, this arises from the <a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/53\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974</a> and the <a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/contents\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Data Protection Act 1998</a>. There is a concept of a &quot;spent&quot; conviction, where a person convicted is not reconvicted of a serious offense for years, and then the person is (statutorily) &quot;rehabilitated&quot;, and under §4 of the law, they &quot;shall be treated for all purposes in law as a person who has not committed or been charged with or prosecuted for or convicted of or sentenced for the offence [s] which were the subject of that conviction&quot;. The law also\ncriminalizes certain disclosures of spent convictions, mainly unauthorized disclosures by officials. The reasoning is that &quot;the public interest in rehabilitation outweighs the public interest in continuing publication and knowledge of the offense&quot;. The warning is actually not directed at Bob, it is directed at the prosecutor.</p>\n", "score": 4 }, { "answer_id": 85506, "body": "<p>Bob has a right to a fair trial under <a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part/I/chapter/5?timeline=false\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Article 6</a> Human Rights Act 1988.</p>\n<p>Supporting this right is the <a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/25/contents\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996</a> (CPIA) and its accompanying <a href=\"https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/criminal-procedure-and-investigations-act-1996-section-231-code-of-practice\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Code of Practice</a> that, among other things, lay out the rules and procedures for &quot;disclosure&quot; to ensure that Bob is given details of, access to, or copies of relevant non-sensitive material¹ to enable him to prepare his defence.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/25/section/3?timeline=false\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Section 3</a> CPIA say that:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(1)The prosecutor must—</p>\n<ul>\n<li>(a)disclose to the accused any prosecution material which has not previously been disclosed to the accused and which might reasonably be considered capable of undermining the case for the prosecution against the accused or of assisting the case for the accused...</li>\n</ul>\n<p>[...]</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>s.3 is the &quot;Prosecution Test for Disclosure&quot;, and athough not every PNC court-print in every prosecution will satisfy this test, it seems to do so in Bob's case.</p>\n<p>Now that he has had disclosure, <a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/25/section/17?timeline=false\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Section 17</a> CPIA places <strong>an obligation of confidentiality on Bob</strong> and prohibits him from sharing the PNC printout (and all other material disclosed to him) except in the circumstances described within:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(1)If the accused is given or allowed to inspect a document or other object under—</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>(a)section 3, 4, 7A , 14 or 15, or</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>(b)an order under section 8,</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>then, subject to subsections (2) to (4), he must not use or disclose it or any information recorded in it.</p>\n<p>(2)The accused may use or disclose the object or information—</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>(a)in connection with the proceedings for whose purposes he was given the object or allowed to inspect it,</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>(b)with a view to the taking of further criminal proceedings (for instance, by way of appeal) with regard to the matter giving rise to the proceedings mentioned in paragraph (a), or</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>(c)in connection with the proceedings first mentioned in paragraph (b).</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>(3)The accused may use or disclose—</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>(a)the object to the extent that it has been displayed to the public in open court, or</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>(b)the information to the extent that it has been communicated to the public in open court;</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>but the preceding provisions of this subsection do not apply if the object is displayed or the information is communicated in proceedings to deal with a contempt of court under section 18.</p>\n<p>(4)If—</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>(a)the accused applies to the court for an order granting permission to use or disclose the object or information, and</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>(b)the court makes such an order,</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>the accused may use or disclose the object or information for the purpose and to the extent specified by the court</p>\n</blockquote>\n<hr />\n<p>¹The CPIA Code of Practice offers these definitions:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<ol start=\"7\">\n<li><strong>material</strong> is material of any kind, including information and objects, which is obtained or inspected in the course of a criminal investigation and which may be relevant to the investigation. This includes not only material coming into the possession of the investigator (such as documents seized in the course of searching premises) but also material generated by them (such as interview records);</li>\n</ol>\n</li>\n<li>\n<ol start=\"8\">\n<li>material may be <strong>relevant</strong> to an investigation if it appears to an investigator, or to the officer in charge of an investigation, or to the disclosure officer, that it has some bearing on any offence under investigation or any person being investigated, or on the surrounding circumstances of the case, unless it is incapable of having any impact on the case;</li>\n</ol>\n</li>\n<li>\n<ol start=\"9\">\n<li><strong>sensitive material</strong> is material, the disclosure of which the disclosure officer believes would give rise to a real risk of serious prejudice to an important public interest; [<em>the Code refers to material not meeting this definition as <strong>non-sensitive</strong></em>]</li>\n</ol>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>And, for completeness:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>10.3 When a prosecutor provides material to the defence in accordance with the obligation under section 3 or section 7A of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996, the prosecutor must at the same time provide the schedule of non-sensitive material to the defence.</li>\n</ul>\n", "score": 4 } ]

[ "criminal-law", "england-and-wales" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91085, "body": "<p>Item 10 from the link you referenced appears to me to answer your question:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<ol start=\"10\">\n<li>When does the higher penalty for subsequent violations apply?</li>\n</ol>\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The higher penalty for subsequent violations will apply after notice to\nthe employer of a previous violation has been established, regardless\nof whether penalties were actually assessed.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>As I read it, the only way a subsequent violation occurs is that the company misses a payment AGAIN after you notify them of the error.</p>\n<p>From what you described above, I believe the answer is &quot;no&quot;, you are not entitled to additional payments due to subsequent violations.</p>\n", "score": 1 }, { "answer_id": 91091, "body": "<p>You might refer to <a href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?division=2.&amp;chapter=1.&amp;part=1.&amp;lawCode=LAB&amp;article=1.\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">the law</a> as stated by the legislature.\n§210 says that</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(a) In addition to, and entirely independent and apart from, any other\npenalty provided in this article, every person who fails to pay the\nwages of each employee as provided in Sections 201.3, 204, 204b,\n204.1, 204.2, 204.11, 205, 205.5, and 1197.5, shall be subject to a penalty as follows:</p>\n<p>(1) For any initial violation, one hundred dollars ($100) for each\nfailure to pay each employee.</p>\n<p>(2) For each subsequent violation, or any willful or intentional\nviolation, two hundred dollars ($200) for each failure to pay each\nemployee, plus 25 percent of the amount unlawfully withheld.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The first time they are late in paying you, they have violated the law and are subject to a $100 penalty. Every violation after that is a subsequent violation, which has a higher penalty. Thus $4150, for the proffered numbers (but only if this is within the statute of limitations, 1 year). &quot;Violation&quot; is not defined in terms of an employee complaining, it is defined in terms of an employer not paying, so there are clearly 10 violations.</p>\n<p>The DoL explanation says that</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The higher penalty for subsequent violations will apply after notice\nto the employer of a previous violation has been established,\nregardless of whether penalties were actually assessed</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>does not mean that multiple violations are subsumed under one violation that accrues when notice is given; it means that they don't care when the penalty was actually assessed – this is for the case that the DoL handles the complaint. The employees can also file a claim.</p>\n<p>Also note that the penalty goes to the state of California, and not the employee. The employee can get up to 25% of the penalty under <a href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&amp;division=2.&amp;title=&amp;part=13.&amp;chapter=&amp;article=\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">the Private Attorney's General Act</a>. <a href=\"https://www.worklawyers.com/how-to-file-wage-claim-california-dlse/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">This page</a> gives some details on filing wage claims. Regarding options, they say that &quot;The most obvious is to raise the issue with their employer and resolve it informally&quot;, bypassing official court action.</p>\n", "score": 0 } ]

[ "california", "employment", "payment" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91080, "body": "<blockquote>\n<p>Why did he use no later on rather than later than? Is it a mistake?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This is obviously a translation mistake. The phrase &quot;no later on&quot; is ambiguous because it doesn't have a clearly understood meaning, and is not proper English.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "contract-law", "international", "sale-of-goods" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91076, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/france\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;france&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;france&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-france-tooltip-container\">france</a></p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https://recordinglaw.com/france-recording-laws/#:%7E:text=In%20France%2C%20it%20is%20illegal%20to%20record%20or,consent%20of%20all%20the%20parties%20to%20the%20conversation.\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">this</a>, it's illegal in France to record without awareness, and generally illegal without consent (though consent can be implied). Here's the most relevant portion:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In France, it is illegal to record or transmit conversations\n(including phone conversations) without the consent of all the parties\nto the conversation.</p>\n<p>However, if the recording is done in full view of the concerned\nparties without them objecting to it when they are in a position to do\nso, then consent is presumed, and you’re allowed to record the\nconversation.</p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "france" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91063, "body": "<p>Subsection 5(5A) was inserted by section 222 of the Housing Act 2004, and the <a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/34/notes/division/6/6/37\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">explanatory notes</a> provide an explanation of its purpose:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Section 222 enables landlords of shared ownership properties to include rights of first refusal in their shared ownership leases in order to help with the retention of affordable housing units.</p>\n<p>[...]</p>\n<p>Enabling the landlord to buy back the property, where the tenant wishes to dispose of it, would prevent the loss of affordable housing stock to the open market, particularly in rural areas where replacement is difficult, and would allow the housing association to re-sell the unit in more affordable tranches.</p>\n<p>Section 5 of the Housing Act 1988 would previously have operated so as to make a right of first refusal unenforceable. Shared ownership leases are generally assured tenancies, as because of the rental element they are not long leases at low rent.</p>\n<p>Section 222, by excluding rights of first refusal from section 5 of the Housing Act 1988, will allow landlords to insert and enforce rights of first refusal in shared ownership leases to assist with the retention of affordable housing units. If included in the lease, a right of first refusal will simply require the shared owner to offer the property back to the original landlord. There will be no obligation on the landlord to accept.</p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "england-and-wales", "assured-shorthold-tenancy" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91043, "body": "<p>The statement that cats cannot commit trespass is technically true, but is also a misreading of ss.4 and 4A of the Animals Act. Those sections replace a common-law doctrine called &quot;cattle trespass&quot;, which was a specific tort (a civil wrong) concerning what happens when my cattle stray onto your land. Both old and new rules apply only to livestock, so not just cows but other kinds of farm animals as well - but <em>not</em> to dogs or cats. Horses are a special case (s.4A). Since cats are not livestock, they cannot be the subject of cattle trespass and are not covered by section 4.</p>\n<p>Further, since they are animals, they cannot commit the tort of trespass at all. Animals themselves are not liable at law. As the <em>keeper</em> of cows, it would be <em>me</em> who was liable in a case of cattle trespass, not the cow. The point of s.4, and its predecessor in common law, is to make me liable for damage done to your property by my cows, regardless of whether I was negligent in the way I looked after them (it is a &quot;strict liability&quot;). The mere fact that they've strayed onto your land and done damage is enough.</p>\n<p>Because cats are not cows, this particular rule does not apply. That does not mean that cats can't be the subject of other torts. In particular, cats could be involved in the tort of nuisance, which covers all sorts of potential scenarios - noise, smells, etc. This has typically happened when there are lots and lots of cats. And under the Animals Act, the keeper of <em>any</em> animal may be liable for damage that it does, including physical injury or damage to property.</p>\n<p>Section 2 of the Act establishes a statutory distinction between whether I am <em>liable</em> for the damage, or <em>strictly liable</em>. In a scenario where I am strictly liable, you do not have to prove that I was negligent in my management of the animal. Broadly, that applies if the animal belongs to a dangerous species, or is unusually dangerous in itself. (There has been very complex litigation on this point which I am not discussing here.) If my cat is not a real vicious bastard of a cat, but just a regular cat, then I can still be liable for damage that he does: it's just not automatic.</p>\n<p>Following Rachael Mulheron's <em>Principles of Tort Law</em> (CUP, 2nd ed., 2016), for an action in negligence there are several key points -</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Proving that D, the owner/keeper of an animal, owed C a duty of care, where C was injured by that animal, has been a straightforward task.</p>\n<p>The court must be satisfied that a reasonable person in the position of D, the keeper of the animal, would foresee a real risk of injury to C arising from D's particular acts or omissions in dealing with the animal. Otherwise, in the absence of that foreseeability, a reasonable D would have done nothing different in response to the risk posed by his animal.</p>\n<p>To fall below the standard of reasonable care as a keeper of an animal, D must have failed to do that which a reasonable keeper would have done (to supervise/fence/control, etc, the animal), or have done something which a reasonable keeper would not have done.</p>\n<p>In damage-by-animals cases, C must prove that, as in the usual negligence action, D's failure to supervise/handle/care for the animals caused C's injury on the balance of probabilities.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>As in other negligence cases, there are various defences; if you hassled my cat and it scratched you, then that's your fault and not mine.</p>\n<p>From the material quoted above, we can see that for a normal cat in the UK, where the owner is not doing anything unusual by letting it roam freely outdoors (as is typical for UK cats), it is going to be hard to meet the tests. Things may be different if D knows that C is allergic to cats, or that the cat has been eyeing up C's delicious prize goldfish, or has a bone to pick with D's own cat and is likely to attack her, or something. Most of the big cases under the Animals Act have involved animals who are more likely to cause damage, such as dogs, horses and cows; a cat is only legally different because (1) unlike for dogs, horses and cows, there are no special rules applying to cats, and (2) factually, most cats don't do much harm.</p>\n<p>To that point, even if D is liable in the way described, C may not get very much out of them by way of damages. Defecation in C's garden is not pleasant, but is probably not worth a lot of money either.</p>\n", "score": 35 }, { "answer_id": 91042, "body": "<blockquote>\n<p>If a cat owner were found liable in a county court for their cat having committed damages during their roaming, would there be any legal basis to challenge this decision?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>That begs the question of liability, doesn't it?</p>\n<p>The bottom line is that cats are regarded both as fairly tame creatures which don't pose any general risk of unprovoked aggression or serious injury towards humans.</p>\n<p>For this reason, they have not fallen under legal regimes designed to control dangerous animals (which are traditionally kept despite a danger because they have some kind of working role).</p>\n<p>Instead cats are simply left to roam the environment in a natural manner. They have always performed a useful function mainly in controlling vermin.</p>\n<p>Cats also do not generally pose a risk of causing serious &quot;damage&quot; to property, save where some arrangement is so fragile that any wild animal or adverse weather event might be prone to cause damage.</p>\n<p>Because cats are relatively inert, there is no specific regime that holds owners liable for ordinary behaviours of cats.</p>\n<p>However, unlike wild animals, domestic cats cannot be permanently captured or killed as they are regarded as the personal property of the owner (though the cats could well be seized temporarily or harassed if the purpose is to deter their future presence).</p>\n<p>Ultimately, a landowner has no more right to be free of visitation from his neighbours' cats, as he has a right to be free from ordinary cooking smells, or the noise of children playing, or the runoff from a water source, or a variety of other things that are clearly imposed on him by the activity or arrangements of his neighbours, but which he has no right to control or hold his neighbour accountable for.</p>\n", "score": 4 } ]

[ "england-and-wales", "liability" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91065, "body": "<p>Yes.</p>\n<p>The prescribed form - Form 1 on the <a href=\"https://www.gov.uk/guidance/assured-tenancy-forms\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">official list of such documents</a>, entitled &quot;Notice proposing different terms for a Statutory Periodic Tenancy&quot; - makes clear that it can be issued by either the landlord or the tenant.</p>\n<p>The form also states:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>If you don't agree with the proposed terms and any adjustment of the rent [...], and you are unable to reach agreement with your landlord/tenant, or you do not wish to discuss it with him/her, you may refer the matter directly to the tribunal, <strong>before the date specified</strong> [...], using the form headed <em>Application referring a Notice proposing different terms for a Statutory Periodic Tenancy to a Tribunal</em></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The specified date, which appears earlier in the document, &quot;must be at least <strong>three months</strong> after the date on which this notice is served.&quot; - hence confirming that if you don't contact the tribunal within that period, the proposed terms become binding.</p>\n<p>The specified form is number 2 on the list linked above.</p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "england-and-wales", "rent", "assured-shorthold-tenancy" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90885, "body": "<h2>Joe can sue Jim</h2>\n<p>And Jim can sue Joe.</p>\n<p>Just because Joe is a tortfeasor (assault) against Jim doesn't change the fact that Jim is a tortfeasor (negligence) against Joe.</p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "damages", "assault", "hypothetical" ]

[ { "answer_id": 85645, "body": "<p>Under US law, there is no requirement for a child to have the same last name as the legal father, the biological father, or the mother. Initially the last name is specified on the birth certificate, often taken from the name of the listed father, but that is not required. But the name can be changed at any time, by a custodial parent or guardian while the child is minor, and later by the child directly.</p>\n", "score": 7 } ]

[ "united-states", "children", "birth-certificate" ]

[ { "answer_id": 37597, "body": "<p>You have been told that the other person's insurance may not be valid. Why it may not doesn't really matter, perhaps the other person didn't pay premiums or lied on an application. So the situation is much the same as if the other person is uninsured or under insured. Your p[olicy must cover things. And your policy has a deductible. So you have to pay the deductable amount. That is what a deductible is, the amount that you must pay before your policy coverage kicks in. The lower it is, the higher your premium is. You don't have any choice about that.</p>\n\n<p>Depending on your jurisdiction, you may be able to sue the other person involved in the accident, and get that person to pay. Your insurance company might do this for you, but if they won't you would have to hire a lawyer yourself to do that. Such a lawyer could get all the details of your case, and advise you of your options. </p>\n", "score": 7 } ]

[ "insurance", "damages", "accident" ]

[ { "answer_id": 34083, "body": "<p>There’s a lot going on in this question.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Insurance doesn’t matter for liability. An insurer indemnifies the insured for damage they cause to other people (third-party personal insurance), other people’s stuff (third-party property insurance) or the insured’s stuff (comprehensive or first-party insurance) [the insurer is the second party]. If someone other than the insured is liable then the insurer can sue that person for recovery on behalf of the insured, just like the insured could do if they didn’t have insurance.</li>\n<li>The owner of the vehicle is the one who suffers the loss so, barring any other liability, they bear the cost.</li>\n<li>Much of the following depends on the tort of <a href=\"https://law.stackexchange.com/a/14110/344\">negligence</a>. An important point is the standard of discharging a duty is that which a reasonable person would do. The fact that the actual person may be under some sort of impairment (as your parent) is irrelevant unless it is brought to the attention of the injured party such that it becomes unreasonable for the injured party to rely on the tortfeasor.</li>\n<li>The driver is liable to the owner if they were <a href=\"https://law.stackexchange.com/a/14110/344\">negligent</a>. If they are an employee of the owner, employment law generally requires their conduct to go beyond negligence into recklessness or wilfulness before holding them liable.</li>\n<li>If the hazard is natural, the property owner is not generally responsible. However, if they have a legal duty to mitigate natural hazards (as the owners of public roads generally do) then they may be liable if they were negligent in performing that duty. By advising of the hazard and making the arrangements you did, you are probably not negligent.</li>\n<li>A person who gives directions to a driver may be liable if those directions were negligent. From your example, if the driver specifically asked about the hazard and if the tortfeasor did not have a reasonable belief that it was (i.e. they didn’t actually know), stating it was safe is probably negligent.</li>\n<li>Negligence is subject to the partial defence of contributory negligence which means that the liability of the tortfeasor is reduced by the proportion that the victim contributed to the event.</li>\n</ol>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "liability", "mental-health" ]

[ { "answer_id": 51836, "body": "<p>In Germany, there is no concept that corresponds directly to public domain. You automatically hold the Urheberrecht (~ copyright) for all creative works that you make, and it can't be given up or transferred (§29 UrhG). The work only enters the Gemeinfreiheit (~public domain) 70 years after your death. You can however license Verwertungsrechte (economic usage rights). When you make creative works in the course of employment (see §43 UrhG), your employer automatically gets the Verwertungsrechte necessary in the context for the work, which is typically an exclusive right (no one else, not even you, can use the work).</p>\n\n<p>Your are not in an employment relationship with your school, so it has no rights to your works and cannot prevent you from publishing them on copyright grounds. When you see advice on the internet to check with your school first, that is U.S.-specific advice.</p>\n\n<p>Since you're still a minor (7–17), you only have limited capacity to enter contracts or legal transactions (bedingte Geschäftsfähigkeit). While you are able to make transactions involving your own means (e.g. buying something with your pocket money) or make transactions that are only to your benefit (such as accepting a gift), other transactions are <em>schwebend unwirksam</em> (~ pending ratification), until your parents agree. The relevant law is in §107 and §108 BGB.</p>\n\n<p>This is a problem with open source licenses. If you publish software under a license, this license is schwebend unwirksam. Someone might start using the software under the license. But then if your parents refuse ratification, the license would be invalid, and everyone would have to stop using your software and destroy any derivative works they made. This is a bit of a problem, especially since open source licenses are otherwise assumed to be irrevocable.</p>\n\n<p>So if you want to offer a license (including open source licenses), please give legal certainty to the recipients of the license and ask your parents for their consent first, possibly even in writing. Per §107 BGB, the license you offer with their consent will be valid.</p>\n", "score": 7 }, { "answer_id": 91050, "body": "<p>We would have to look exactly at what happens if a 15 year old publishes their own work under the GPL license. USA and Germany are not identical but similar.</p>\n<p>In the USA, you can absolutely publish your work under the GPL. However, you or your legal guardian can cancel this at any time up to and slightly after your 18th birthday. If that doesn’t happen, then everything is fine.</p>\n<p>But if you void the GPL license, it just is not valid anymore. That would mean trouble for everyone using it. They suddenly lose their license, and they are committing copyright infringement by using the software. That would be my risk that I take if I use gpl-licensed software that was licensed by a 15 year old. For you, there is no risk.</p>\n", "score": 3 } ]

[ "copyright", "germany", "open-source-software", "minor" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91061, "body": "<p>It takes the officer seconds to say &quot;stay here&quot; or &quot;you can leave&quot;. It's more likely that the motorist misheard.</p>\n<p>Call 911 from your cell phone or nearest phone and ask for instructions. The call taker can contact dispatch who can raise the officer on the radio. They will also take down your information as part of any 911 call, specifically name and phone number, so the police can contact you again if necessary.</p>\n<p>The call will be recorded so if there's ever a dispute about fleeing, you will have the instructions given to you as evidence.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "united-states", "police", "traffic", "oregon" ]

[ { "answer_id": 55921, "body": "<p>Short answer: No. If a court destroys the criminal file due to age, the defendant's criminal record lives on in law enforcement databases, be it local, state, or federal. In San Diego, the Superior Court records are open to inspection. Court case files are public records and subject to public inspection. California Rules of Court, rule 2.400(a) states that all papers in the court files may be inspected by the public in the office of the clerk. Rule 2.550(a) says that unless confidential or sealed by law, all court records are presumed open.</p>\n<p>However, again, this does not impact a criminal history report retained by law enforcement. To get the conviction literally removed from the criminal history report, the defendant will typically need a court order directing the law enforcement agency to remove the arrest and/or conviction.</p>\n<p>For example, in California, if the defendant can prove there was no reason to have arrested the defendant in the first place.</p>\n<p>Specifically, Penal Code section 851.8 (b) requires “any law enforcement agency” to destroy their records. “[Penal Code] section 851.8 is for the benefit of those defendants who have not committed a crime. It permits those petitioners who can show that the state should never have subjected them to the compulsion of the criminal law -- because no objective factors justified official action -- to purge the official records of any reference to such action. . . ...” (People v. Matthews (1992) 7 Cal.App.4th 1052, 1056.) (Emphasis added)</p>\n<p>In People v. Scott M. (1985) 167 Cal. App. 3d 688, 700 [“Section 851.8 is for the benefit of those defendants who have not committed a crime.”].) Factual innocence may be determined based on circumstances at the time of arrest or any meritorious defense. Recent case law establishes the pivotal time for viewing the evidence is when the motion is heard. The statutory language “necessarily means that the existence of reasonable cause depends on the current evidence rather than simply the evidence that existed at the time that the arrest and prosecution occurred.” (People v. Laiwala, 143 Cal. App. 4th 1065, 1068 &amp; n. 3 (2003) (emphasis added).</p>\n<p>Keep in mind in California, &quot;expunge&quot; does not mean to seal or destroy, but officially dismisses the conviction - leaving the public record intact.</p>\n<p>The best place to start is contacting your local public defender and ask about post conviction relief or record sealing if your arrest did not result in a conviction. Getting free advice never hurts.</p>\n", "score": 3 }, { "answer_id": 40463, "body": "<p>Not necessarily, if there is such a record such as the online listing you described, then I'd imagine a court would consider that as a record of the case. </p>\n\n<p>However I doubt a court would accept that a record could be expunged in this case. They would consider the nature of the offence, whether it was a first time offence, and a whole host of other issues and requirements. So if that person were to seek their record being expunged, they would have to petition the court on more than the issue of the physical file not being found. </p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "united-states", "court-records", "expungement" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91059, "body": "<p>All <em>ex post facto</em> laws are unconstitutional in the United States. But, not all retroactive laws are unconstitutional in the United States.</p>\n<p>An <em>ex post facto</em> law is basically a law that retroactively makes conduct illegal or punishes it more severely than it was punished at the time if it was already illegal.</p>\n<p>By way of example, tax legislation is often constitutionally retroactive, and laws that retroactively make the punishments for acts that are crimes at the time more lenient (or retroactively grant amnesty for previously illegal conduct) are legal.</p>\n<p>I strongly suspect, but do not know for certain, that India's constitutional law makes the same distinction that U.S. constitutional law does in this regard.</p>\n", "score": 4 } ]

[ "criminal-law" ]

[ { "answer_id": 89489, "body": "<p>A &quot;night court&quot; is simply a court that operates outside the ordinary business hours for the convenience of people who have work during those hours. They aren't common and are mostly found in medium sized and large cities.</p>\n<p>A &quot;night court&quot; can do whatever judges in the jurisdiction decide should be offered at that time based upon the needs of people who deal with the court system.</p>\n<p>Small claims civil cases and protection order cases, for example, are also often handled in a night court format, and a variety of criminal law matters not requiring a jury trial could be handled in that format.</p>\n<p>Most cities have a judge or magistrate assigned to take arraignments, not always at night (often the position is rotated among judges in the jurisdiction every now and then), which, as the question notes, &quot;should serve to read the charges, set bail and potentially record a plea, but defer the rest of the process (discovery, pre-trials, depos, trial, and eventual sentencing) to later appearances.&quot;</p>\n<p>An arraignment court would often accept guilty pleas, and sentence people when they plead guilty to infractions, petty offenses, and misdemeanors. It would also often dismiss charges when the prosecutor decides that the case has no merit and decides not to pursue it. It would rarely enter not guilty pleas on the merits, but the court in the television show might not be a pure arraignment court.</p>\n<p>But, as my knowledge of television comedies is less expansive than my knowledge of the law, I can't tell you if this is &quot;an accurate portrayal of a Night Court, or purely a device for fictional purposes.&quot;</p>\n<p>I'm sure that the TV version has wittier dialog, more interesting lawyers and court personnel, and less boringly repetitive cases than real life, but I'd have to defer to someone who has ever watched more than the trailers of the show to comment further.</p>\n", "score": 30 }, { "answer_id": 89516, "body": "<p><em>Night Court</em> is set in Manhattan. The Arraignments part of <a href=\"https://ww2.nycourts.gov/COURTS/nyc/criminal/generalinfo.shtml#NEW_YORK_COUNTY\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Manhattan's Criminal Court</a> (but not the Desk Appearance Tickets section) is open 7 nights per week until 1:00 AM.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The <a href=\"https://ww2.nycourts.gov/courts/nyc/criminal/index.shtml\" rel=\"noreferrer\">NYC Criminal Court</a> handles misdemeanors (crimes punishable by fine or imprisonment of up to one year) &amp; lesser offenses. The Court also conducts arraignments and preliminary hearings for felonies (crimes punishable by imprisonment of more than one year).</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Which would explain why <em>Night Court</em> disposes of lots of misdemeanor cases.</p>\n<p>New York City's <a href=\"https://nycourts.gov/courts/1jd/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Small Claims Court</a> is open until midnight on Thursday nights.</p>\n", "score": 26 }, { "answer_id": 89512, "body": "<p>When I was a lad, The Chief Magistrate presided over Court One, and on a Monday morning would hear the summary cases for all the people picked up by the police over the weekend. And he did deliver verdicts. Also, over the weekend and at night, bail hearings went to Bail Justices.</p>\n<p>If we'd had a Night Court, that's what it would have been hearing. Summary cases and bail applications.</p>\n<p>In my jurisdiction, those were not called &quot;Arraignment Courts&quot;, and they didn't handle &quot;mentions&quot; (arraignments), mentions were scheduled for normal court hours. It's entirely possible that in some other system, a night court might handle arraignments, but in my system arraignments were and are handled separately from Summary and Bail judgements.</p>\n", "score": 6 } ]

[ "law-in-fiction", "arraignment" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91006, "body": "<h2>Other Entities means <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Legal Person</a></h2>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The reason for the term &quot;legal person&quot; is that some legal persons are not people: companies and corporations are &quot;persons&quot; legally speaking (they can legally do most of the things an ordinary person can do), but they are not people in a literal sense (human beings)</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This is very similar to <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Corporate Personhood</a>.</p>\n<p>Among the recognized items for legal personhood are usually <em>groups of people</em>, such as a corporation, states or countries, but also churches and temples. In rare cases, Temple buildings and at least two rivers are legal persons. All non-natural legal persons have in common, that they are represented by natural persons - aka humans.</p>\n<p>A computer program is <strong>not</strong> represented by a natural person. A natural person (possibly representing a legal person) can <strong>use</strong> a program to agree to a contract, but a program agreeing on its own is not following the basic principle of a contract, which requires a <em>meeting of the minds</em> on the offer. The computer program becomes the <em>tool that facilitates</em> the contract, for example by offering a prewritten contract to people that want to use the service.</p>\n<p>Since the contract is usually offered by the service providers <em>as is</em> with no renegotiation allowed, those contracts can only be accepted or not - their side of the bargain is offered and then facilitated by the computer of the service provider - we have an <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_treat\" rel=\"noreferrer\"><em>invitation to treat</em></a>. If a natural or legal person is able to agree (through its representative), the contract becomes binding.</p>\n<p>If you are <strong>not</strong> a legal person - so neither a human nor one of the recognized categories - you can not agree to the TOS, the contract is void.</p>\n", "score": 23 }, { "answer_id": 91005, "body": "<h2>It can’t consent for itself, but it can consent on your behalf</h2>\n<p>The concept we are interested in is that of the <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person\" rel=\"noreferrer\">legal person</a>. A legal person can, among other things, enter into contracts which is what Terms of Service are. Things that aren’t legal persons can’t.</p>\n<p>There are two types of legal persons: natural persons (i.e. human beings) and judicial persons (i.e. things defined by law as legal persons that aren’t human beings). You fall into the first category, a company falls into the second. A computer program falls into neither.</p>\n<p>However, if you or your company cause a computer program to accept a contract, then you or your company has accepted. The computer program hasn’t. For example, when you and Stack Exchange agreed to be bound by this site’s ToS, you did it in person (probably), SE did it by computer program.</p>\n", "score": 16 } ]

[ "legal-terms", "terms-of-service" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91017, "body": "<p>Where consent is required for some act to be lawful, the consent is required before or at the time of the act.</p>\n<p>Typically, consent does not need to be express, but can be implied by conduct.</p>\n<p>It's unclear what &quot;consent after the fact&quot; means. Presumably it means someone has acquiesced to a prior use of force. Certainly that can happen, although it does not make an unlawful act retrospectively lawful.</p>\n<p>To illustrate the difference, a boxer consents to a certain amount of beating in the sports ring. Whereas a victim of a criminal beating may not have consented, but later may nevertheless acquiesce to the beating they received.</p>\n<p>As an aside, there is a discrepancy between the concept of consent as being like a bureaucratic decision which is announced and recorded, and the reality of how humans make decisions which often does not involve a sudden conclusion or a sharp transition between a pending and settled state, and might involve internal conflict before there is a clear outward indication of how the person is minded, or inconsistency across time in how a person expresses their mind.</p>\n<p>How humans react to uncertainty is typically by suspending judgment about events until more information emerges. For example, people often do not react harshly to an insulting remark, until they are sure that it was intended to be insulting by the person who made the remark, and that it was unwarranted.</p>\n<p>This suspension of judgment during uncertainty, conflicts with laws that expect a firm state of mind to exist and a decision to be made quickly about the consent to an impending act.</p>\n<p>With human recollection, earlier events can also be reinterpreted through the prism of information that arises later. Keeping careful account of when various pieces of information arrived in their knowledge, or how they previously felt about a scenario based only on what they knew at an earlier time (as distinct from reasoning about how they would now feel about a past scenario with their current knowledge), is a cognitive skill which people possess to a very variable degree.</p>\n<p>This natural human tendency to reinterpret past events (and mistaken earlier judgments) based on later information, also does not sit easily with legal theories around consent.</p>\n", "score": 10 }, { "answer_id": 91022, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/canada\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-canada-tooltip-container\">canada</a></p>\n<p>This is not possible in Canada. Consent must be subjective and contemporaneous with the impugned act. See <em>Criminal Code</em>, s. <a href=\"https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-265.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">265</a> and especially s. <a href=\"https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-273.1.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">273.1(1.1)</a>: &quot;<strong>Consent must be present at the time the sexual activity in question takes place</strong>.&quot; See also <em>R. v. McKnight</em>, <a href=\"https://canlii.ca/t/jqj0n#par261\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2022 ABCA 251 at para 261</a> (consent must be contemporaneous).</p>\n<p>To be clear, in the context of sexual assault, indifference of the complainant¹ is not consent of the complainant:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>For purposes of the actus reus, “consent” means “that the complainant <strong>in her mind</strong> wanted the sexual touching to take place&quot;</p>\n<p><em>R. v. Barton</em>, <a href=\"https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/17800/index.do\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2019 SCC 33</a>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>See also <em>R. v. Ewanchuk</em>, <a href=\"https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1684/index.do\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">[1999] 1 S.C.R. 330</a> at paras. 26-30:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>26 The absence of consent ... is subjective and <strong>determined by reference to the complainant’s subjective internal state of mind towards the touching, at the time it occurred</strong>...</p>\n<p>27 ... for the purposes of determining the absence of consent as an element of the actus reus, the actual state of mind of the complainant is determinative. At this point, <strong>the trier of fact is only concerned with the complainant’s perspective</strong>. The approach is purely subjective.</p>\n<p>...</p>\n<p>29 While the complainant’s testimony is the only source of direct evidence as to her state of mind, credibility must still be assessed by the trial judge, or jury, in light of all the evidence. It is open to the accused to claim that the complainant’s words and actions, before and during the incident, raise a reasonable doubt against her assertion that she, in her mind, did not want the sexual touching to take place. <strong>If, however, as occurred in this case, the trial judge believes the complainant that she subjectively did not consent, the Crown has discharged its obligation to prove the absence of consent.</strong></p>\n<p>30 The complainant’s statement that she did not consent is a matter of credibility to be weighed in light of all the evidence including any ambiguous conduct. The question at this stage is purely one of credibility, and whether the totality of the complainant’s conduct is consistent with her claim of non-consent. The accused’s perception of the complainant’s state of mind is not relevant. That perception only arises when a defence of honest but mistaken belief in consent is raised in the mens rea stage of the inquiry.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https://law.stackexchange.com/a/86660/46948\">I have explained in another answer</a> the relationship between the <em>actus reus</em> and <em>mens rea</em> of sexual assault and the defence known as &quot;honest but mistaken belief in communicated consent,&quot; so I will not repeat that here.</p>\n<hr />\n<p>^{1. &quot;<a href=\"https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/page-1.html#h-115011\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Complainant</a>&quot; in the <em>Criminal Code</em> is defined merely to be &quot;the victim of an alleged offence.&quot;}</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "jurisdiction" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91025, "body": "<p>In some jurisdictions it is impossible to completely waive the copyright to a work one created. And one could make the legal argument that the term &quot;Anti-copyright&quot; under a work is probably too vague and ambiguous to hold legal weight or that it should be interpreted as a political statement or parody of copyright law rather than a legally valid waiver of copyright. Interestingly, the only way to test this in court would be by the original authors if they would try to enforce intellectual property rights to their work against someone <em>despite</em> their prior &quot;anti-copyright&quot; claim.</p>\n<p>However, when an artist wants to give the public the broadest possible permission to use their work in any way they desire, then this can usually be achieved through public licensing. They publish their work and state that it falls under a standardized license which states that the author formally retains their copyright, but gives everyone a perpetual and irrevokabel permission to do everything with the work that is usually protected by copyright. This is in practice equivalent to giving up copyright, but holds up the legal fiction that copyright is still held by the original author. Examples include the Creative Commons <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">CC-0 license</a>, the <a href=\"https://unlicense.org/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Unlicense</a> or the <a href=\"http://www.wtfpl.net/about/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License</a>.</p>\n", "score": 0 }, { "answer_id": 91047, "body": "<h2>Yes, it’s legally significant</h2>\n<p>A court would need to determine objectively what the author meant by providing an ‘anti-copyright” notice.</p>\n<p>At the very least, it would bar the author from seeking damages for copyright breach against anyone who relied on the notice. It may go further and prevent any legal action to limit or restrain such a person.</p>\n<p>At most, the notice might place the work in the public domain in jurisdictions where this is possible or grant an irrevocable, unconditional licence where it isn’t.</p>\n", "score": 0 } ]

[ "copyright", "music", "new-zealand" ]

[ { "answer_id": 82482, "body": "<p>If you have a contract with another party, you can in principle sue them for damages if they breach the contract. Since you mentioned Stackoverflow, we would look at that contract, <a href=\"https://stackoverflow.com/legal/terms-of-service\">here</a>. There is a bunch of stuff you can't do, and a bunch of stuff you can do. One thing that you will note is that their liability is highly limited (big print §9 Limitation of Liability). Also note in §4:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Stack Overflow reserves the right to refuse, suspend or terminate your\naccess to the public Network if it determines, in its sole discretion,\nthat you have in any way violated these Public Network Terms or are\notherwise ineligible to access or use the Network or Services. If your\nactions are determined by us to violate these Public Network Terms,\nStack Overflow may, in its sole discretion, try to remediate that\nviolation by working with you individually, but is under no obligation\nto do so, and if any such remediation efforts are unsuccessful (in\nStack Overflow’s sole discretion), then Stack Overflow may revoke your\nrights to the Network.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>So they get to ban you, if they decided that your actions warrant. If you try to sue them, they will win because of this clause.</p>\n", "score": 5 }, { "answer_id": 82483, "body": "<p>You might want to ask <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965/firing-mods-and-forced-relicensing-is-stack-exchange-still-interested-in-cooper\">Monica Cellio</a> about how well suing SE for dropping a person from a role went.</p>\n<p>You can only sue another person or entity for breach of contract (with a prospect of winning) if:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>You had a contract with that entity</li>\n<li>It promised you something of value</li>\n<li>The terms of the contract were violated so that you did not get the benefit to which you were entitled by those terms</li>\n</ol>\n<p>SE or SO may contribute to one's professional reputation, but the operators never promise that it will, nor that any given person will be able to continue to participate. I do not see a plausible basis for a suit here.</p>\n", "score": 4 }, { "answer_id": 82484, "body": "<p>(In a US context, but broadly applicable in most places that have similar legal structures in place): In order to &quot;have a case&quot; (technically, one can sue without &quot;having a case&quot; but there are other issues with this, and based on &quot;rightfully sue&quot; I assume this isn't what you mean), one must be able to show (or believe they can show*) four things:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>That there existed a legal duty from the defendant (the person or entity sued, i.e. StackOverflow, in this example)</li>\n<li>That the defendant breached the above duty</li>\n<li>That the plaintiff (i.e. you, the suing party) actually suffered an &quot;injury&quot;*</li>\n<li>The that above injury was caused by the above breached duty</li>\n</ol>\n<p>Or more informally: 1) They had to do/not do something, 2) They failed to do or not do so, 3) You, the suer, got hurt, in some way 4) The thing that they did or did not do is the reason you got hurt.</p>\n<p>In this example,</p>\n<ol>\n<li><p>There is no inherent duty to allow access to StackOverflow**, just because they grant one a license to use their system. Edit: In the case of showing job profiles, if the job profile is still displayed, that may or may not satisfy the contractual duty (if the contract or its advertising mentions explicitly linking one's stackexchange activities to the advertisement); it depends on the contract for the posted job/employment ad.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>If there is not duty, there is no breach of said duty. Additionally, the rules can be changed to put one's action in violation retroactively.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>An actual injury has to be shown*. One would have to show how stack overflow is a source of financial income.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>False advertising is specific to consumers. (Assuming a normal user of the site, this would not apply, because a normal user is not buying a product or service from stack overflow).</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n<p>*Some jurisdictions may have exceptions or modifications to this rule, but in the US, the Supreme Court has ruled that, no injury means no case (e.g. see 2020's Transunion, LLC v. Ramirez). With regards to &quot;an employer not choosing you because your StackOverflow profile was suspended or deleted&quot;, I believe one would have to prove on the balance of probabilities, that one would have been hired by a specific employer but for the suspension/deletion.</p>\n<p>**Promissory estoppel may or may not apply to promises made, incurring a duty, but probably not in this case, for multiple reasons, including the fact that in the TOS, there is a &quot;change at any time&quot; clause, where StackOverflow reserves the right to change the terms in the future(as such it cannot be seen as a promise of eternal access), as well as specifically disclaims any promise of eternal access in a later section.</p>\n", "score": 3 }, { "answer_id": 82566, "body": "<h2>No</h2>\n<p><strong>Forum</strong></p>\n<p>You are limited by <a href=\"https://stackoverflow.com/legal/terms-of-service\">contract</a> (clause 10(b)) to either binding arbitration or a suit in a small claims court in your jurisdiction.</p>\n<p>If you choose the small claims path this would normally preclude you from seeking any sort of injunctive relief - like restoring your access - (since small claims courts typically lack that power) and limit your damages to the small claims maximum value (but see below).</p>\n<p>If you choose arbitration, you are technically not suing, however, that just begs the question.</p>\n<p><strong>Damages</strong></p>\n<p>Your damages are limited to $100 (clause 9) and only for direct damages. The damages you are seeking (&quot;financial source of income&quot;) are what are known as consequental damages and these are excluded totally.</p>\n<p>Note that this clause is hedged with &quot;TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW&quot;, however, most common law jurisdictions allow limitations of liability unless the terms are unconscionable - these clearly aren't with respect to the Public Network. Similarly, even in jurisdictions where the lower bar of unfair is used, this exclusion for an unpaid service provided only for individuals is not obviously unfair.</p>\n<p><strong>Breach</strong></p>\n<p>From clause 4:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Stack Overflow reserves the right to refuse, suspend or terminate your access to the public Network if it determines, in its sole discretion, that you have in any way violated these Public Network Terms or are otherwise ineligible to access or use the Network or Services.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The power to determine if you have breached the terms lies solely with Stack Overflow. &quot;<a href=\"https://incorporated.zone/sole-discretion/#Sole_discretion_definition\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Sole discretion</a>&quot; is a term of art which is no obligation on SO to act reasonably. Indeed, they may act arbitrarily - that is, they do not have to treat you the same as anyone else nor do they have to offer you procedural fairness/natural justice/due process. It also removes any obligation on SO to act in good faith.</p>\n<p>However, they may not act in bad faith - that is, they cannot act maliciously.</p>\n<p>So, unless they are deliberately persecuting a user, then if they decide you broke the rules then <em>you broke the rules</em>.</p>\n", "score": 3 } ]

[ "contract-law" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91044, "body": "<p>Selective prosecution is when a defendant (1) is charged with a crime based on conduct that others are generally not prosecuted for; and (2) is singled out for an impermissible reason, such as race, religion, or First Amendment-protected speech. <a href=\"https://casetext.com/case/wayte-v-united-states\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><em>Wayte v. United States</em>, 470 U.S. 598, 608 (1985)</a>.</p>\n<p>Because there is no indication that you are being targeted for an impermissible purpose, this does not appear to be selective prosecution.</p>\n<p>It does sound like the chief is a jerk, but American courts do not care about that sort of thing.</p>\n", "score": 3 } ]

[ "criminal-law", "texas", "civil-rights", "equal-protection", "res-judicata" ]

[ { "answer_id": 19782, "body": "<p>You have to give attribution by the terms of the license. If that is the only way then that is the way you must do it.</p>\n", "score": 2 }, { "answer_id": 91027, "body": "<p>If you distribute music files in one of many standard formats, it is often possible to add text to the metadata of the music. I just opened a random song that I purchased in Apple's Music app, clicked on &quot;Info&quot;, then &quot;File&quot; and found under &quot;Copyright&quot; the text &quot;℗ Originally released 1965, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1971 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT (P) 1975, 1978, 1990 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT&quot;.</p>\n<p>For sound recordings, you don't want to interfere with the enjoyment of the recording, while staying legal. For audiobooks, often with 20 or 50 chapters, you could add copyright and license information as the first or last chapter. Easy to skip because the listener doesn't want to hear it again and again. Same for collections of music. In a single song, you should try to get the required info into the file's metadata if at all possible.</p>\n", "score": 0 } ]

[ "copyright", "creative-commons", "music", "attribution" ]

[ { "answer_id": 89616, "body": "<p>Your question is very broad, but yes, there innumerable ways that the actions of a victim/complainant can result in a not-guilty verdict. I'll list some.</p>\n<ol>\n<li><p>Contemporaneous consent to contact. If the victim/complainant consented to the contact, then the offence of assault or sexual assault will not have been committed.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Self-defence. If the victim gave the accused reasonable grounds to believe that the victim was about to use force against the accused, then depending on the circumstances, it might not be an offence for the accused to take certain actions against the victim for the purpose of defending themself (the accused).</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>The provocation defence that is based on conduct of the victim. See <em>Criminal Code</em>, <a href=\"https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-232.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">s. 232</a>, which can result in a not-guilty verdict for murder.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n", "score": 6 } ]

[ "criminal-law" ]

[ { "answer_id": 88194, "body": "<p>In <a href=\"/questions/tagged/germany\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"germany-container\">germany</a>, a child below the age of 14 cannot be guilty of a crime. However, a family court may order measures regarding the welfare of the child. In a case like the one you describe, or even somewhat less extreme ones, this might be taking the child out of the family and into a care home where the child would be locked up for <em>his or her own good.</em></p>\n", "score": 24 }, { "answer_id": 88195, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/canada\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"canada-container\">canada</a></p>\n<p>Child protective services would very likely intervene to place the child in circumstances where they can be better supervised for their own well-being and safety.</p>\n<p>See generally and for example: <a href=\"https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/public-safety/protecting-children\" rel=\"noreferrer\">https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/public-safety/protecting-children</a> and the <a href=\"https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/96046_01\" rel=\"noreferrer\"><em>Child, Family and Community Service Act</em></a>.</p>\n<p>Section 15(2) specifically states, &quot;If the child has killed, assaulted or endangered another person, the police officer must report the circumstances to a director, and, in any other case, may report the circumstances to a director.&quot;</p>\n<p>After a report to the director, the director must investigate the child's need for protection and can make orders for a plan of care, issue supervision orders, remove the child, and ultimately place them in the custody of another person or in the care of the director.</p>\n", "score": 14 }, { "answer_id": 88192, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/washington\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;washington&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;washington&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-washington-tooltip-container\">washington</a></p>\n<p>Parents have an obligation to make their children behave, to a certain extent. If the parents allow their child to engage in some criminal enterprise, the courts have broad jurisdiction to intervene, and can <a href=\"https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=13.34&amp;full=true\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">terminate</a> the parent-child relationship and appoint someone else to supervise the child. This includes being <a href=\"https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=13.34.050\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">assigned to a shelter</a> with locked doors. This is not the same as conviction and punishment for committing an illegal act, it is about protecting the interests of the child. (I understand that this may seem like a distinction without a difference.) A propos your scenario, let us dial the crime back a bit: the child was a lookout for a burglary ring, but stopped (having been undetected) and thereafter lived a virtuous life. Then the child can &quot;get away with it&quot;. The question that the courts would address in any termination of relation and assignment to custodial care case is whether the situation warranting the action still exists. In the case of a 12 year old contract killer with a 6 year career, it is unimaginable that the courts would think that the situation no longer exists.</p>\n", "score": 10 }, { "answer_id": 88219, "body": "<p>In the UK, <a href=\"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger\" rel=\"noreferrer\">the murder of James Bulger</a> was carried out by two 10-year-old boys. They were tried, convicted, and spent the rest of their youth in young offenders institutions. As adults, various restrictions apply to where they can go and what they can do for the rest of their lives.</p>\n<p>The key element was the question of whether the boys knew that what they were doing was wrong. If your hypothetical killer can tell right from wrong, they will be convicted the same way.</p>\n", "score": 7 }, { "answer_id": 88217, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/england-and-wales\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"england-and-wales-container\">england-and-wales</a></p>\n<p>In England, the absolute age of criminal responsibility is <strong>10</strong>, so in the strictest sense your answer is that a child aged 11 or 12 who commits a murder (or series of murders) would be held responsible and charged with murder. That case would escalate from the Youth Court to the Crown Court and they would be sentenced.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Children between 10 and 17 can be arrested and taken to court if they commit a crime.</p>\n<p>They are treated differently from adults and are:</p>\n<p>dealt with by youth courts<br />\ngiven different sentences<br />\nsent to special secure centres for young people, not adult prisons</p>\n<p>_{<Sup><a href=\"https://www.gov.uk/age-of-criminal-responsibility\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Gov.uk - Age of criminal responsibility</a>}</Sup></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The <a href=\"https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/overarching-guides/magistrates-court/item/sentencing-children-and-young-people/#Section%20six:%20Available%20sentences\" rel=\"noreferrer\">sentences available to the courts</a> would be up to and including an 'extended duration sentence', one appropriate to the severity of the crime (e.g. 10-20+ years), but usually less.</p>\n<hr />\n<p>If you're asking what would happen if a child was below the age of criminal responsibility (e.g. 10), then the answer is different. These children can't be charged with a crime, but they can be taken into care.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Children under 10 cannot be charged with committing a criminal offence. However, they can be given a:</p>\n<p>Local Child Curfew<br />\nChild Safety Order<br />\nChildren under 10 who break the law regularly can sometimes be taken into care, or their parents could be held responsible.</p>\n<p>_{<Sup><a href=\"https://www.gov.uk/child-under-10-breaks-law\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Gov.uk - What happens if a child under 10 breaks the law?</a>}</Sup></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Whoever directed their activities could obviously be charged with a range of offences including murder (e.g. in the sense that the child was used as a weapon) and child endangerment.</p>\n", "score": 5 } ]

[ "canada", "hypothetical", "juvenile-law" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91020, "body": "<p><strong>Can someone pointing an object which they might not bring into contact with them but which still distresses them count as force or assault?</strong></p>\n<p>This would be an assault, contrary to <a href=\"https://www.indiacode.nic.in/show-data?actid=AC_CEN_5_23_00037_186045_1523266765688&amp;orderno=391\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">section 351</a> IPC:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Whoever makes any gesture, or any preparation intending or knowing it to be likely that such gesture or preparation will cause any person present to apprehend that he who makes that gesture or preparation is about to use criminal force to that person, is said to commit an assault.</p>\n<p><em>Explanation</em>.—Mere words do not amount to an assault. But the words which a person uses may give to his gestures or preparation such a meaning as may make those gestures or preparations amount to an assault.</p>\n<p><em>Illustrations</em></p>\n<p>(a) A shakes his fist at Z, intending or knowing it to be likely that he may thereby cause Z to believe that A is about to strike Z. A has committed an assault.</p>\n<p>(b) A begins to unloose the muzzle of a ferocious dog, intending or knowing it to be likely that he may thereby cause Z to believe that he is about to cause the dog to attack Z. A has committed an assault upon Z.</p>\n<p>(c) A takes up a stick, saying to Z, &quot;I will give you a beating&quot;. Here, though the words used by A could in no case amount to an assault, and though the mere gesture, unaccompanied by any other circumstances, might not amount to an assault,the gesture explained by the words may amount to an assault.</p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "criminal-law", "legal-terms", "india", "assault", "indian-penal-code" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91019, "body": "<h2>No</h2>\n<p>Developers either know the law or take the risk.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "internet", "software", "international", "regulations" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90335, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/british-columbia\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;british-columbia&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;british-columbia&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-british-columbia-tooltip-container\">british-columbia</a></p>\n<p>All of this is from the <em><a href=\"https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/02078_01\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Residential Tenancy Act</a></em> and related decisions from the <a href=\"http://www.housing.gov.bc.ca/rtb/search.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Residential Tenancy Branch</a> (a delegate of the <a href=\"https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/02078_01#section1\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">director</a>).</p>\n<p>A tenant is entitled to exclusive possession subject only to the landlord's limited right of entry, described next.</p>\n<p>As long as there is a tenancy, the landlord cannot enter unless:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>the tenant consents, or</li>\n<li>the landlord gives 24 hours notice and enters between 8am and 9pm (up to monthly), or</li>\n<li>the landlord is providing agreed-upon housekeeping services, or</li>\n<li><strong>the landlord has an order of the director authorizing entry</strong>, or</li>\n<li>the tenant has abandonned the unit, or</li>\n<li>an emergency exists.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>If satisfied that the landlord will enter other than as authorized above, the director can authorize the tenant to change the locks.</p>\n<p>If a landlord does not comply with the Act, the director can make orders to give effect to the tenant's rights, and can award compensation. One such possible award, where the tenant can establish that the landlord is trespassing contrary to the permitted entry described above, is retroactive rent decrease, consistent with the loss of a right to exclusive possession.</p>\n", "score": 3 }, { "answer_id": 90427, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/florida\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;florida&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;florida&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-florida-tooltip-container\">florida</a></p>\n<p>For a few years, I was an unwilling landlord for a property down in Florida, which I contracted with a property manager to handle on my behalf.</p>\n<p>As part of that arrangement, they drafted the lease, which included a clause to permit entry by the landlord, which stated:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Landlord and Agents shall have the right at all reasonable times, and by all reasonable means, given reasonable notice, during the term of this Lease and any renewal thereof to enter the Premises for the following purposes...</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I've omitted the listed reasons, but they relate to things inspections of the property, repairs, efforts to sell the property, and to leave notices. Failure by the tenant to permit these inspections render the tenant to be in default.</p>\n<p>Note, that there are no specific time tables provided, in part because there are many things that warrant inspection on short notice. For example, if a pipe breaks, we need to be able to enter the property immediately. However, for most anything else, we would notice via e-mail or phone call 48 hours in advance. Presuming an amiable relationship, the tenant could shift this timetable, however, the right to inspect the property was always important.</p>\n<hr />\n<p>To address your specific question, &quot;If a landlord enters residential premises without receiving a judgement for possession and without the presence of a Special Civil Part Officer what recourse does the tenant have (in NJ)?&quot;</p>\n<p>I'm not sure for NJ, however, for Florida it's doubtful we could be charged with trespass. We have a right to be on the property pursuant to the lease. We could not change the locks without notifying the tenant without a court order, however, we could change the locks pursuant to the terms of the lease; for example we'd need to give the tenant a copy of the new key, however, if the tenant is non-responsive to notices they might not be able to claim their new key.</p>\n<p>Bear in mind, there are multiple other elements in the lease which can give rise to justify an inspection by the landlord in an eviction proceeding including, but not limited to: affirming status of the unit at any point during the eviction process (if you damage it, we will want that damage included in the judgement), ensuring that standard maintenance is occurring (we don't want the unit to become someone's personal landfill), ensuring that the property is not abandoned (a common occurrence in an eviction), ensuring that the property isn't being subletted (another common occurrence in an eviction).</p>\n<p>Literally every single thing I listed in the above paragraph occurred during an eviction I had on the property. For those reasons, we want to be able to access the property. And if the property manager I hired is to be believed, it's legal for us to access at any time pursuant to the lease they drafted.</p>\n<p>For the record, I had little interest in pestering my tenant provided the rent was paid on time. The only times we'd enter the unit during normal circumstances were for maintenance and once a year to conduct an inspection. Things are notably different if we've elected to resort to eviction.</p>\n", "score": 1 }, { "answer_id": 90338, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/england-and-wales\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-england-and-wales-tooltip-container\">england-and-wales</a></p>\n<p>Landlord commits an indictable criminal offence under protection from eviction act 1977 s1, liable on conviction to two years imprisonment and unlimited, usually quite substantial damages, and other penalties.</p>\n", "score": 0 } ]

[ "civil-law", "landlord", "tenant", "court" ]

[ { "answer_id": 85330, "body": "<p>In the US, any legal restrictions on names are implemented at the state level——although broad administrative restrictions exist on the federal level. Some states may restrict use of diacritics (ubiquitous in Vietnamese) or Arabic numerals (but not Roman numerals). At the other extreme, in Washington state, there is no requirement to include a name at all in the case of <a href=\"https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=70.58A&amp;full=true#70.58A.100\" rel=\"noreferrer\">live birth of known parentage</a>. In the case of <a href=\"https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=70.58A&amp;full=true#70.58A.120\" rel=\"noreferrer\">delayed report of live birth</a>, and &quot;An individual requesting the delayed report of live birth of an individual under twelve years of age must establish the facts concerning full name, date, and place of live birth&quot;. But no restrictions are imposed on names that can be so reported.</p>\n<p>Theoretically, one could attempt to register a child with the name 𑠓𑠳𑠢 (in the <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogra_(Unicode_block)\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Dogra script</a>), which would cause technical problems for the registrar's office. It is likely that the clerk taking in the form would respond something along the lines of &quot;Huh?&quot; and &quot;How do you spell that&quot;. Similarly, one might try to register a birth name Hoàng Phủ Ngọc Tường, which would not be particularly difficult to deal with but might still stress the system (it depends on the county). In the latter case the name might be quietly converted to Hoang Phu Ngoc Tuong. In the former case, it is virtually guaranteed that the clerk would have no recourse but to insist on a romanization. Then the person registering would be insistent, they would file a lawsuit, and the courts would make some decision. It is most likely that the courts would be sympathetic to the practical concerns of the registrar and would not demand a huge overhaul of computer systems to allow any arbitrary graphic representation as a legal name.</p>\n<p>The State Department has regulations regarding names at <a href=\"https://fam.state.gov/fam/08fam/08fam040301.html\" rel=\"noreferrer\">8 FAM 403:\nPersonally Identifying Information</a>. 8 FAM 403.1-3(C) addresses punctuation, special characters and symbols, diacritical marks, and non-Latin alphabets. They do not prohibit anything in names, instead they acknowledge that not everything is <em>supported</em>, and there is a long discussion of &quot;discrepancies&quot; which would explain the passport name &quot;Nyema&quot; for 𑠓𑠳𑠢. Passport names comply with the\n<a href=\"https://www.icao.int/publications/Documents/9303_p3_cons_en.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer\">International Civil Aviation Organization standard</a>. Social Security has a <a href=\"https://www.ssa.gov/employer/ssnvshandbk/usingSSNVS.htm\" rel=\"noreferrer\">different set of rules</a> where spaces, numbers, hyphens, slashes or any other special characters are not allowed for names, even including length limits where first, middle and last names can be maximally 10, 7 and 13 characters long (enter the first 10, 7 and 13 characters).</p>\n", "score": 54 }, { "answer_id": 85361, "body": "<blockquote>\n<p>Can I legally include a line break in my child's name?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Let's rephrase that:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Can I legally register my child's name in bold/italic/underlined/strike-through?</li>\n<li>Can I legally register my child's name in a specific color?</li>\n<li>Can I legally register my child's name in blinking text?</li>\n<li>Can I legally register my child's name with a spoiler cover?</li>\n</ol>\n<p>More generally:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Is text formatting a feature of a person name?</li>\n</ul>\n<p>I'm sure it is not, and you probably will conclude too it's not.</p>\n<p>Simple reason: how to format the text name of a person when speaking? Could I file a lawsuit if my teacher doesn't speak my name in italic when checking student presence?</p>\n<p>P.S.: stick to letters present in your language's alphabet. If it's not there, it's just a typograhical or other technological convention, not a valid letter.</p>\n", "score": 35 }, { "answer_id": 85328, "body": "<h2>Not in <a href=\"/questions/tagged/germany\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"germany-container\">germany</a></h2>\n<p>In general, you can name your kid how you want, but there are limits in practice, due to technical and legal constraints.</p>\n<p>Germany has a list of allowed characters in names because the Bundesdruckerei does not support every character. Format characters are not on the list, as are many other non letter characters, such as brackets. Neither is þ (thorn), which is still in use as a typical character in Icelandic and would be transliterated into <code>th</code>. Even typical Danish alphabet extensions are not available.</p>\n<p>On top of that, German officials can deny names to be put on the birth certificate if they are made up, can't be properly expressed, or in other way or form would negatively impact the child. An example would be a clear negative connotation. How strict are they? Well, depends on the name and clear ideology: You can not ever name your kid Satan, Stalin, or Lenin and you might trigger the block with Adolf, but you won't get scrutiny if name your kid <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavus_Adolphus\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Adolphus</a>. Oh, and you are limited to 5 first names, of which at most pairs can be combined with a hyphen.</p>\n<p>However, even old names can get this treatment. Among the people I know, the father of an Oke had to prove that it was a typical Friesian name, and the parents of a Merlin were urged to add a second name.</p>\n<h2>Not in <a href=\"/questions/tagged/japan\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;japan&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;japan&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"japan-container\">japan</a></h2>\n<p>The 戸籍法 (Family Register Act) contains this paragraph:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>第五十条子の名には、常用平易な文字を用いなければならない。<br>\nArticle 50(1)For the given name of a child, characters that are simple and in common use shall be used.</p>\n<p>２常用平易な文字の範囲は、法務省令でこれを定める。<br>\n(2)The scope of characters that are simple and in common use shall be defined by Ordinance of the Ministry of Justice.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The list of characters on the Ordinance is Hiragana, Katakana, common Kanji, and a list of uncommon ones. None of them is a linebreak, or a Latin character (Romaji), or an Indian number.</p>\n<p>Consolation prize: Numerals in Japanese script <em>are</em> available for naming, and are actually somewhat common. For example, <a href=\"https://jisho.org/search/ichigo%20%23names\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Ichigo</a> with the &quot;ichi&quot; written as <code>一</code> is literally &quot;first ...&quot; and some of those are rather common names, especially the combinations meaning &quot;first child.&quot;</p>\n", "score": 34 }, { "answer_id": 85345, "body": "<h2>Not in <a href=\"/questions/tagged/iceland\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;iceland&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;iceland&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-iceland-tooltip-container\">iceland</a></h2>\n<p>Iceland has an explicit <a href=\"https://island.is/en/search-in-icelandic-names\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">list of approved given names</a>. If a child’s prospective name is on that list, then it’s fine. If it’s <em>not</em> on that list, then it needs to be approved by the Mannanafnanefnd (generally called the ‘Icelandic Naming Committee’ in English). Actually being approved has a couple of concrete requirements:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>It can only contain letters in the Icelandic alphabet (A, Á, B, D, Ð, E, É, F, G, H, I, Í, J, K, L, M, N, O, Ó, P, R, S, T, U, Ú, V, X, Y, Ý, Þ, Æ, and Ö).</li>\n<li>It has to be possible to decline it as a noun in the Icelandic language’s grammatical case system. This is a requirement because Iceland still uses patronymic and matronymic surnames instead of family names like most of the rest of the Western world does, which means that it must be possible to form a genitive form of a name (so that it can then be used as the first part of the patronymic or matronymic name of any future children).</li>\n<li>In practice because of the above two constraints, it usually has to follow Icelandic phonotactics (that is, combinations of sounds that are not valid in Icelandic are typically not allowed).</li>\n<li>Prior to 2019, the name’s grammatical gender had to match the physiological gender of the individual.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Additionally, the Mannanafnanefnd has to accept that the name is ‘compatible with Icelandic tradition’ (yes, it’s really that vague in the laws surrounding this), and is not likely to cause the bearer embarrassment (so, for example, something such as Rassinn would not be likely to be accepted).</p>\n", "score": 28 }, { "answer_id": 85348, "body": "<h2>Not in <a href=\"/questions/tagged/canada\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-canada-tooltip-container\">canada</a></h2>\n<p>I assume you are asking whether it is legal or possible to include a line break character in the name used in the state administrative records referring to your child, since I am not aware of any restrictions on what you call your child or how you represent your child's name in your own writing. Here are some restrictions from around Canada.</p>\n<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/manitoba\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;manitoba&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;manitoba&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-manitoba-tooltip-container\">manitoba</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://web2.gov.mb.ca/laws/statutes/ccsm/v060e.php\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Vital Statistics Act</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>the given name and the surname must consist only of the letters &quot;a&quot; to &quot;z&quot; and accents from the English or French languages, but may include hyphens and apostrophes</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/british-columbia\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;british-columbia&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;british-columbia&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-british-columbia-tooltip-container\">british-columbia</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/life-events/birth-adoption/births/birth-registration\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Birth Registration</a> (appears to be a practical, not legal constraint):</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Names must use Latin alphabetic letters, and can contain apostrophes, hyphens, a period, and a standard set of French accents. Numbers, brackets (), slashes / or other symbols are not accepted.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/alberta\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;alberta&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;alberta&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-alberta-tooltip-container\">alberta</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.alberta.ca/restrictions-respecting-personal-names.aspx\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Restrictions respecting personal names</a> (it is not clear whether these are practical or legal restrictions):</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>All given and last names must begin with a letter and may contain non-consecutive hyphens, apostrophes and periods. The name must use the standard English alphabet of 26 letters.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Some punctuation marks are allowed, but &quot;A legal name cannot contain just hyphens, periods or apostrophes without letters such as <code>('..-..')</code>&quot;. Some accented characters can also be printed.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://kings-printer.alberta.ca/1266.cfm?page=V04P1.cfm&amp;leg_type=Acts&amp;isbncln=9780779830725&amp;display=html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Vital Statistics Act</a>: The Registrar has discretion to refuse to register a name that in the Registrar's opinion might reasonably be expected to cause confusion.</p>\n<hr />\n<p>An aside. I think we all understood this question clearly, and it's been a fun research adventure! But I would avoid the framing about whether people's &quot;names&quot; are legal. None of this regulates names as such. It regulates what you can have the state to record and refer to you as. It regulates one's &quot;legal&quot; name—one's administrative name. I think this is an important distinction because calling one's name &quot;illegal&quot; can minimize one's identity. And highlighting the distinction between one's name and the name recognized by the government can help push the government to expand their capacity to different forms of names.</p>\n", "score": 16 }, { "answer_id": 85359, "body": "<h2>Not in <a href=\"/questions/tagged/france\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;france&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;france&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-france-tooltip-container\">france</a></h2>\n<p>The glyphs of a <strong>first name</strong> <a href=\"https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F882\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">must be part</a> of the <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_orthography#Alphabet\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">French alphabet</a>. The new line character/sequence is not part of it.</p>\n<p>I did not find anything for the <strong>family name</strong> but I believe that in doubt it would follow the rules for the first name.</p>\n", "score": 14 }, { "answer_id": 85350, "body": "<h1>Probably not in <a href=\"/questions/tagged/sweden\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;sweden&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;sweden&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-sweden-tooltip-container\">sweden</a> and <a href=\"/questions/tagged/israel\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;israel&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;israel&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-israel-tooltip-container\">israel</a></h1>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_law_in_Sweden\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Naming law in Sweden</a> Wikipedia article:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The first paragraph does not give a person the right to acquire as a first name a name that\ncan cause offence,\ncan be assumed to lead to discomfort for the person who will bear the name,\nor\nis for some other reason unsuitable as a first name.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>For example &quot;Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116&quot; was not approved as a name.</p>\n<p>Israel has a similar law regarding names.</p>\n", "score": 11 }, { "answer_id": 85381, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/england-and-wales\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"england-and-wales-container\">england-and-wales</a></p>\n<p>This <a href=\"https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/restrictions_on_childrens_names\" rel=\"noreferrer\">FOI request</a> outlines the relatively permissive regime that governs the registering of baby names, but your chosen name would not be allowed as it is not a &quot;<em>sequence of letters</em>&quot;.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Registrations of births in England and Wales are made under the Births\nand Deaths Registration Act 1953 and the Registration of Births and\nDeaths Regulations 1987. The legislation does not set out any guidance\non what parents may name their child.</p>\n<p>Our advice to registrars is that a name should consist of a sequence\nof letters and that it should not be offensive. The reason for limiting\nthe registration of names to a sequence of letters is that <strong>a name\nwhich includes a string of numbers or symbols etc. has no intrinsic\nsense of being a name,</strong> however the suffix 'II' or 'III' would be\nallowed.</p>\n<p>The only restriction on the length of a name is that it must be able\nto fit in the space provided on the registration page.</p>\n<p>There are no leaflets or booklets available giving guidance on this\nmatter. Where the registrar has any concerns over a name they will\ndiscuss this with the parents and point out the problems the child may\nface as they grow up and try to get them to reconsider their choice.</p>\n<p>We have not had occasion to refuse to register a name.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>In practice, the registrar would advise you that this name wouldn't be allowed and try to dissuade you from giving your offspring a stupid name, noting that none of the following characters appear in any UK registration on record;</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Following <a href=\"https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/babynameswithspecialcharacters\" rel=\"noreferrer\">a search of the data</a> I can confirm that <strong>none</strong> of the relevant\ncharacters appear in the names published in the above releases.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/msDtRm.png\" rel=\"noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/msDtRm.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\" /></a></p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 9 }, { "answer_id": 85369, "body": "<p><strong>TL;DR</strong></p>\n<p>Don't do this to your child. I feel like CPS could file an abuse report against you for the hardship you'd cause.</p>\n<hr />\n<p>Setting aside both ethics and legality you are merely inquiring about the capabilities of computer systems.</p>\n<p>Odds are sky-high that the field where the name gets entered is just a single-line text field which does not support newlines; by design.</p>\n<p>Even if you could miraculously register the newline control character in your child's name it will simply trigger a life of hardship in every single web form which has to be filled out.</p>\n<p>See <a href=\"https://jsfiddle.net/o1zthnwy/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://jsfiddle.net/o1zthnwy/</a></p>\n", "score": 4 }, { "answer_id": 91014, "body": "<p>There is a reigning characteristic amongst the existing answers that they all start from the idea that the person registering the name has the right to specify the name authoritatively in writing.</p>\n<p>In fact, the authoritative specification of a name historically was the verbal form. A person's &quot;name&quot; is how they are called and to what call they respond.</p>\n<p>The name registered in birth rolls is how the parents call the child and refer to it amongst the family and community (albeit there would not yet be response from the baby itself).</p>\n<p>It is the registrar who is ultimately responsible for deciding how the written form translates from the specified verbal form, and for making the entry into the rolls accordingly. If they cannot coherently hear the name, or translate it into writing, they will not make an entry.</p>\n<p>Whilst the registrar isn't likely to quibble with any plausible spelling offered to accompany a verbalised name, when it comes to things like a &quot;line break&quot;, they would simply ask &quot;how do you say that?&quot; and &quot;how do you spell that?&quot;.</p>\n<p>Since the relevant concept has no sounding - it's a typesetting/type layout concept - it is by definition not part of any name by which a person is (or may be) called.</p>\n<p>As it is not part of any name and cannot be spoken, it would simply not fall to be entered into the rolls by the registrar.</p>\n<p>You could of course give the child a middle name like &quot;Bobby Line Break Tables&quot;, but the name then consists of the words &quot;Line Break&quot; - the written form of the name does not however incorporate any line break.</p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "name", "birth-certificate" ]

[ { "answer_id": 77923, "body": "<h2>Placing a work which uses idea suggested in a Stack Exchange post under a CC-BY-SA license is not required</h2>\n<p>Copyright law is clear: copyright does not in any case protect an idea or a method of achieving a result. In the US <a href=\"https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#102\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">17 USC 102(b)</a> provides that:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>There are similar provisions in the law of most countries <a href=\"https://wipolex.wipo.int/en/text/283698\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Article 2 of the Berne Copyright Convention</a> protects “literary and artistic works”, not the ideas expressed in such works.</p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode.txt\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">text of the CC-BY-SA license</a> states in section 3.b:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In addition to the conditions in Section 3(a), if You Share Adapted Material You produce, the following conditions also apply.</p>\n<ol>\n<li>The Adapter's License You apply must be a Creative Commons license with the same License Elements, this version or later, or a BY-SA Compatible License.</li>\n</ol>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Notice that this applies only to &quot;<em><strong>Adapted Material</strong></em>&quot;</p>\n<p>Section 1.a of the license defines Adapted Material:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Adapted Material means material subject to Copyright and Similar Rights that is derived from or based upon the Licensed Material and in which the Licensed Material is translated, altered, arranged, transformed, or otherwise modified in a manner requiring permission under the Copyright and Similar Rights held by the Licensor.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Use of an idea is not a translation, alteration, transformation or modification of a source work.</p>\n<p>Note further that section 2.a.2 of the CC-BY-SA license states:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>For the avoidance of doubt, where Exceptions and Limitations apply to Your use, this Public License does not apply, and You do not need to comply with its terms and conditions.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This means that when an exception to copyright (such as fair use or fair dealing) permits a use, he terms and restrictions of the license do not apply. It also means that when a limitation of copyright law prevents a lawful claim of protection, the license and its terms and conditions also do not apply. Thus the license does not purport to cover protection of ideas, as copyright law dos not protect them.</p>\n<p>This means that there is no such thing as a &quot;copyright on a concept&quot;. Choice (a) of the four in the question would be the normal response, the finished book is under copyright to the author, until or unless s/he sells it or gives it away or licenses it. The author <strong>could</strong> choose to release the book under a CC-BY-SA license (which is essentially option (d)), but is under no obligation to do so. (And this would be very unusual.) Options (b) and (c) are not really legally possible. If the other person does enough of the work to be considered a <em><strong>co-author</strong></em>, that person would get half of all profits unless the co-authors agreed on a different split, which they may choose to do. But merely providing an idea in a typical worldbuilding.se post would not normally be enough to make the poster a co-author.</p>\n<h2>Derived works</h2>\n<p>What many find confusing in a situation of this sort is the issue of <em><strong>derivative works</strong></em>. When one work is based on another, the later work is said to be a &quot;derivative work&quot; and one may not create a derivative work from a work protected by copyright without permission from the current copyright holder. For example, creating a sequel to a work of fiction that uses the distinctive setting, and at least some of the distinctive characters from the source work would usually be considered a derivative work, and require permission if the original is protected by copyright.</p>\n<p>But merely using an idea from an earlier work would not constitute creating a derivative work. In the US, 17 USC 102 (quoted above) would forbid this. In US law a derivative work is defined in <a href=\"https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#101\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">17 USC 101</a> as:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications, which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Similar definitions apply in other countries, and in the Berne Convention.</p>\n<p>Merely using an idea does not make a later work a derivative work. There must be detailed, distinctive, non-generic similarity of setting, character, plot, or other creative element of the original. General ideas such as &quot;a couple coming from feuding families fall in love&quot; is not enough.</p>\n<p>Professional writers asked about the value of an idea for a work are apt to say things like:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Ideas are ten a penny. It is what a writer <strong>does</strong> with the idea that matters.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Specifically, author Lawrence Watt-Evans writes on his <a href=\"http://www.watt-evans.com/writingfaq.shtml\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">witting FAQ page</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>I have this cool idea -- if I tell it to you, will you write it, and we'll split the money 50/50?</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>No. Ideas are cheap. I have far more than I can use; there are literally hundreds in my files that I haven't used yet.</em></p>\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>I have this nifty idea -- has it ever been used before?</strong></p>\n<p><em>Yes. Pretty much every idea you can imagine has been used, and probably at least a decade earlier than you'd have thought possible. (The first story describing something like the Internet was published in 1909.)</em></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>So simply using ideas, particularly ideas specifically offered to help a writer in progress, will not require the resulting book to be placed under CC-BY-SA. However, if such a post contains a detailed and specific way to use an idea, copying those details might require getting permission from the post author. In practice, such a suit would be quite unlikely.</p>\n<h2>Multi-Licensing</h2>\n<p>Note also that the author of a work released under a CC-BY-SA license, such as a SE post, is free to re-release under a different, less restrictive license, if s/he so chooses. The copyright owner is not bound to continue using the CC-BY-SA license, nor to use the same license to everyone. The poster of an SE answer could, for example, grant the poster of the corresponding question a free license to use content from that post on any terms the poster chooses, including on simple attribution alone, with no share-alike requirement.</p>\n<p>Thus if the person who posted the question and wants to use content from an answer asks the poster of the answer for permission, and gets it, there is no need to place a book under a CC-BY-SA license, even if the book uses so much of the post as to become a derivative work of the post (unlikely but possible, as described above).</p>\n<h2>Attribution</h2>\n<p>The question reads:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>And don't think that creating a useful attribution from a website that uses usernames wouldn't by itself cause a legal nightmare. But let's assume I was able to get in contact with the respondent and get a suitably legal attribution.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>One may validly attribute to a pen name, which is what a user name is, legally. It serves to credit the originator of the idea or text quoted. Many CC tests are posted under usernames or pen names, and people make reasonable attributions and fulfill the terms of the license often. Something like</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Concept based on a post to worldbuilding.stack exchange by user &quot;QRS&quot; on {date}. Post available at {URL}.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>ought to be a sufficient attribution. There is no need to learn the legal name of the poster. In fact all the CC licenses allow the licensor to specify a pen name to be used for attribution, and in the absence of any other statement, the user name would be that pen name.</p>\n<h2>Fair Use</h2>\n<p>The question reads:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>... CC-BY-SA made that portion of the book open game for &quot;fair use&quot;.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>A CC-BY-SA does not in any way increase (or decrease) the scope of fair use in a work licensed under it. In fact, where fair use (or any other exception to copyright) applies, the CC-BY-SA license explicitly does <strong>not</strong> apply. A CC-BY-SA license is a grant of permission, over and above what fair use permits, to use the work. CC-BY-SA seems similar to fair use in that it allows a person to reuse a work, or part of one, without specifically asking permission, and without paying any fee.</p>\n<p>But the basis is different. Under a CC-BY-SA license there is no need to ask permission because the owner has already <strong>given</strong> permission, that is what the license does. That permission is limited by the terms of the license, including the SA part.</p>\n<p>Under a claim of fair use one is allowed to reuse a protected work because the US Congress has decided that m a limited amount of reuse is for the public benefit, and has included this exception into the rights given to the copyright owner. Any fair use is restricted by the terms of 17 USC 107 and the complex case law developed under that provision.</p>\n<p>So each grants permission for reuse for specific reasons subject to limits. But the entity doing the granting is different, the reasons are different, and the limits are different.</p>\n<h2>CC Licenses</h2>\n<p>The questiion reads, in option &quot;d&quot;:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(d) There is no practical copyright, the entire book is CC-BY-SA</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>It is not the case that a CC license, such as CC-BY-SA gives up or loses copyright. It <strong>is</strong> the case that the owner of the copyright in such a work gives up some of the rights s/he would otherwise have had, including the right to insist n payment for any use or modification of the licensed work.</p>\n<p>However, a commercial filmmaker is unlikely to want to use a work under a CC-BY-SA, because of the license that such a film would need to be released under.</p>\n<p>As I explain in the &quot;Multi-Licensing&quot; section above, the owner of such a copyright can still grant to a person or firm a different license on different terms. A filmmaker could still get the right to create a film based on such a work in a traditional arrangement in return for a royally or fixed fee, and the filmmaker would not need to release the film under a CC-BY-SA license.</p>\n", "score": 10 } ]

[ "copyright", "creative-commons" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90969, "body": "<ol>\n<li><p>Don't consent.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Say so (ideally in a well documented way, like on video).</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Challenge the fruits of any unlawful search after the fact in a suppression hearing, or in a civil rights lawsuit.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n<p>There is a decent chance that a court will find that the warrantless search is lawful – even if it isn't – but there isn't much that you can do about it that would be wise or legal.</p>\n<p>Also, recognize that in many circumstances, warrantless searches are legal.</p>\n", "score": 28 } ]

[ "united-states", "search-and-seizure", "hypothetical", "warrant" ]

[ { "answer_id": 21702, "body": "<h1>Twenty States Allow Pre-Conviction Pardons</h1>\n<p>The default rule is that states follows the federal rule that a crime can be pardoned any time after it is committed, but cannot be pardoned before it is committed.</p>\n<p>It appears that this is the rule in 20 U.S. states (a compilation of state clemency laws and procedures can be found <a href=\"http://restoration.ccresourcecenter.org/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">at this website</a> and a compact chart for all 50 states is <a href=\"http://ccresourcecenter.org/state-restoration-profiles/50-state-comparisoncharacteristics-of-pardon-authorities/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">here</a>). Admittedly, this evaluation relies on a third party summary that may not capture every fine nuance of the process or exception to the general rule.</p>\n<h1>Four States Where Pre-Conviction Pardons Are Allowed Don't Actually Grant Them Under A Policy Which Is Actually Followed</h1>\n<p>This list of 20 states include states where the Governor or Board or both working together, have the power to grant clemency in a very broad array of circumstances, but have adopted policies for how the current Governor or Board will handle applications that are more restrictive than the legal authority that the person issuing pardons has to grant them.</p>\n<p>In Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Nebraska, the pardon power is legally very broad but recent Governors, as a matter of personal pardon power policy, have refused to consider applications for pardons by people who have not completed their sentences many years earlier (5 years in IN; 7 years in MN; 10-15 years depending upon the offense in MA; 3-10 years depending upon the offense in NE).</p>\n<p>In addition to these four states, North Carolina's Governor has an informal five year from completion of sentence waiting period. But, North Carolina is not included because in practice, the Governors of North Carolina have granted almost all pardons awarded in cases where the Governor is commuting sentences due to a likelihood of actual innocence of a crime, notwithstanding this policy.</p>\n<h1>Commutation Of Sentences And Pre-Conviction Pardons Are Very Rare</h1>\n<p>In practice, however, commutation of a sentence for crimes, or pardons of people who have not completed sentences for their crimes of conviction are very rare in every state, although the frequency with which pardons are granted varies wildly from state to state.</p>\n<p>For example, in Alaska, the pardon power is legally very broad, but has been exercised only three times since 1995, while in Pennsylvania the hybrid Governor-Board pardon power is theoretically more narrow but about 150 pardons are granted per year (a rate about 1000 times greater before adjusting for population, and more than 30 times greater after adjusting for population).</p>\n<p>The vast majority of pardons are issued to people who have been convicted of a crime and served their sentences and shown good behavior after their release in order to relieve the applicants of the collateral consequences of having a criminal record, such as ineligibility for occupational licenses and loss of gun ownership rights.</p>\n<p>Pardons for people who have not been convicted of a crime and commutations of the sentences of people who have been convicted of crimes and are still serving their sentences are extremely rare in every state, and pardons for people who have not been convicted of a crime at the state level are less common than commutations of people who are currently serving sentences for crimes they have been convicted of by courts.</p>\n<p>There are probably fewer than twenty such pardons or commutations per year in the United States on average (excluding several cases in which a Governor has commuted the sentence of everyone sentenced to death to life in prison).</p>\n<p>The number of pardons of people who have not been convicted of a crime at the state level is probably less than five per year on average in the entire United States - although there are occasional spikes (e.g. in the case of pending prosecutions where serious doubt has been cast on a common source of evidence like a state informant or a crime lab).</p>\n<p>Most of the notable instances of pardons of people who have not been convicted of crimes (e.g. <a href=\"https://www.justice.gov/pardon/vietnam-war-era-pardon-instructions\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">President Carter's pardon of Vietnam era draft dodgers</a>) involve categorial pardons of a class of people rather than case by case evaluations of individuals, and resemble a legislative amnesty process to serve a political goal, rather than an individualized quasi-judicial consideration of a particular individual's case in the interests of justice tempered by mercy.</p>\n<h1>Immunity From Prosecution</h1>\n<p>On the other hand, even when a state limits the pardon power to persons who have been convicted of a crime in a court of law (which many appear to), there is something almost equivalent to the pardon power for people who have not been convicted of crimes that is routinely used by executive branch DAs (i.e. a grant of <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_immunity\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">immunity from prosecution</a> for a crime, for example, in exchange for testimony or cooperation with an investigation).</p>\n<p>This practice is quite common, although so far as I know, there are no comprehensive statistics available regarding immunity from prosecution grants, although there may be some estimates of how many are made in the academic literature.</p>\n<h1>Governors v. Pardon Boards v. Hybrid Systems</h1>\n<p>While it doesn't go to the thrust of your question, it is true, however, that while every state has a pardon power, not every state vests that power in the Governor of the state on the federal model.</p>\n<p>Many states (e.g. Georgia, Texas and Oklahoma) require the involvement of a Board of Pardons and Paroles (or an equivalent body) to be involved any time that a pardon is sought, sometimes independently of the Governor, and sometimes in coordination with the Governor. Wikipedia <a href=\"https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">states</a> that nine states have Boards of Pardon and Parole or the equivalent with exclusive power over pardons. In the other forty-one U.S. states the pardon power is vested either in both the Governor and a Board, or is vested entirely in a Governor.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The pardon power of the President extends only to offenses\nrecognizable under federal law. However, the governors of most of the\n50 states have the power to grant pardons or reprieves for offenses\nunder state criminal law. In other states, that power is committed to\nan appointed agency or board, or to a board and the governor in some\nhybrid arrangement (in some states the agency is merged with that of\nthe parole board, as in the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board).</p>\n<p>Nine states in the United States have Boards of Pardons and Paroles\nthat exclusively grant all state pardons. These states are: Alabama\n(Board of Pardons and Paroles), Connecticut (Board of Pardons and\nParoles), Georgia (Board of Pardons and Paroles), Idaho (Commission of\nPardons and Paroles), Minnesota (Board of Pardons), Nebraska (Board of\nPardons), Nevada (Board of Pardon Commissioners), South Carolina\n(Board of Probation, Parole and Pardon), and Utah (Board of Pardons\nand Parole).</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>In states that vest the pardon power in part or in full to a Board of Pardons and Paroles, as opposed making it a plenary power of the Governor personally which is not subject to review or limitation as in the federal model, as a practical matter, it is much harder to fit into the Board's bureaucratic process for processing pardon applications when there is not a conviction that has been entered, than it is in the less bureaucratic case when that power is vested solely and personally in the Governor on a plenary basis.</p>\n<p>The pardon board process in many states, at least as a practical matter, makes it impossible to obtain a pardon until there has been a conviction and in most cases, also a sentence imposed and sometimes a waiting period after a sentence has been fully served.</p>\n<p>For example, many states prohibit applications to the pardon board from being made until a sentence has been completed or until a certain number of years after a sentence has been completed (effectively limiting the power to restoration of civil rights rather than commutation of a sentence, or relief for someone who has not been convicted).</p>\n", "score": 4 } ]

[ "united-states", "pardon" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90997, "body": "<p>To answer the headline question, <em>unauthorised</em> is defined by <a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/17?timeline=false\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Section 17(8)</a>, Computer Misuse Act 1990 which states:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>An act done in relation to a computer is unauthorised if the person doing the act (or causing it to be done)—</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>(a) <strong>is not himself a person who has responsibility for the computer and is entitled to determine whether the act may be done</strong>; and</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>(b) <strong>does not have consent to the act from any such person.</strong></p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>In this subsection “ act ” includes a series of acts. </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>(As for how difficult it is to prove or disprove acts have been authorised will hinge on the particular circumstances and available evidence.)</p>\n<hr />\n<p>For completeness, there are four &quot;unauthorised&quot; offences within the Computer Misuse Act 1990.</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/1?timeline=false\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Section 1</a> - Unauthorised access to computer material</p>\n</li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/2?timeline=false\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Section 2</a> - Unauthorised access with intent to commit or facilitate commission of further offences</p>\n</li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/3?timeline=false\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Section 3</a> - Unauthorised acts with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing, operation of computer, etc</p>\n</li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/3ZA?timeline=false\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Section 3ZA</a> - Unauthorised acts causing, or creating risk of, serious damage</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n", "score": 2 }, { "answer_id": 90995, "body": "<p>I don't have any information on how UK law handles these situations, but the <a href=\"/questions/tagged/united-states\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;united-states&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;united-states&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-united-states-tooltip-container\">united-states</a> Supreme Court recently elaborated on the meaning of &quot;authorization&quot; in the <a href=\"https://casetext.com/statute/united-states-code/title-18-crimes-and-criminal-procedure/part-i-crimes/chapter-47-fraud-and-false-statements/section-1030-fraud-and-related-activity-in-connection-with-computers\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Computer Fraud and Abuse Act</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>An individual &quot;exceeds authorized access&quot; when he accesses a computer with authorization but then obtains information located in particular areas of the computer—such as files, folders, or databases—that are off limits to him. The parties agree that Van Buren accessed the law enforcement database system with authorization. The only question is whether Van Buren could use the system to retrieve license-plate information. Both sides agree that he could. Van Buren accordingly did not &quot;excee[d] authorized access&quot; to the database, as the CFAA defines that phrase, even though he obtained information from the database for an improper purpose.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https://casetext.com/case/van-buren-v-united-states-5\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><em>Van Buren v. United States</em>, 141 S. Ct. 1648, 1662 (2021)</a></p>\n", "score": 0 } ]

[ "criminal-law", "england-and-wales", "computer-misuse-act" ]

[ { "answer_id": 91007, "body": "<p>It depends on one's particular circumstances, as merely being employed by a government organisation isn't enough on its own to warrant a Statement of Economic Interests (Form 700).</p>\n<p>As an example of what those circumstances may be, this from LA County's <a href=\"https://bos.lacounty.gov/services/conflict-of-interest-lobbyist/statement-of-economic-interest/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Board of Supervisors</a> stipulates that state and local government officials:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>publicly disclose their personal assets and income that may be <strong>materially affected</strong> by their official acts.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>And agency employees, including some public officials who are designated in a conflict of interest code, are required to disclose:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>certain financial interests <strong>according to the disclosure categories</strong> assigned to that position in their agency's conflict of interest code.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>And certain public officials, including public officials who manage public investments:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>are required to disclose <strong>all financial interest.</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "california", "conflict-of-interest", "disclosure" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90993, "body": "<p>It really comes down to the licensing of the code, the context of what you built, how you built it and when something is built.</p>\n<p>Think about it like this. If you used your previous jobs resources (like a company laptop). Then they can claim anything produced on that laptop belongs to them.</p>\n<p>If you built something on company time but used your own resources. It may also belong to them if they were paying you during those hours.</p>\n<p>If you used an open source library like Next.js to build a custom application for job1. Your job1 doesn't own the Next.js library. You can switch to job2 and still build on top of that library. However, use of any of the customized application code built from or for job1, might open the door for claims against what ever you are building for job2.</p>\n<p><strong>Open Source</strong></p>\n<p>Your best approach to avoiding legal issues across jobs is to open source any of the code you plan to reuse and implement a <a href=\"https://snyk.io/learn/open-source-licenses/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">code license</a> that allows you to use, modify, or distribute software code freely.</p>\n", "score": 1 }, { "answer_id": 90994, "body": "<p>The code you write as an employee belongs to your employer in most normal circumstances. It isn’t yours it’s theirs.</p>\n<p>Without permission you have no right to do anything with it outside work.</p>\n", "score": 0 } ]

[ "copyright", "software", "employment" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90963, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/united-states\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;united-states&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;united-states&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-united-states-tooltip-container\">united-states</a></p>\n<p>In a criminal case, there are a couple of grounds for dismissal of a prosecution based upon insufficient evidence.</p>\n<p>One is a failure to establish in a preliminary hearing in criminal cases where one is allowed, the probable cause that the defendant has committed the crime charged has been established. Probable cause is also required for a search warrant and to make an arrest with or without a warrant, and it is the standard applied by grand juries in deciding whether to indict (a grand jury in not constitutionally required at the state and local level in all states but is required at the federal level and in some, mostly Eastern U.S., states).</p>\n<p>The other, <strong>which applies in motions to acquit for lack of sufficient evidence</strong> at the close of the prosecution's case, at the close of the case before it is sent to a jury, <strong>in a post-trial motion to the trial court judge, and on appeal</strong>, is that &quot;no reasonable juror&quot; could rule in favor of the prosecution with respect to a particular charge, given the admissible evidence in the record to support that charge and the applicable legal standard (i.e. proof of each of the elements of the charge beyond a reasonable doubt, although sometimes a different standard applies to affirmative defenses). This review is conducted assuming that the jury resolved all disputed issues of fact and credibility determinations that a reasonable juror could, in favor of the prosecution. Most often, these kinds of post-conviction motions and appeals are based upon the absence of any admissible evidence supporting an element of a particular criminal charge in the trial court record (e.g., if an element of the charge required serious injury and no evidence of the nature of the injuries suffered by the victim was presented at trial).</p>\n<p>Whether these standards are constitutionally required as a matter of due process is hard to evaluate without a counterexample. Usually the question of the source of the legal right doesn't come up because these minimum standards are in place as a matter of law anyway.</p>\n<p>Generally speaking, the U.S. Constitution does not require extrinsic evidence that a criminal charge has a factual basis in the face of a plea bargain in a criminal case, although some U.S. legal systems (including the U.S. military justice system) does require some sort of extrinsic factual basis to be established, at least in criminal cases.</p>\n<p>Of course, in criminal cases, there are a variety of grounds for dismissing claims other than a lack of a factual basis for the charge.</p>\n<p>For example, a criminal charge can be dismissed because the alleged crime has been pardoned, because the statute of limitations has expired, because the defendant was not of the age of criminal responsibility, because the defendant had diplomatic immunity, because the statute establishing the crime was repealed before the crime was committed or didn't take effect until after the crime was committed, because the court in question doesn't have jurisdiction to handle that kind of case or a crime committed in the location alleged, because the defendant hasn't been brought into custody of the court or appeared before it, because the evidence needed to support the claim was obtained illegally, because speedy trial rights were violated, because the conduct described in the indictment isn't a crime, etc.</p>\n<p>The philosophical analysis found in the question is not part of the analysis used by courts and lawyers in the U.S.</p>\n<p><strong>Footnote Re Collateral Attacks On Convictions</strong></p>\n<p>Sometimes after a jury entered a guilty verdict which has been affirmed in all available appeals from the conviction to higher courts (called direct appeals), someone can bring what is called a &quot;collateral attack on a conviction.&quot;</p>\n<p>Historically and still today in federal court practice in in some state courts, this is called a <em>habeas corpus</em> petition. In many states courts, a petition for <em>habeas corpus</em> has been replaced by a motion under a particular criminal court rule (mostly in the interest of replacing archaic latin language and procedural forms with plain English language with procedural language that makes more sense in light of how modern courts are organized, without any intended difference in substance).</p>\n<p>The standard for overturning a conviction in a collateral attack on a conviction is much more involved and complicated, because it involves setting forth standards for second guessing a previous, presumptively reasonable determination made on the merits by a trial court and affirmed by appellate courts.</p>\n<p>Frequently collateral attacks are based upon factors that were not available for the jury and appellate courts to consider in admitted evidence in the trial court record, such as newly discovered evidence or ineffective assistance of counsel that wasn't obvious from the trial court record.</p>\n<p>A federal habeas corpus petition is even more &quot;meta&quot; due to standards established by federal statutes out of a concern that the federal courts were insufficiently deferential to decisions made by state courts. This requires a variety of showings including an exhaustion of state court remedies and a showing that the state court judges were not just wrong, but were unreasonable in how they interpreted and applied the applicable law on matters pertinent to federal constitutional rights (rather than just any legal issue that could be a ground for vacating the conviction under state law).</p>\n<p><strong>Second Footnote Re Historical Appellate Review Of Convictions</strong></p>\n<p>Sufficiency of the evidence is a matter that can be reviewed in both direct appeal of a conviction, and in a collateral attack on a conviction, so some extent under current law.</p>\n<p>Historically, until roughly the 1890s, there was no right to a direct appeal of a criminal conviction in the United States, and the right to a direct appeal of a criminal conviction in the United States is not a constitutional right. This doesn't mean that there aren't constitutional rights regarding how criminal convictions are conducted if direct appeals of criminal convictions are allowed at all, however.</p>\n<p>Also, in this era and context, habeas corpus review of convictions was largely limited to jurisdiction and the existence of either a conviction or acquittal for someone who was detained. Generally, if you were convicted by a court with jurisdiction over the case, that was the end of the inquiry in a common law habeas corpus petition, unless the term of your sentence had expired. Conversely, if you were detained despite being acquitted, that would be a way to win a habeas corpus petition.</p>\n<p>There was some expansion of this common law foundation to protect constitutional rights in the 19th century U.S., but prior to the passage of the 14th Amendment, most federal constitutional rights did not apply to state court criminal cases, so the federal courts didn't have jurisdiction to protect most rights of criminal defendants.</p>\n<p>In that era, the pardon power was used more freely to make up for the deficiencies of the post-conviction review process.</p>\n", "score": 2 }, { "answer_id": 90981, "body": "<h2>Descartes was never a common law judge</h2>\n<p>Nor did he write any legislation.</p>\n<p>Therefore, his ideas are irrelevant to the practice of law.</p>\n<h2>The judge has the authority to decide the law because they are the judge</h2>\n<p><strong>Similarly the jury can decide guilt or innocence because they are the jury</strong></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Relative to law, that means that a person cannot be sure that the alleged or presumed evidence that is being used to sustain a conviction is representative of actual evidence. It could be that an evil genius has deceived persons as to what the actual facts of the case are, thus crippling persons from having awareness of what alleged or presumed evidence is representative of actual evidence.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><strong>Who cares?</strong></p>\n<p>Their authority does not come from any epistemological ability or disability to decide, it comes from the authority they are given by the state to make the decision.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "motion", "acquittal" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90970, "body": "<h2>Legally, nothing</h2>\n<p>Grammatically they mean what parenthesis always mean, that the parenthesised words are less important i.e. parenthetical.</p>\n<p>Organisationally they serve to group legislation together. This is particularly common in regulations and other subordinate legislation where the tradition is that the regulation takes the name of the Act it is created under. Where there is more than one, the specific function of the regulation is put in parentheses. For heavily legislated areas, like Housing, some parliaments do the same thing for Acts.</p>\n", "score": 4 }, { "answer_id": 90973, "body": "<p>Put a comma sized pause whenever ( or ) appears in the written text and also between the words and the year even if the year is not offset by parenthesis.</p>\n<p>So when you are reading it aloud, you would say:</p>\n<p>Housing comma-sized-pause tenancy deposits comma-sized-pause prescribed information comma-sized-pause order comma-sized-pause 2007</p>\n<p>If you want another written representation:</p>\n<p>Housing, tenancy deposits, prescribed information, order, 2007</p>\n<p>If you wanted to get really fancy and precise, the phrase &quot;tenancy deposits&quot; and the phrase &quot;prescribed information&quot; would also be spoken with an ever so slightly elevated but hushed or breathy pitch relative to &quot;Housing&quot;, &quot;order&quot; and &quot;2007&quot; which might be pronounced a bit more &quot;firmly.&quot;</p>\n<p>You could also say that the accents in the phrase fall on &quot;Housing&quot;, &quot;order&quot; and &quot;2007&quot; while &quot;tenancy deposits&quot; and &quot;prescribed information&quot; are unaccented.</p>\n", "score": 3 } ]

[ "united-kingdom", "parliament", "naming-conventions" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90991, "body": "<p>The <a href=\"https://casetext.com/case/clark-v-city-of-ny-14\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">order</a> certifying the class action and <a href=\"https://casetext.com/case/clark-v-city-of-new-york-8\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">the ruling</a> provide circumstantial details that would bear on the applicability of that reasoning. The opinion frames the question as:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Does the United States Constitution permit the New York City Police\nDepartment (the &quot;NYPD&quot;) to require an observant Muslim woman to remove\nher hijab when sitting for an arrest photo? The Court holds that it\ndoes not.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The agreed-to settlement includes instructions to police that are broader:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>A religious head covering worn pursuant to a sincerely held religious\nbelief can be retained by the prisoner while in the custody of the\nDepartment. However, the religious head covering must be temporarily\nremoved when conducting the mandatory Department search for weapons\nand/or contraband, but will be returned to the prisoner after that\nsearch unless the head covering presents a risk to the safety of the\nprisoner or others.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The First-Amendment part of the ruling is that</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Clark and Aziz have no alternative means of exercising their right to\nwear a hijab in public, at all times. The Policy, although sometimes\ninconsistently applied, still requires that Clark and Aziz remove\ntheir hijabs and makes their photographs available to men. The Court\nagrees with Plaintiffs that permitting observant Muslim women to wear\na hijab while being photographed as part of booking procedure would\nhave reasonably accommodated their beliefs and also would be less\nburdensome on the NYPD. Indeed, snapping a Booking Photograph of an\narrestee with her religiously compelled covering would expend fewer\nresources than “requir[ing] dialogue with arrestees and additional\ntime spent negotiating removal.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The First Amendment is equally available to males and females, and to Muslims and non-Muslims. This ruling cannot be interpreted to mean that only women or only Muslims have this right to religious expression.</p>\n<p>The courts have also declined to engage in religion-evaluation whereby some beliefs are certified as &quot;true religion&quot; and others are &quot;false religion&quot;. See <a href=\"https://casetext.com/case/swartzentruber-v-gunite-corp\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Schwarzentruber v. Gunite</a>, where an employee was required to cover up his racist tattoos on the job, and sued on First Amendment accommodation grounds. The court states the relevant legal principle regarding such a suit:t</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>To establish a prima facie case of religious discrimination, a\nplaintiff must show that (1) he has a sincere religious belief,\nobservance or practice that conflicts with an employment requirement;\n(2) he informed his employer of the conflict; and (3) the religious\npractice was the basis for the adverse employment decision.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Plaintiff lost the case because he</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>cannot show that he holds a sincere religious belief that conflicts\nwith an employment requirement.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>even though he alleges that</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>the &quot;Firey Cross&quot; tattooed on his arm is one of that church's seven\nsacred symbols</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The crux of the defendant's failure is that he</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>does not present admissible evidence, or even contend without\nevidence, that being required to cover up his tattoo at work conflicts\nwith his religious beliefs, or that he told Gunite about any conflict\nwith his beliefs and Gunite's demand that he cover his tattoo. Mr.\nSwartzentruber doesn't satisfy the first and second elements of a\nprima facie case.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The atheist male hat-wearer would at a minimum have to contend that he has a deep-seated belief about the nature of the universe that he must (whatever the claim is). It is settled First Amendment law that a &quot;religious belief&quot; does not have to be theistic. <a href=\"https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1318/atheism\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">This page</a> sets forth the case law and reasoning leading to the conclusion that atheism must be treated as a religion. See <a href=\"https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1467028.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Kaufman v. McCaughtry</a> and citations therein. That court observes that</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>a religion, for purposes of the First Amendment, is distinct from a\n“way of life,” even if that way of life is inspired by philosophical\nbeliefs or other secular concerns. A religion need not be based on a\nbelief in the existence of a supreme being (or beings, for\npolytheistic faiths) nor must it be a mainstream faith</p>\n<p>Without venturing too far into the realm of the philosophical, we have\nsuggested in the past that when a person sincerely holds beliefs\ndealing with issues of “ultimate concern” that for her occupy a “place\nparallel to that filled by ․ God in traditionally religious persons,”\nthose beliefs represent her religion.  We have already indicated that\natheism may be considered, in this specialized sense, a religion.  \nSee Reed v. Great Lakes Cos. (“If we think of religion as taking a\nposition on divinity, then atheism is indeed a form of religion.”).  \nKaufman claims that his atheist beliefs play a central role in his\nlife, and the defendants do not dispute that <em>his beliefs are deeply\nand sincerely held</em>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This sketches the claims that a person would have to make in order to rely on a Free Exercise exception to a general rule.</p>\n", "score": 3 } ]

[ "privacy", "first-amendment", "arrest", "fourteenth-amendment", "equal-protection" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90987, "body": "<p>A caveat to begin with: It's not definitive whether this particular use is or is not infringing, given that the circumstances haven't been tested in court.</p>\n<p>The usual scope for this kind of thing is called &quot;nominative use&quot; or &quot;nominative fair use&quot; in the U.S. context. The Python developers are offering a software module so that Python programs, when run on POSIX systems, can make use of capabilities of those systems covered by the POSIX standard. They have named their module <code>posix</code> so that Python programmers will have a fighting chance of guessing what it does. (The official documentation does say you ought to prefer use of <code>os</code> instead, but let's ignore that wrinkle.) Likewise, other parts of the standard library contain trademarks of other companies, such as Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle, in relation to Python code which interacts with those companies' products. These are all internal to the Python codebase and documentation, are not distributed separately, and &quot;POSIX&quot; is not part of the name of any product or service offered by the Python Software Foundation. Python is using that word &quot;nominatively&quot;, describing some aspect of Python which relates to POSIX but is not POSIX.</p>\n<p>The module authors might consider it sensible to use the word &quot;POSIX&quot; in its name and documentation, for the reason that compatibility with POSIX is essential to its functionality. But the rightsholders might also object to its appearance as a bare word (as opposed to <code>posixinterface</code> or something), because they want to preserve the meaning of &quot;POSIX&quot; as referring to their specific standard, the commercial value of which depends on restricting which operating systems can describe themselves as POSIX-compatible.</p>\n<p>In the U.S., circuit courts have taken slightly different directions in trying to carve out whether trademark use like this is OK. In the Second Circuit, there is a recent case about nominative fair use of a certification mark, <a href=\"https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1735354.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Int'l Info. Sys. Sec. Certification Consortium v. Sec. Univ., LLC, 823 F.3d 153 (2d Cir. 2016)</a>. The plaintiff, (ISC)², offers the mark &quot;CISSP&quot; for security professionals who have passed certain examinations that they administer. The defendant, SU, offered training classes where the instructor was described as a &quot;Master CISSP&quot;, to which the plaintiff objected because consumers could be misled into thinking that (ISC)² endorsed the classes, and their trademark was being diluted because &quot;Master CISSP&quot; is not a term they use. On appeal, the upper court found that for assessing consumer confusion, courts must consider the eight &quot;<em>Polaroid</em> factors&quot; (named for <a href=\"https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?q=Polaroid+Corporation+v.+Polarad+Electronics&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=4,60,107,112,114,122,127,129&amp;case=2293827617926067028&amp;scilh=0\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Polaroid Corp. v. Polarad Electronics Corp., 287 F.2d 492 (2d Cir. 1961)</a> and rephrased in the judgement):</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The eight factors are: (1) strength of the trademark; (2) similarity of the marks; (3) proximity of the products and their competitiveness with one another; (4) evidence that the senior user may “bridge the gap” by developing a product for sale in the market of the alleged infringer's product; (5) evidence of actual consumer confusion; (6) evidence that the imitative mark was adopted in bad faith; (7) respective quality of the products; and (8) sophistication of consumers in the relevant market.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>and also:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(1) whether the use of the plaintiff's mark is necessary to describe both the plaintiff's product or service and the defendant's product or service, that is, whether the product or service is not readily identifiable without use of the mark; (2) whether the defendant uses only so much of the plaintiff's mark as is necessary to identify the product or service; and (3) whether the defendant did anything that would, in conjunction with the mark, suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the plaintiff holder, that is, whether the defendant's conduct or language reflects the true or accurate relationship between plaintiff's and defendant's products or services.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Other circuit courts have adopted subtly different phrasings and this divergence has yet to be resolved by the Supreme Court or by Congress. Whether this standard is met in the example of this question is a matter for argument on the detailed facts.</p>\n<p>In the EU, there is an explicit protection for this specific kind of use, by virtue of Article 14 of the latest trademark directive, <a href=\"https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32015L2436\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Directive 2015/2436 of 16 December 2015</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<ol>\n<li><p>A trade mark shall not entitle the proprietor to prohibit a third party from using, in the course of trade:\n<br>...<br>\n(c) the trade mark for the purpose of identifying or referring to goods or services as those of the proprietor of that trade mark, in particular, where the use of the trade mark is necessary to indicate the intended purpose of a product or service, in particular as accessories or spare parts.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Paragraph 1 shall only apply where the use made by the third party is in accordance with honest practices in industrial or commercial matters.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The <code>posix</code> library could be regarded as an &quot;accessory&quot; to a POSIX-compatible operating system, in this sense, but is nonetheless within scope if the word &quot;POSIX&quot; is essential to identify what the module does. A key case in the CJEU, concerning a previous version of the Directive but with the same provision, was <a href=\"https://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?num=C-63/97\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">BMW Nederland BV v Deenik [1999] C-63/97</a>, where a garage owner advertised himself as able to repair BMW cars, with &quot;BMW&quot; being a trademark of the complainants since 1930. The court held that so long as Deenik didn't imply that he had any commercial relationship or endorsement by BMW, he could reasonably use the term &quot;BMW&quot; as part of describing his services.</p>\n<p>As with the U.S. system, whether there is actual infringement would depend on the precise situation, and the relevant factors end up being pretty similar. That is partly because of conscious international efforts to harmonize trademark law.</p>\n", "score": 4 } ]

[ "trademark" ]

[ { "answer_id": 64333, "body": "<p>I know the OP is asking about America, but its also worth knowing about other countries.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/cross-border-portability-online-content-services\" rel=\"noreferrer\">This is legal</a> if both subscriber and subscription are within the EU. There was also a <a href=\"https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17150054\" rel=\"noreferrer\">court case</a> about this. In <a href=\"https://www.satandpcguy.com/2014/01/31/premier-league-live-football-pl-win-legal-case-uk-pub-broke-copyright-law/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">another case</a> in 2014 the pub lost, but that seems to have been because the decoder was only licensed for domestic use.</p>\n<p>These cases were for satellite decoders rather than Internet streaming, but the legal issues would be the same.</p>\n<p>Both these cases involved British pubs, so obviously this law doesn't apply to them since Brexit.</p>\n", "score": 7 } ]

[ "united-states", "internet", "payment" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90959, "body": "<p><em>Defendant</em> is normally used as the opposing party to a <em>plaintiff</em>, in a civil cause of action. It also refers to the accused in a criminal matter.</p>\n<p><em>Respondent</em> is normally used as the responding party to an <em>applicant</em>, in motions, in certain statutory relief, relief based in judicial review, etc. It is also used to refer to the opposing party to <em>petitioners</em> in various statutory and equitable matters (and in some jurisdictions, there is little to no distinction between petitions and applications).</p>\n<p>Before administrative adjudicative tribunals and in alternative dispute processes, <em>respondent</em> is often the party that is not the <em>claimant</em>.</p>\n<p>A plaintiff or defendant may <em>also</em> either be an applicant or respondent on various motions at different times throughout the litigation.</p>\n<p><em>Respondent</em> also refers to the non-<em>appellant</em> party or parties on appeal.</p>\n<p>There are likely other contexts that I am missing. For more, look to the rules, practice directives, or forms for the particular forum and process you are wondering about.</p>\n", "score": 8 } ]

[ "england-and-wales", "legal-terms" ]

[ { "answer_id": 89757, "body": "<p>Abetment is to <a href=\"https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/abetment\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">abet</a></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>To encourage or incite another to commit a crime. This word is usually applied to aiding in the commission of a crime. To abet another to commit a murder is to command, procure, counsel, encourage, induce, or assist. To facilitate the commission of a crime, promote its accomplishment, or help in advancing or bringing it about.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>So encouraging someone to give or take bribes is abetment, and so would, say, conveying the bribe itself so they don't have to meet in circumstances where it would be noticed.</p>\n<p>Per the legal dictionary of the Free Dictionary.</p>\n", "score": 2 }, { "answer_id": 89761, "body": "<p>Abetment in Indian criminal jurisprudence is implied as per the definition under <a href=\"https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1667403/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Section 107 of the Indian Penal Code</a></p>\n<p>For its application within the context of Prevention of Corruption Act, see <em><a href=\"https://indiankanoon.org/doc/72524133/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Hari Kishan Bansal v. CBI</a></em></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The word abetment is not defined in the P.C.Act but by virtue of\nSection 28 of the said Act, it is permissible to look into the\ndefinition of ―abetment appearing under Section 107 of the IPC.</p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "india" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90984, "body": "<p>The way to prevent this is to not have sex. It takes two to figuratively tango. To avoid having no custody of a child, not being a bum would be a way to start. It is extremely unlikely that courts will award sole custody to one parent, absent real problematic behavior by the other parent.</p>\n<p>Preconception agreements exist, and are used for sperm donors or the equivalent. This is really not a vehicle for protection from child support from a regular sexual relationship, and you might find it difficult to enforce if used for such. State laws will matter a lot here. A coparenting agreement would have a better chance in court. Remember that the child will have rights that the mother cannot sign away.</p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "united-states", "contract-law", "finance", "child-support", "custody" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90741, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/germany\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-germany-tooltip-container\">germany</a></p>\n<p>Defendants who are later accused of a crime committed when they were minor (under 18, or under 21 if the court finds that they had juvenile mental maturity) will be tried under juvenile rules.</p>\n<p>That can lead to people <a href=\"https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Dey\" rel=\"noreferrer\">almost 90 years</a> old being sentenced to juvenile detention. (A suspended sentence, not least because of the time that had passed.)</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>[...] On July 23th, 2020, D. was given a suspended sentence of two years of juvenile detention for 5232 counts of accessory to murder and one count of accessory to attempted murder. [...]<br />\n(my translation)</p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 21 }, { "answer_id": 90744, "body": "<p>In all U.S. jurisdictions (as a matter of constitutional law), if age was an affirmative defense to the crime when it was committed you would benefit from that affirmative defense at trial, even if the trial took place when you were an adult.</p>\n<p>In most U.S. jurisdictions (although that rule is not constitutionally required) you are tried as a juvenile in the juvenile justice system for crimes committed as a juvenile. I recall this being done in a case involving a celebrity in Massachusetts, but don't remember who it was.</p>\n<p>In the case of serious offenses committed by an older juvenile, prosecutors in many jurisdictions are allowed to try a juvenile offender as an adult anyway, so trying an adult as an adult rather than as a juvenile for one of these offenses wouldn't violate any right of the defendant.</p>\n<p>With respect to federal criminal offenses in particular, I don't know how juvenile offenders are handled in the federal criminal justice system period. In part, this is because these cases are overwhelmingly handled under state law, and in part, this is because there is minimal press coverage of these cases which are usually secret for the general public.</p>\n<p><strong>How Sentences Are Served</strong></p>\n<p>Despite this fact, the place where the sentence was served might be different if you were an adult when convicted than if you were a child when convicted.</p>\n<p>Children who are sentenced to incarceration are usually imprisoned in juvenile detention centers rather than adult prisons. But someone who was, for example, convicted of a murder committed at age 15 when he was age 26, would, in all likelihood, serve his sentence in an adult prison rather than in a juvenile detention center that is not equipped to handle adult detainees.</p>\n<p>Most U.S. jurisdictions also provide that someone who is sentenced in the juvenile justice system who &quot;ages out&quot; during their sentence is transferred to an adult prison at that time if the sentence has not been fully served by then.</p>\n<p>However, that doesn't come up very often, because the percentage of juvenile convictions that leave someone with a sentence so long that they can age out is small, and a large share of juveniles who commit a crime that serious are transferred from the juvenile justice system to the adult criminal justice system for trial in any case.</p>\n<p><strong>Statute Of Limitations Considerations</strong></p>\n<p>Also, the question of age of criminal responsibility questions can come up only for a handful of federal crimes that would be barred by the statute of limitations anyway.</p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https://www.tpatrialattorneys.com/statute-of-limitations-federal-crimes/#:%7E:text=3282.,date%20the%20crime%20was%20committed.\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">default federal criminal statute of limitations is five years</a>, and 13 years old will generally be above the age of criminal responsibility, so for those federal crimes that can't come up. According to the same source the main exceptions in federal law are as follows:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>tax evasion or failure to file a tax return — 6 years from the date of the crime</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>fraud against the U.S. involving $1,000,000 or more —7 years from the date of the crime</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>bank fraud or RICO predicated on bank fraud — 10 years from the date of the crime</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>mail fraud — 10 years from the date of the crime</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>wire fraud — 10 years from the date of the crime</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>embezzling from a federal institution —10 years from the date of the crime</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>conspiracy to commit a federal crime — the applicable statute begins to run on the date of the “last act”</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>immigration offenses — 10 years from the date of the crime.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>&quot;capital crimes&quot; (see below).</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>It would be rare for a middle school age or younger child to commit thee kinds of fraud crimes, and even more rare for someone below the age of criminal responsibility to be in a position to do so, although the immigration offense crime might come up in the case of an unaccompanied minor illegal immigrant.</p>\n<p>There is no federal statute of limitations for certain &quot;capital crimes&quot; but again, the cases where a child below the age of criminal responsibility might commit these acts is again vanishingly rare. Most are variations on murder or attempted murder, although a few go beyond that. Federal capital offense include, but are not limited to:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>murder committed in a wide range of specific fact patterns relating to matters under the jurisdiction of the federal government, and also destruction of aircraft, motor vehicles, or related facilities resulting in death, civil rights offenses resulting in death, mailing injurious articles with intent to kill or resulting in death, genocide, hijacking aircraft resulting in death, torture resulting in death committed outside the U.S. by a U.S. national or foreign national on U.S. soil, terrorist murder in the U.S. or another country,</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>treason,</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>espionage,</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>sexual offenses against children.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n", "score": 13 }, { "answer_id": 90738, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/england-and-wales\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-england-and-wales-tooltip-container\">england-and-wales</a></p>\n<p>No. If they were younger than 10 (being the age of criminal responsibility) at the time then they do not commit an offence so cannot ever be arrested for it, regardless of how old they are in the future.</p>\n<p>It's extremely difficult to prove a negative but <a href=\"https://www.stuartmillersolicitors.co.uk/can-you-go-to-jail-for-something-you-did-as-a-child/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">this article</a> by a criminal defence solicitor explains that:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>If a person is 10 years old or older, they cannot be arrested or charged in relation to an offence that they committed when they were under the age of 10.</p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 11 }, { "answer_id": 90748, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/canada\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-canada-tooltip-container\">canada</a></p>\n<h3>No prosecution for things that a person did while younger than twelve</h3>\n<p>First, if the act or omission happened while the person was under the age of twelve years old, the person will never face criminal responsibility for that act or omission. See <a href=\"https://www.laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/y-1.5/page-2.html#h-470249\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><em>Criminal Code</em>, s. 13</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>No person shall be convicted of an offence in respect of an act or omission on his part while that person was under the age of twelve years.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<h3>Being &quot;tried as an adult&quot;</h3>\n<p>Canada does not have the procedure of trying young people as an adult. If an offence is alleged to have been committed while a person was a young person (defined as someone between twelve and eighteen), they will be tried as provided under the <em>Youth Criminal Justice Act</em>. See <a href=\"https://www.laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/y-1.5/page-2.html#h-470249\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">s. 14(1)</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>a youth justice court has exclusive jurisdiction</strong> in respect of any offence alleged to have been committed by a person while he or she was a young person, and that person shall be dealt with as provided in this Act.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<h3>Imposing an adult sentence</h3>\n<blockquote>\n<p>the Act does allow judges to impose an adult sentence on a youth who is found guilty of a serious offence and was 14 years of age or older when the crime was committed. In fact, prosecutors are obligated to consider seeking an adult sentence when a youth is found guilty of murder, attempted murder, manslaughter or aggravated sexual assault.</p>\n<p>Department of Justice, &quot;<a href=\"https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/yj-jj/tools-outils/sheets-feuillets/syp-dpaa.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Sentencing of Young Persons</a>&quot;</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>See also <em>Youth Criminal Justice Act</em>, <a href=\"https://www.laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/y-1.5/page-8.html#h-471029\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">s. 64</a>.</p>\n", "score": 4 }, { "answer_id": 90743, "body": "<p>Unsure if this is asking about the age of criminal responsibility, or if it's the age of criminal responsibility in U.S. Federal Law, then the child is not liable for the crime if they were not yet 11 years old on the date of the criminal incident. If they are older than 11, but younger than 18 (legal adulthood). The Feds will either recommend the offender to state court systems, begin federal delinquency proceedings, or petition federal court to move the juvenile to be tried as an adult. This determination is typically case dependent and made based off of specific facts related to the case. If delinquency proceedings are used, the child will not be tried in adult court after turning 18 for the same criminal incidents, as this would violate the child's fifth Amendment rights against double jeopardy.</p>\n<p>U.S. law considers the age of the defendant at the time of crime when making a determination, so if they were discovered to be responsible after their 11th birthdate for a crime that occurred prior to that same date, they would not be tried, since they were not 11 at the time of the crime. If they are 17 and will turn 18 before the trial, then they would likely be charged as an adult, but would not subject the child to any punishment that would be for a legal adult offender (i.e. if charged with a capitol offense, you cannot use the death penalty if the defendant was 17 at the time of the incident, even if they are 18 at time of trial).</p>\n<p>An exception to U.S. Law's preventing Double Jeopardy is the concept of separate sovereigns. This holds that a trial for a crime in state court triggers only for that state. Other states, territories, tribal governments that are separately sovereign, and the Federal Government can all try an offender for the same crime if the crime occurred in their jurisdiction.</p>\n<p>It is exceptionally rare that juvenile offenders are tried in the federal level of government as most federal crimes are not something that can't be handled at the state level, OR involve crimes crossing state lines, the latter of which is difficult for a youth, as it usually involves travel methods not readily available to a juvenile. The most likely youth federal crime would likely involve an incident at a branch office of a Federal Government facility. In that case, the child would likely be criminally referred to state law-enforcement to handle.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "united-states", "criminal-law", "juvenile-law" ]

[ { "answer_id": 85829, "body": "<h2>Following the guidance of the <a href=\"https://www.met.police.uk/ro/report/lp/lost-or-found-property/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">police</a></h2>\n<p>In summary:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>If the item is hazardous or dangerous you should report it to the police using the emergency number.</li>\n<li>If the item is non-hazardous and found in a private place, hand it to the owner of the premises - it's their responsibility to attempt to find the owner and the property becomes theirs if they can't.</li>\n<li>If the item is non-hazardous and found on public transport, hand it to the operator - they have their own by-laws about lost property.</li>\n<li>If the item is non-hazardous and found in a public place,</li>\n</ol>\n<ul>\n<li>if it has a serial number, hand it to the police - they may be able to trace the owner</li>\n<li>if it is a government document, hand it to the issuer</li>\n<li>if it is of low value, make reasonable efforts to find the owner &quot;these could include asking people nearby or in offices or shops. You could also consider leaving a note with your details. If you can't find the owner there's nothing more we can do and you should dispose of the item.&quot;</li>\n<li>if it is of high value, make reasonable efforts to find the owner and if you can't hand it to the police.</li>\n</ul>\n", "score": 3 }, { "answer_id": 85831, "body": "<p>Depending on the laws of your state and local city &amp; county regulations, it otherwise boils down to being a matter of Civil Code and will vary depending where you live. But, for example <a href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=2080.&amp;lawCode=CIV\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Section 2080 of the California Civil Code</a> more or less says you're not required to take responsibility for it (but by taking it, you are in some extent taking responsibility of it) whereas you could have just left it right where you found it so that if the person returned, they would find whatever it is they lost.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>What are examples of reasonable steps one could take to attempt to\ncontact the item's rightful owner before concluding that it may in\nfact not be possible to do so?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>It depends on what was found, such as if it was something containing a unique serial number, IMEI # (in the case of a phone) or otherwise has a form of being identified as uniquely belonging to a particular person and registered to that person through a service provider or retail seller in the case of high end electronics as opposed to a general item like a Twenty dollar bill then &quot;reasonable&quot; steps would be very limited. But, in either case, &quot;reasonable&quot; is subjective and again, responsibility to find the owner only falls on you if you choose to take charge of it (pick it up and remove it from where it was found). But in either case, what you've done as reasonable may include</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Posting a lost &amp; found sign around the area it was found such as you might see with a lost &amp; found pet sign, providing limited details for the person to know you have it and how they can contact you but will need to be vague enough so that the true owner can provide a specific detail to that only the owner would know about it, to prevent false claims of ownership</li>\n<li>Posting about a found item online in the local community pages of places like Facebook Marketplace, craigslist etc. or you could try searching for posts of someone mentioning the lost item, and asking when they lost it to see if it coincides with around the time u found it or asking where they think might've lost it. It's hard to provide examples when the subject of what was found is so broad.</li>\n<li>As reference, the police department, depending on the value, may takes steps such as trying to notify the owner or otherwise would even wait long enough to publish an item being found in the newspaper if the value of the item is high enough.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Seeing as how broadly stated the question is, if it's something of high value, it's better to check your city's &amp; county's policy on the matter because most likely you'll be expected to turn it in.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Once one has reasonably reached this conclusion, is one then legally\nentitled to keep the property for one's self?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>In the case of California, <a href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?division=3.&amp;chapter=4.&amp;part=4.&amp;lawCode=CIV&amp;title=6.&amp;article=1.\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">CIV Section 2080.1</a> says that if the item is worth $100 or more, you're expected to turn the item into the police department or sheriff's department of the county if outside of city limits and file an affidavit (make a statement) about where, when, and how you found the item.</p>\n<p>If it's under $100, then there's no stipulation that says you couldn't keep the item per se but in terms of specifically &quot;legally entitled to keep the property&quot; when it's valued over $100 then the answer is, no, you're not &quot;entitled&quot; to keeping it based on your own conclusions but yes after the local authorities have taken a chance at trying to return the item.</p>\n<p>What I mean is that you have to first turn it in to police or sheriff's department as aforementioned, then in terms of what happens next, if it's value is over $250 then it's only after the 90 days of a waiting period and 7 days of another waiting period after the published in the newspaper about it will then, only then will the finder have the opportunity to claim it (or be given title of the property) for themselves, assuming it wasn't found during the course of employment (where a customer left it at your work and didn't come back for it), and requires even the finder to pay the cost of publication back to the city before being able to get it back from the police.\nUnder that same provision, (<a href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CIV&amp;sectionNum=2080.3.\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">CA CIV 2080.3</a>), it also mentions that if it's <em>under</em> $250, then the finder will have the opportunity to take title of the item after just the 90 days without having to wait for an additional 7 days for the newspaper print notices and since there's no newspaper publish, you don't have to pay for the city back for that cost before being able to claiming your title of it.</p>\n<p>So <em>legally</em> speaking, you can't take ownership until you've turned it in to local authorities to give them a chance to try finding and contacting the owner and means you can't technically &quot;just keep it&quot; to be <strong>legally entitled</strong> to it</p>\n<h2>Notes</h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It's mostly a safer bet to turn it in and then wait the 90 days because then, if hypothetically you just kept it without turning it in, and that person somehow (depending on the item) discovers you have it, or reports the item as lost and you're somehow found with it later, although it's not a likely scenario, by finding you with the item and having not reported it, will make it appear as if you stole it and harder to claim it as being found.</li>\n<li>The answer is based on California state laws and does not include consideration for county and city laws who have the ability of setting different limitations.</li>\n<li>As noted for example, in the <a href=\"https://www.ocsheriff.gov/commands-divisions/professional-services-command/records/property-evidence\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">County of Orange</a> the other stipulations not included part of California state Civil Code:</li>\n</ul>\n<blockquote>\n<p>For Sections 2080.3(a) and 2080.3(b) to be applicable and for title to\nbe vested in the person who found or saved the property, he or she\nmust sign the affidavit on the back of the Found Property Report Form\nwhen the deputy takes possession of the property. Refusal to sign the\naffidavit at the time the property is turned over to the Sheriff's\nDepartment shall be deemed the intention of the finder to abandon\ntitle to the found property when such title should vest to the finder.</p>\n<p>If no owner appears to prove his ownership of the property and the\nfinder fails to claim the property within 23 days after the 97 day\nholding period (value $250 or over) or within 30 days after the 90 day\nholding period (value under $250), or the finder refuses to pay all\nreasonable charges, then title to the property shall not vest in the\nfinder and the property shall be processed as unclaimed property.</p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 2 }, { "answer_id": 85832, "body": "<p>If you worry about this, the first step would be that you can <em>ignore</em> the item. It is entirely legal to completely ignore an item that you believe may be lost.</p>\n<p>Obvious steps would be examining the item. For example, there is a debit card in my wallet. If you don't find me, then I'd hope that any court would convict you. You could have just called the bank (their number is on the card) and talked to them. Is that inconvenient? A bit, but you could have left my wallet where it is.</p>\n<p>Another very obvious step would be to ask the police what to do.</p>\n<p>The exact rules are different per country. For example, if you find my wallet on a train in Germany and don't find me, you are guilty of theft. That's because items on a train (or on anyone's property, like an airport, library, someone's home) is legally in the possession of the ones responsible for the property, like the train operator, and taking it away is theft.</p>\n", "score": 1 }, { "answer_id": 85836, "body": "<p>The <a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><em>Theft Act 1968</em></a> (see also the <a href=\"https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/theft-act-offences\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">prosecution manual</a>) says:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Theft is the <em>dishonest</em> appropriation of &quot;property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it&quot;.</li>\n<li>Appropriation is <em>not regarded as dishonest</em> if the appropriator &quot;appropriates the property in the belief that the person to whom the property belongs cannot be discovered by taking reasonable steps&quot;.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>This leaves two paths open to avoid a &quot;theft by finding&quot; charge.</p>\n<ol>\n<li>If common-law property rules have made this abandonned property. Then it is not &quot;property belonging to another&quot;. I know you're not asking about this path, but look up the law of finders: <em>Parker v British Airways Board</em>, [1982] 1 QB 1004; etc.</li>\n<li>If the appropriator believes there's no way to discover the owner by taking reasonable steps. Sometimes this belief can only be reasonably formed after attempting and failing at various reasonable steps.</li>\n</ol>\n<p>In assessing dishonesty, and as part of that, whether the &quot;reasonable steps&quot; exception applies, the judge (or jury) must answer:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>What was the defendant’s actual state of knowledge or belief as to the facts?</li>\n<li>Was the defendant’s conduct dishonest by the standards of ordinary decent people?</li>\n</ul>\n<p>One <a href=\"https://www.slatergordon.co.uk/newsroom/why-keeping-money-you-find-can-result-in-a-criminal-conviction/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">example of a reasonable step</a> is handing the property to the owner of the venue where the property was found and thereby placing the responsibility on them for attempting to return it. Many other examples are in the other answers to this question. The question of what is reasonable is determined by the objective standard of what ordinary and decent people should do.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "criminal-law", "england-and-wales", "theft" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90976, "body": "<p>Threatening to report the uninsured driver to avoid payment would be blackmail and illegal / criminal. As a result, they are not going to do this. Reporting the uninsured driver on the other hand is their civic duty. So they can get your friend into trouble, but they can't get around paying.</p>\n<p>Is your friend insured now? If not, tell him to get insured IMMEDIATELY. And if they are very lucky, the other company doesn't figure out your friend was uninsured, and they get away with it when they make a claim. Alternatively, tell them to figure out how much the damage is, how much the repair will cost, and whether it is worth taking the risk.</p>\n", "score": 14 } ]

[ "insurance", "pennsylvania" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90979, "body": "<p>In <em>Egbert v. Boule</em>, <a href=\"https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-147_g31h.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">596 U.S. ___</a> (2022), the Supreme Court held that &quot;there is no <em>Bivens</em> action for First Amendment retaliation.&quot; The Court was unanimous on this point.</p>\n<p>This means that right now, there is no way to sue for a damages remedy for First Amendment retaliation by federal officials. The majority said that &quot;Congress, not the courts, is better suited to authorize such a damages remedy.&quot;</p>\n", "score": 3 }, { "answer_id": 90980, "body": "<p>Bringing suit for injunctive relief is very likely possible and does not require a <em>Bivens</em> remedy, but in the case of a First Amendment violation by a federal government official that is done and over, the First Amendment has become a right without a remedy.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "us-constitution", "freedom-of-speech", "civil-rights" ]

[ { "answer_id": 41069, "body": "<p>You'd have to look careful for example at the Taiwanese law. Does it disallow companies in Taiwan to hire minors, or does it disallow minors to take jobs in Taiwan? In 99.99% of all cases the effect would be the same, but in this case the minor is in Taiwan, and the company in the USA. If their law disallows minors to take jobs, then the matter is clear. If it disallows companies to hire minors, then there is the question if the US company hiring a remote employee is covered by this or not. </p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, if employment is against Taiwanese law, how can they enforce it? Normally enforcement is against the company, not the minor. </p>\n", "score": 4 }, { "answer_id": 41067, "body": "<p>Taiwanese law applies to employees in Taiwan regardless of their citizenship.</p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "united-states", "minor", "labor-law", "labor", "taiwan" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90953, "body": "<p>See <a href=\"https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part52/practice-direction-52b-appeals-in-the-county-courts-and-high-court\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Practice Direction 52B</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The venue for an appeal within the County Court will be determined by the <a href=\"https://www.judiciary.uk/about-the-judiciary/who-are-the-judiciary/leadership-judges/designated-civil-judges/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Designated Civil Judge</a> and may be different from the appeal centre.</p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "england-and-wales", "appeal", "county-court" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90945, "body": "<h2><a href=\"https://www.bubbagump.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Bubba Gump Shrimp</a></h2>\n<p>Yes - the above example uses two fictional names from the movie Forest Gump.</p>\n", "score": 1 }, { "answer_id": 90966, "body": "<p>The main issue is whether an ordinary reader would understand the fake person information to be fake, or at least would have no material reason to care.</p>\n<p>A detailed biography of a clearly fictional character even if this person is based on a real person to some extent (e.g. Forest Gump, or Colonel Sanders of KFC, or Wendy of Wendy's, or Ronald McDonald) is certainly allowed.</p>\n<p>Pen names and stage names are likewise allowed if they don't deceive people in a material way, which they usually don't since readers only interact with a pen named author through their real work product, and since stage names don't conceal the human being using the name (and are similar to an actual name change for all purposes).</p>\n<p>The crime procedural TV melodrama &quot;<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Steele\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Remington Steele</a>&quot; was an example of an initially permissible trade name persona getting out of hand, crossing over into the improper zone, and then being exploited by a third-party. In this TV series:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Remington Steele's premise is that Laura Holt, a licensed private\ninvestigator (Stephanie Zimbalist) opened a detective agency under her\nown name but found potential clients refused to hire a woman, no\nmatter how qualified. To solve the problem, Laura invents a fictitious\nmale superior she names Remington Steele. Through a series of events\nin the first episode, &quot;License to Steele&quot;, Pierce Brosnan's character,\na former thief and con man (whose real name even he proves not to know\nand is never revealed), assumes the identity of Remington Steele.\nBehind the scenes, a power struggle ensues between Laura and Steele as\nto who is really in charge, while the two carry on a casual romantic\nrelationship.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The things that made the trade name improper in that context was that clients relied upon the performance of future personal services by the fictional persona, and personal services are not assignable contractual obligations in that context.</p>\n", "score": 0 } ]

[ "united-states", "business", "fraud", "trade-name" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90965, "body": "<p>There are several kinds of intellectual property and related rights that could be implicated by coworking considerations. This answer provides answers where it is clear and leaves open the legal issues where I don't know the answer.</p>\n<ol>\n<li><p><strong>Trademarks and Trade Names.</strong> A coworking company might not infringe your trademark if used merely to identify the trademarks of its tenants (e.g. for marketing purposes to show the businesses that use its services), but could not market products using your trademark. Certainly, a coworking company could refer to its tenant by their trade names but could not purport to be the owner of those trade names.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p><strong>Copyrights.</strong> A coworking company does not gain any rights in your copyrighted material merely by providing office space for them. Merely letting someone see copyrighted material does not provide a license to copy or republish it, any more than someone reading your book purchased at a book store has a right to copy or republish the book.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p><strong>Trade secrets.</strong> A trade secret gains its legal force by the trade secret owner taking reasonable measures to keep it secret, such as putting non-disclosure agreements in place with people who you allow to see it and keeping it protected with locks, closed doors, passwords, and encryption. What is sufficient to make efforts to keep a trade secret secret is a fact specific case by case inquiry. Generally speaking, if one leaves trade secret information in plain view in a coworking space, one would lose trade secret protection for that trade secret, unless there was an express non-disclosure agreement with the coworking facility and all of the other users of the space who could see the trade secret material.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p><strong>Patents</strong> Once a patent is obtained, it doesn't matter who can see the patent which is a matter of public record anyway, so the coworking company gets no rights at that point. But, when someone is developing an idea that you would like to patent, disclosure of the patented idea in a sufficiently public way could make the idea part of &quot;prior art&quot; that prohibits anyone from patenting it, and if someone else patents the idea using insight from someone else without using illicit means, they will often get the patent in a first to file system (which is predominant, if not universal, in world patent systems now). <strong>I'm not enough of a patent law expert to spell out the boundaries of what could cause your idea to become prior art or permit a coworkering firm or someone else working there to appropriate your work and patent it legally.</strong> <strong>Swiss law regarding implied duties of landlords/privacy and, if it exists, coworking, would also be pertinent and is beyond the scope of my knowledge. E.U. privacy regulations (or <a href=\"https://www.dataguidance.com/notes/switzerland-data-protection-overview\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">copycat versions of them in Switzerland</a>) like the <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">GDPR</a> could be a factor as well.</strong> In the face of uncertainty, the better course of action would be &quot;better safe than sorry.&quot; The steps necessary to preserve as a trade secret an idea that could potentially be patented is probably sufficient in most cases, but the same level of vigilance might not be necessary to preserve a patentable idea and prevent another person seeing it from appropriating it.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p><strong>Other Confidentiality Obligations</strong> Another related issue is that many people have legal obligations to keep certain kinds of information they obtain in the course of their occupations secret and confidential from all but certain people. These people include lawyers, medical professionals, health insurance companies, teachers and school administrators, soldiers, psychotherapists, bankers, accountants, certain kinds of civil servants dealing with certain kinds of information, social science researchers, clergy, scientists, people subject to non-disclosure agreements, and web site operators. <strong>It isn't always obvious that these confidentiality obligations can be met in a co-working environment.</strong></p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "intellectual-property", "privacy", "workplace", "switzerland", "trade-secret" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90937, "body": "<p>It's not clear what the big deal is. Congress has already passed vast numbers of laws for POTUS to enforce, and has left the details of implementation up to the executive branch. The main limitation is that you need a Congress to fund any new federal government projects. The Constitution anticipates this problem, and there are clauses regarding filling vacancies (clearly applicable to the dead). Assuming that zombies are rioting in the streets, POTUS can <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergencies_Act\" rel=\"noreferrer\">invoke the National Emergencies Act</a>, issuing an executive order to call out the National Guard.</p>\n", "score": 5 }, { "answer_id": 90967, "body": "<blockquote>\n<p>Which begs the question - until we can get a Congress assembled, what\ncan the President do to restore peace and order?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>It depends upon how long it takes. The real crunch would hit when there are no longer Congressional appropriations for spending, which could be sooner or later depending upon how long ago the last appropriations bills were passed. It the world falls apart just on the verge of a government shutdown for lack of spending bills that could happen quickly, but it could take longer if spending bills were just passed for the next year or two.</p>\n<p>Of course, in practice, most individuals wouldn't have standing to complain about unauthorized spending in any case and judges would probably turn a blind eye given the emergency anyway, perhaps inventing some new &quot;zombie spending doctrine.&quot; The end of the world would also screw up tax collections and the ability to issue new debt, so this interim period of inability to carry out the constitution as directed due to lack of Congressional input would be irrelevant soon enough anyway.</p>\n", "score": 1 }, { "answer_id": 90943, "body": "<blockquote>\n<p>They don't approve of the recently-enacted regulations and executive orders and will happily sue us the first chance they get to prove the executive is acting without authority from Congress.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Congress does not participate in such lawsuits. They are of course heard by the judiciary, where the plaintiff is an aggrieved party -- someone who claims to have been injured by the executive's exceeding its authority -- and the defendant is an officer of the executive -- for example the secretary of the department that issued the regulations or the officer who acted on the executive order. The defendant is represented by lawyers from the Department of Justice.</p>\n<p>It would be necessary to assemble congress only if there was a need to change the law or to remove the president from office.</p>\n", "score": 0 } ]

[ "united-states" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90875, "body": "<p>Although you aren't interested in the TOS, you should be. You are not allowed to make any copy of other people's stuff without permission. The TOS is how you get permission. First, the author uploads his material to You Tube, because he has an account and the TOS associated with the account specifies the license that he grants to You Tube and the world – same thing with Stack Exchange. The TOS says (roughly) &quot;when you upload stuff, you give permission for others to access your stuff using the You Tube interface&quot;. Content-consumers likewise are allowed to stream content using their interface, but not generally download. (The license terms changes over time – previously there were more license types). Specifically,</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>You are not allowed to:</p>\n<p>access, reproduce, download, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display,\nsell, license, alter, modify or otherwise use any part of the Service\nor any Content except: (a) as expressly authorized by the Service; or\n(b) with prior written permission from YouTube and, if applicable, the\nrespective rights holders;</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>and they don't expressly authorize ordinary download, you have to use their interface.</p>\n<p>You might also directly contact the author of the work in question and negotiate a deal where you can directly acquire a license from the rights-owner. But if you want to access the material via You Tube, you have to do it in a way that is permitted, and You Tube says that you're not permitted to download. Any &quot;copying without permission&quot; is infringement.</p>\n", "score": 25 }, { "answer_id": 90915, "body": "<p>Copying is a necessary and pervasive part of typical internet usage. Visiting any website requires, not only that it is temporarily copied and saved onto your hard drive, but also that every intermediate server through which the content is transmitted to you has a copy, and also that a copy can be displayed on the physical screen you use to view the media. This was the source of a lot of controversy in the early internet era, I recommend reading Chapter 3 of Lawrence Lessig's <em>Free Culture</em> if you're interested in the history.</p>\n<p>Since the default is &quot;any copying is illegal&quot;, I will answer the contrapositive &quot;why <em>isn't</em> using my browser to visit YouTube illegal?&quot;. <strong>I claim that the Terms of Service of YouTube are irrelevant for the purposes of this question.</strong> I think there are essentially two defenses for using the website/app in its usual fashion, which do not apply to tools for downloading permanent copies.</p>\n<p>Both rest on the distinction that the implied copying is (1) temporary, (2) non-commercial, (3) transient, (4) the minimum necessary to carry out the relevant technical aim (i.e. transmitting video content through the internet).</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>In the US</strong> I claim that implicit copying would definitely be considered a fair use, while making a personal copy for private use <em>could</em> but probably wouldn't, and making a personal copy to distribute would <em>definitely</em> not. See <a href=\"https://law.stackexchange.com/a/3589/36772\">https://law.stackexchange.com/a/3589/36772</a> for details.</li>\n<li><strong>In the EU</strong> There are explicit exemptions in the Copyright Directive which permit copying under these circumstances. See <a href=\"https://law.stackexchange.com/a/4858/36772\">https://law.stackexchange.com/a/4858/36772</a> for details.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>One commenter mentions anti-circumvention law as in the DMCA. This <em>might</em> be relevant, but personally I doubt it, as YouTube does not use any kind of &quot;digital lock&quot; (i.e. DRM) that I'm aware of. Access to the raw blob is obfuscated, but not directly locked.</p>\n<p>A final note is that in some jurisdictions you are allowed to make &quot;Home copies&quot; for personal use, or for other specific demarcated purposes. You can find some references to specific jurisdictions on the Wikipedia article for <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Private copying levy</a> (which is a common form of tax used to remunerate copyright holders for private copying).</p>\n<h2>youtube-dl and Invidious</h2>\n<p>There are two relevant software projects that touch on this area.</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://invidious.io/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Invidious</a> is an open-source front-end for YouTube. A certain amount of copying is incidental in the provision of such a service, but as far as I know it is considered likely to be legal. <a href=\"https://docs.invidious.io/takedown/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">The developers certainly think so</a>.</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://youtube-dl.org/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">youtube-dl</a> is an open-source software project enabling users to download any youtube video they like. It is the user's responsibility to ensure that they are using youtube-dl under proper license of the downloaded material.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>There have been many similar projects: Vanced, HookTube, Youtube2Peertube, ... which were intimidated into shutting down, either due to real or bogus legal threats. You may want to look into them if you want to know the details.</p>\n", "score": 9 }, { "answer_id": 90903, "body": "<p><strong>It is not illegal</strong></p>\n<p>There no law against downloading any video from YouTube. YouTube does, however has a policy and mechanisms against that because law allows them to do so. It is their website, after all.</p>\n<p><strong>The saved track is pirated</strong></p>\n<p>The license YouTube allows you to listen to the track only from their website or apps, even if it cached on your hard drive. Same goes on Spotify, Netflix... If you save the track outside their allowed use, then you are breaking the contract and you have an unlicensed copy of the track.</p>\n<p><strong>Make your own streaming service to get around this</strong></p>\n<p>If you are not interested in following YouTube terms of service, you don't have to follow them by never accessing the website or apps. You can get around the issue by creating an app that does what you want and set your own content policies. If the app and its policies are so good, people will rather posting their content to your platform, rather than theirs.</p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "copyright", "intellectual-property", "music", "youtube" ]

[ { "answer_id": 78159, "body": "<h2>preface</h2>\n<p>As evidenced by the <a href=\"https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2022/bvg22-008.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">federal constitutional court’s recently published decision</a>, law is no exact science.\nI cannot possibly “summarize the current understanding” because “one room, two lawyers, three opinions”.\nNevertheless, let me show you <em>a</em> legal opinion addressing some issues and demonstrating the mechanics of a criminal case.</p>\n<p>German law distinguishes between judgmental statements (“You’re a fat pig!”) and factual claims (“Baker X uses cockroaches for her bread.”).\nWith respect to MFW’s original question, doing the latter toward third parties, like on a social media site, could qualify as defamation, a <em>separate</em> criminal offense.\nAt any rate (and considering the question/comments), either of which is <em>also</em> an insult toward the person at hand (“You” or “Baker X”).</p>\n<h2>opinion</h2>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>insult through action</strong><br />\nBy responding to a post of Doctor Who with “Doctor Who is a fat pig.” on the social media website Foobar, OM might have committed the crime of insult, <a href=\"https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1891\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">§ 185 StGB</a>.\n<ol>\n<li>applicability of German penal law<br />\nGerman penal law must be applicable at the time and place of the offense.\nProsecution of insults is possible if the crime was committed in Germany, § 3 StGB.\nThe place of commission is every place where OM acted, § 9 Ⅰ StGB.\nActs are all activities ensuring the furtherance of the crime’s success.\nOM does not operate Foobar or its webservers, but necessarily composed and initiated publication of the post.\nHowever, due to the website being accessible <em>globally</em> via the world wide web, it is not automatically established OM was in Germany during his/her actions.<br />\nNevertheless, much like a person throwing a rock across the border, applicability of German penal law is still indicated via § 3 StGB if the purpose of the crime in question is to protect <em>domestic</em> interests.\nIn the present case, § 185 intends to protect, among other things, the individual interest <em>honor</em> of people in Germany.\nSince DW regularly stays on German territory, her honor is at risk and must therefore be protected by the German state.\nHence applicability of German penal law is found, regardless where OM specifically was at the time of her/his actions.<br />\n(Further reading: BGHSt 46, 212)</li>\n<li>elements of the offense<br />\nOM’s post must display all elements of an insult.\n<ol>\n<li>physical elements of the offense\n<ol>\n<li>object of the offense<br />\nGiven the context of replying to a post of DW, OM’s post unambiguously identifies DW as the subject of the potential insult.\nDW is a living person, thus a suitable holder of honor.</li>\n<li>act<br />\nOM must have acted accordingly.\nAn insult is the announcement of own contempt or disrespect toward someone else.\nThe statement “Doctor Who is a fat pig.” compares DW with an animal.\nAnimals are considered inferior to humans.\nIn particular, the choice “pig” is associated in many cultures as an “unclean” animal.\nFurthermore, the adjective “fat” implies a certain immobility, another bad quality.\nThus OM expressed contempt or disrespect of DW.<br />\nHowever, since OM wrote his/her post in English it could be the case DW did not understand any of that.\nAn insult “through” a translator or interpreter cannot be attributed to the perpetrator anymore.\nTherefore it is necessary, the addressed person has at least a basic understanding of the language and/or script used.\nIn the present case, DW has an MD obtained in Germany.\nShe is sufficiently capable of directly understanding the disrespectful contents at hand.</li>\n<li>factual attribution<br />\nMoreover, the act can be attributed toward OM.</li>\n</ol>\n</li>\n<li>mental elements of the offense<br />\nUnless otherwise stated all crimes must be committed with intent, § 15 StGB.\nIntention is the wish to effect the physical elements of the offense knowing all circumstances of the crime.\nOM deliberately posted the insult, or at least was consciously accepting the risk to insult and therefore acted with criminal intent.</li>\n<li>intermediate conclusion<br />\nBy posting “Doctor Who is a fat pig.” on the social media website Foobar OM has committed the crime of an insult.</li>\n</ol>\n</li>\n<li>unlawfulness<br />\nThe elements of the offense indicate unlawfulness, unless the offense was warranted.\n<ol>\n<li>vindicatory consent<br />\nProtection of <em>honor</em> as a disposable interest can be relinquished, yet in the present case DW did not expressly agree to being insulted, and the Terms of Service of Foobar DW agreed to actually forbid hate speech in general.</li>\n<li>presumed vindicatory consent<br />\nWithout express consent and DW agreeing to Foobar’s ToS, it could be the case DW’s honor was no interest warranting protection.\nDW’s post OM responded to might have been provocative or unethical, yet she did not give reason to believe that she did not care about her honor, e. g. by insulting someone else, and in particular not OM him‑/her‑self, § 199 StGB.</li>\n<li>protection of legitimate interests<br />\nOM’s post could have been done to safeguard legitimate interests, § 193 StGB.\nCritical opinions about scientific, artistic or commercial achievements are allowed if an insult as a matter of form and content or the circumstances do not show the sole intent to insult.\nDW expressed an opinion in a public venue like Foobar certainly with the intent to initiate debate, yet OM’s post primarily shows disrespect toward DW, without expressing criticism to her post.\nTherefore OM’s post has not been done to safeguard legitimate interests.</li>\n<li>intermediate conclusion<br />\nOM’s act was unlawful.</li>\n</ol>\n</li>\n<li>guilt<br />\nAn unlawful act fulfilling all elements of the offense indicates guilt, thus OM is considered is guilty.</li>\n<li>sentence considerations<br />\nSince the insult happened through dissemination of materials, the permissible sentence is up to two years of imprisonment or a fine.\nThe court recognizes following considerations:\n<ul>\n<li>The brevity and ordinary nature of the insult.</li>\n<li>OM’s rap sheet, queried on 2022‑02‑26, is empty.</li>\n<li>OM and DW are not related.</li>\n<li>OM has not apologized to DW.</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>conclusion<br />\nBy posting “Doctor Who is a fat pig.” on the social media site Foobar OM is guilty of unlawfully insulting DW.</li>\n</ol>\n</li>\n<li><strong>criminal prosecution requirements</strong><br />\nProsecution of an insult is only possible if a criminal complaint was submitted, § 194 Ⅰ 1 StGB.\nWhen DW reported the offense to the Police of Lower Saxony on 2022‑01‑10, she initiated a provisional criminal complaint.\nAs she is the subject of the insult, she is entitled to initiate such, § 77 Ⅰ StGB.\nThe 3‑month-submission deadline was met, § 77b StGB.</li>\n<li><strong>criminal prosecution obstacles</strong><br />\nThe statute of limitations grants a five-year limitation period, § 78 StGB, so there are no obstacles.</li>\n<li><strong>conclusion</strong><br />\nOM is sentenced to a fine of thirty daily units.\nSince OM refused to disclose their economic situation, an estimated monthly net income of three thousand euros is presumed, thus a daily unit amounts to one hundred euros.<br />\nConsidering OM’s guilt, § 46 Ⅰ 1 StGB, imprisonment, especially more than six months, § 47 Ⅰ StGB, was not indicated.</li>\n</ol>\n<h2>afterthought</h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The “dissemination through materials” qualification is a recent addition, Federal Gazette 2021 Ⅰ page 441, article 1, number 6.\nIt was meant to take effect on July 1, 2021 (article 10, subsection 1), but came into effect early on April 3, 2021, FG 2021 page 474.\nIf you insulted someone on or before April 2, 2021, the maximum sentence is one year imprisonment or a fine, § 2 Ⅰ StGB.</li>\n<li>Considering this, I should probably <em>double</em> the fine.\n30 daily units, give or take, <em>was</em> standard for a “normal” insult before the change.</li>\n<li>Maybe interesting, but the insulted does not need to “feel” insulted.\nNevertheless, only the addressed person(s) can file a complaint, § 77 Ⅰ StGB.</li>\n<li>Initiating a criminal complaint could be unnecessary if you are “insulting” a public figure, § 188 StGB, if the DA thinks it’s of public interest, § 194 Ⅰ 3 StGB, or if the insult’s content refers to persecution of people in the Third Reich or similar regimes, § 194 Ⅰ 2 StGB.</li>\n</ul>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "germany", "defamation", "online", "social-media" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90835, "body": "<blockquote>\n<p>It’s illegal to modify the exhaust system to make a vehicle noisier after it has been ‘type approved’ (checked it meets environmental and safety standards).\nThe police can also take action if your vehicle’s silencer doesn’t work in the way it was designed or if you’re driving in a way that creates too much noise.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.gov.uk/noise-pollution-road-train-plane\" rel=\"noreferrer\">https://www.gov.uk/noise-pollution-road-train-plane</a></p>\n", "score": 17 }, { "answer_id": 90829, "body": "<p>Many jurisdictions have enacted noise restrictions. For example Calgary, Alberta has a <a href=\"https://publicaccess.calgary.ca/lldm01/livelink.exe?func=ccpa.general&amp;msgID=SyAccKqKqW&amp;msgAction=Download\" rel=\"noreferrer\">traffic bylaw</a> that prohibits a person fom allowing their vehicle to make noise louder than 96 decibels, subject to a penalty of $270.00. See also CBC, &quot;<a href=\"https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/noisy-motorcycles-trucks-target-of-bylaw-review-1.871760\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Noisy motorcycles, trucks target of bylaw review</a>&quot; (July 5, 2010).</p>\n", "score": 13 }, { "answer_id": 90832, "body": "<p>In <a href=\"/questions/tagged/germany\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-germany-tooltip-container\">germany</a>, motor vehicles need a permit to certify their technical fitness. Either the vehicle conforms to the manufacturer's specification, or modifications are inspected and recorded. Modifications to deliberately increase the noise would not be certified and illegal modifications may lead to the impounding of the vehicle. This happens with some frequency, often involving motor scooters and motorbikes.</p>\n", "score": 11 }, { "answer_id": 90838, "body": "<p>In the UK there is a maximum noise level of 89dB for all motorcycles, HGVs, PCVs.</p>\n<p>If you often have a very loud motorbike near your home, you can leave a dB sound level meter near the road and film it just enough to get the level and the numberplate, and then the police will have a word and the guy will have to change it.</p>\n<p>What happens on many motorbikes is that the noise absorbance tech in the exhaust is cheap and gums up and fails, else new exhausts are fitted.</p>\n<p>I live near un up-hill road with loud engines, I became used to sleeping with 3M style foam ear buds, some people can become mentally sapped by noise and bad sleep from road noise.</p>\n", "score": 10 }, { "answer_id": 90833, "body": "<p>In <a href=\"/questions/tagged/switzerland\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;switzerland&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;switzerland&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-switzerland-tooltip-container\">switzerland</a> there's an article in the traffic law (Art 33 Verkehrsregelverordnung) that prohibits &quot;continued, unnecessary driving trough towns&quot;. People can be fined for driving through towns, if they do that mostly for the sake of driving (and presenting themselves). Some towns have real problems with so called &quot;car posers&quot; that drive trough small streets near public gathering places with (often illegally) modified, expensive cars and howling engines. Of course, the law also applies to motorcycles.</p>\n<p>Full article (german): <a href=\"https://www.swissrights.ch/gesetz/Artikel-33-VRV-2021-DE.php\" rel=\"noreferrer\">https://www.swissrights.ch/gesetz/Artikel-33-VRV-2021-DE.php</a></p>\n", "score": 8 }, { "answer_id": 90957, "body": "<p>So, as the OP is UK based, I thought it'd be helpful to answer some specifics:</p>\n<p>There's two key offences:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Silencer/ exhaust system altered to increase noise – Reg. 54(2) The Road &gt; Vehicles (Construction &amp; Use) Regulations 1986;</p>\n<p>Avoidance of excessive noise – Reg. 97 The Road Vehicles (Construction &amp; Use) Regulations 1986</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>For cars, the (police measured) limit is 80 dB, and 89 dB for motorcycles...</p>\n<p>...but, a crucial point is how these measurements are taken - the police measure the noise at 50% of max engine speed. Quite often, in both performance cars and motorcycles, there are electronically controlled valves to control the noise at lower engine speeds (allowing type approval).</p>\n<p>As you can imagine, the noise difference between 7500 rpm and 15000 rpm can be significant.</p>\n<p>For very obvious / egregious exhausts (&quot;race use only&quot;, visibly modified or in some cases, removed completely), the first of the two offences is easier to prove.</p>\n<p>Source:</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.essex.police.uk/cy-GB/foi-ai/essex-police/our-policies-and-procedures/h/h0504-procedure---loud-exhaust-offences/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://www.essex.police.uk/cy-GB/foi-ai/essex-police/our-policies-and-procedures/h/h0504-procedure---loud-exhaust-offences/</a></p>\n", "score": 2 }, { "answer_id": 90929, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/germany\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-germany-tooltip-container\">germany</a> In Germany, noise pollution is regulated in the immission protection laws which exist at the federal and state levels, and by the traffic regulations <em>(&quot;Straßenverkehrsordnung&quot;).</em></p>\n<p>The federal immission protection law (&quot;<a href=\"https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bimschg\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><em>Bundes-Immissionsschutzgesetz, BImSchG</em></a>&quot;) states in <a href=\"https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bimschg/__38.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">§38</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(1) Kraftfahrzeuge und ihre Anhänger, Schienen-, Luft- und Wasserfahrzeuge sowie Schwimmkörper und schwimmende Anlagen [...] müssen so betrieben werden, dass <strong>vermeidbare Emissionen verhindert</strong> und unvermeidbare Emissionen auf ein Mindestmaß beschränkt bleiben.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Avoidable emissions are to be avoided. You cannot just make your motorcycle loud because you like the noise.</p>\n<p>The traffic regulations generally forbid &quot;unnecessary noise and avoidable nuisance from exhaust fumes&quot;. The relevant paragraph is <a href=\"https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stvo_2013/__30.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">§30</a> (emphasis by me):</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(1) Bei der Benutzung von Fahrzeugen sind <strong>unnötiger Lärm und vermeidbare Abgasbelästigungen verboten. Es ist insbesondere verboten, Fahrzeugmotoren unnötig laufen zu lassen</strong> und Fahrzeugtüren übermäßig laut zu schließen. Unnützes Hin- und Herfahren ist innerhalb geschlossener Ortschaften verboten, wenn Andere dadurch belästigt werden.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>As in the environmental law, the general rule is to avoid avoidable noise and other pollution. More specifically, it is forbidden to run motors without a reason, rev it up where not necessary, slam doors etc.</p>\n<p>But a very specific rule forbids riding back and forth within city limits without a reason if and when it annoys others.</p>\n<p>This resembles the <a href=\"https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15133548/the-end-of-cruising/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">anti-cruising laws</a> enacted by many communities in the U.S. and leads to similar social and legal discussions: In both countries, driving a car has connotations of freedom and adventure; excessive regulation interferes with the right to lead one's life as one sees fit. The German law only forbids cruising when it disturbs others though and has generally survived judicial scrutiny.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "england-and-wales", "any-jurisdiction", "noise", "nuisance", "motorcycle" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90939, "body": "<p>&quot;Why&quot; someone did something is potentially off-topic, but in regards to your hierarchical image - it lacks provenance so cannot be tested, however according to the official <a href=\"https://www.judiciary.uk/about-the-judiciary/who-are-the-judiciary/judges/profile-mor/#:%7E:text=The%20Master%20of%20the%20Rolls%20is%20second%20in%20judicial%20importance,system%20and%20rights%20of%20audience.\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">judiciary website</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The Master of the Rolls is second in judicial importance to the Lord Chief Justice.</p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 3 }, { "answer_id": 90949, "body": "<p>This is from Lord Dyson's autobiography <em>A Judge's Journey</em> (Bloomsbury, 2019), with some hyperlinks added by me for context:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The same restlessness and unwillingness to reject a new challenge as had propelled me rashly to move chambers in 1996 led me inexorably to decide to apply to become the MR. But the fact that it would be a new challenge was surely not a sufficient reason for taking this major decision. After all, I would be giving up sitting in the highest UK court to presiding in a lower court, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. After I had been appointed as the MR, my good friend and colleague <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Kerr,_Baron_Kerr_of_Tonaghmore\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Brian Kerr</a> told me that he couldn't wait to overturn me. My decisions were liable to be reversed by my former colleagues; and even where an appeal from one of my decisions was dismissed, I would not have had the last word. As against that, for the only time in my judicial career, except when I was in charge of the <a href=\"https://www.gov.uk/courts-tribunals/technology-and-construction-court\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">TCC</a>, I would be in charge and able to choose the cases I heard and the colleagues with whom I sat to hear them. And apart from the heavy case-load, there was the challenge of discharging numerous other responsibilities.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>He also describes that the competition was contested, but his application was prompted by the then Lord Chief Justice, <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Judge,_Baron_Judge\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Lord Judge</a>, who anticipated that the outgoing Master of the Rolls, <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Neuberger,_Baron_Neuberger_of_Abbotsbury\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Lord Neuberger</a>, was likely to be appointed President of the Supreme Court and that Dyson would be a good candidate to succeed him.</p>\n<p>In all, as the book describes, Master of the Rolls is in some sense junior to being a Supreme Court justice, since decisions of the Court of Appeal could go to the Supreme Court for final determination. But the majority of cases don't: the civil division takes at least five to six hundred appeals in a typical year, compared to only dozens for the Supreme Court from <em>all</em> of the UK jurisdictions. So most cases that the MR decides will not be appealed, and he can be involved in many more cases (whether by sitting himself, or deciding which other Lord Justices of Appeal will sit). That is one reason why the job would be attractive to an energetic judge, even though he wouldn't always get the last word.</p>\n<p>Dyson also describes several additional tasks which come along with the role, and help to give it a special identity and aura of prestige. Aside from the antiquity of the title, it is also one which has attracted various other statutory and traditional functions. Dyson was surprised to learn that he was <em>ex officio</em> a <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners_for_the_Reduction_of_the_National_Debt\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Commissioner for Reduction of the National Debt</a>, although not expected to do anything substantive as such. He ran <a href=\"https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/civil-procedure-rules-committee\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">the committee</a> responsible for the Civil Procedure Rules, an important behind-the-scenes way to have an effect on the entire civil justice system. As MR, he also enjoyed a higher individual profile than as a Supreme Court Justice in terms of public outreach, and involvement in various official and diplomatic events.</p>\n<p>In comparison, he found his time on the SC to have more of an academic/intellectual character, as one judge among many, dealing in an intense way with a small number of cases. He also notes differences in style between the courts, with the SC using larger panels and having more tradition of issuing multiple opinions. Dyson also remarks that he did not find sitting on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (which comes along with being on the SC) particularly interesting, since he did not find himself engaged by a large part of its work involving criminal appeals from Commonwealth countries.</p>\n", "score": 3 }, { "answer_id": 90942, "body": "<p>That hierarchy seems to be based on the court hierarchy. Justices of the Supreme Court are listed above the Master of the Rolls because the Supreme Court sits above the courts in the division that the Master of the Rolls administers. But the administrative duties of the Master of the Rolls apparently carry with them increased prestige and authority (along with <a href=\"https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/judicial-salaries-and-fees-2021-to-2022\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">higher pay</a>).</p>\n<p>Think of a corporate conglomerate. Someone who is among several vice presidents of the parent corporation might similarly be in a lower position than the CEO of one of the subsidiaries even though the parent corporation has authority over the subsidiary.</p>\n", "score": 0 } ]

[ "united-kingdom", "judge" ]

[ { "answer_id": 11872, "body": "<p>I'll use Washington state as my source, but laws will be similar in other states. <a href=\"http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9A.76&amp;full=true\">RCW 9A.76.020</a> outlaws obstructing a law enforcement officer, which this would be: it is a gross misdemeanor. In using lethal force, you would have committed first degree murder, under <a href=\"http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.32&amp;full=true\">RCW 9A.32.030</a>. There is a defense that can be used, per <a href=\"http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.16&amp;full=true\">RCW 9A.16.050</a>, that homicide is justified when:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In the lawful defense of the slayer, or his or her husband, wife,\n parent, child, brother, or sister, or of <em>any other person in his or\n her presence</em> or company, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend\n a design on the part of the person slain to commit a felony or to do\n some great personal injury to the slayer or to any such person, and\n there is imminent danger of such design being accomplished.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Law enforcement officers have access to justifiable homicide defenses as well under 9A.16.040, for example</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>(b) When necessarily used by a peace officer to overcome actual\n resistance to the execution of the legal process, mandate, or order of\n a court or officer, or in the discharge of a legal duty</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>or</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>(c) When necessarily used by a peace officer or person acting under\n the officer's command and in the officer's aid: (i) To arrest or\n apprehend a person who the officer reasonably believes has committed,\n has attempted to commit, is committing, or is attempting to commit a\n felony</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The outcome of the case would hinge in part on whether the officer's arrest and use of force was lawful. To take two extremes, if the guy on the ground had just killed a dozen people and was aiming to rack up another dozen kills, the officer's arrest would almost certainly be held to be legal and his degree of force justified. Your personal belief that the suspect was compliant and unarmed might be refuted by the facts. On the other hand, if the guy on the ground had slept with the officer's sister and the officer wanted to rid the world of this vermin, then the arrest and force would almost certainly be held to be not legal.</p>\n\n<p>It can be legal to use deadly force to resist unlawful arrest. See <a href=\"https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/177/529/case.html\">John Bad Elk v. United States, 177 U.S. 529</a>, where the court held that</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>if a party resisted arrest by an officer without warrant, and who had\n no right to arrest him, and if, in the course of that resistance, the\n officer was killed, the offence of the party resisting arrest would be\n reduced from what would have been murder, if the officer had had the\n right to arrest, to manslaughter</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The court also said</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>where the officer is killed in the course of the disorder which\n naturally accompanies an attempted arrest that is resisted, the law\n looks with very different eyes upon the transaction when the officer\n had the right to make the arrest from what it does if the officer had\n no such right. What might be murder in the first case might be nothing\n more than manslaughter in the other, or the facts might show that no\n offense had been committed.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This ruling has been somewhat eroded, in <a href=\"http://openjurist.org/409/f2d/474/united-states-v-simon\">US v. Simon</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>We recognize that law enforcement officers are frequently called on to\n make arrests without warrants and should not be held, so far as their\n personal security is concerned, to a nicety of distinctions between\n probable cause and lack of probable cause in differing situations of\n warrantless arrests. It is for this reason we believe that the force\n of John Bad Elk has been diminished</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The upshot of this is that (assuming no warrant), leeway is granted to officers in assessing probable cause (I'm not sure anybody really knows at a general conceptual level what constitutes \"probable cause\". The court seems to imply that the remote hearsay used as the basis for the arrest would not have been sufficient for a warrant, but it was \"reasonable grounds\" for believing accused had committed a crime).</p>\n\n<p>Your premise that the officer is about to shoot would have to be substantiated by some fact, such as a declaration \"I'm gonna kill you\". Otherwise, your belief that the officer was about to commit unjustified murder would itself be unjustified. With better fleshing out of the circumstances, you could manufacture a justified-homicide scenario.</p>\n", "score": 11 }, { "answer_id": 11874, "body": "<p>Absent a special contract, <em>nobody</em> has a legal <em>obligation</em> to defend another person from assault or battery &ndash; <a href=\"https://law.stackexchange.com/a/7902/10\">not even police</a>.</p>\n\n<p>The use of lethal force can be justified <strong>if one reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent imminent (and unjustified) death or great bodily harm to oneself or another</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>As usual, the \"reasonable person\" test would be applied by the judicial system, potentially in an adversarial court trial, to determine whether your use of lethal force was justified. The results would be very specific to the facts presented and their interpretation by a judge and/or jury.</p>\n\n<p>Therefore, the remainder of this answer is simply my opinion and conjecture:</p>\n\n<p>Would a reasonable person think that a person pointing a gun at another person constitutes an <em>imminent threat</em>? Without additional information, no. There are all sorts of legal reasons to brandish a gun, and very few of them result in the discharge of a firearm. Furthermore, if the person brandishing the gun is a police officer a \"reasonable person\" would have further reason to believe that the officer is exercising his lawful duties, and <em>not</em> engaged in unlawful assault.</p>\n\n<p>Under what circumstances might it be reasonable to shoot an officer holding a person at gunpoint? You would have to show reasonable belief that:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>The officer had an imminent intent to fire his weapon.</li>\n<li>The officer would <em>not</em> be justified in doing so.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>It is hard to imagine a scenario in which you could reasonably form those beliefs. However, <em>if</em> you observed the officer discharge his weapon, <em>and</em> he <em>continued</em> his armed assault, <em>and</em> it was <em>clear</em> to you that he was shooting at a person that posed no immediate threat to another person, then it's conceivable your use of lethal force would be considered justified. (But what if you had just come across a poorly controlled movie set? Or what if the \"apparently unarmed man\" was about to trigger a remote bomb detonator? You could still be found civilly or criminally liable for the consequences of your use of force.)</p>\n\n<p>Another hypothetical scenario: If it was known that a dangerous criminal was at large impersonating a police officer and shooting people, and you had reasonable confidence that the gunman you found was that criminal, you might be justified in shooting him. But again, unless you observed him actually discharging his weapon towards a person, you would have a hard time arguing that the peril was <em>imminent and unavoidable</em>. That's why many defensive shootings are preceded by a verbal warning (e.g., \"Stop or I'll shoot!\").</p>\n", "score": 5 }, { "answer_id": 11869, "body": "<p>You are asking what you could legally do if a police officer is just about to murder a person. That situation is so out of order that what is legal doesn't really matter. It's not a situation where the law will protect you. </p>\n\n<p>Instructing that officer to drop his weapon would obviously be a very, very bad idea. Guess what an officer who is going to shoot an unarmed person is going to do to someone who has a gun and is shouting at him. And guess what happens to you if you shoot a police officer if you get caught, no matter whether this was legally self defence or not. </p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "united-states", "police", "self-defense" ]

[ { "answer_id": 89717, "body": "<p>In most states, you have to pay an annual or biannual registration fee, complete a certain number of continuing education classes each registration cycle, and fill out a form affirming that your contact information is up to date.</p>\n<p>An attorney usually also has to make certain other representations in the registration process (e.g. no child support debts outstanding, you haven't been disciplined or charged criminally in any jurisdictions for professional misconduct or a crime, you do or do not have malpractice insurance in force, how many hours of pro bono work did you do, you do or do not have a trust account in place, you are or are not retired). Sometimes there are optional surveys that you may complete as well (e.g. regarding salaries and hours worked and type of practice and disability status).</p>\n<p>If you fail to comply with these registration requirements after receiving warnings to do so, your license to practice law is suspended. The conditions upon which your license can be reinstated and the process for doing so varies from state to state.</p>\n<p>Exceptions to the usual rules often exist if you primarily practice law in another state, you are on &quot;inactive status&quot; for some reason, or you are retired.</p>\n<p>Generally speaking, to keep your license current, you don't have to take new exams regarding the practice of law or legal ethics, and you generally don't have to complete the comprehensive background check called character and fitness review that is necessary to be admitted to the practice of law in the first place.</p>\n", "score": 1 }, { "answer_id": 90944, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/england-and-wales\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-england-and-wales-tooltip-container\">england-and-wales</a></p>\n<p>Yes.</p>\n<p>In order to practise as a solicitor¹ they must renew their eligibility every year and meet the requirements at <a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/47/section/1?timeline=false\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">section 1(c)</a>, Solicitors Act 1974:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(1) No person shall be qualified to act as a solicitor unless—</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>(a) he has been admitted as a solicitor, and</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>(b) his name is on the roll, and</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>(c) <strong>he has in force a certificate</strong> issued by the Society in accordance with the provisions of this Part authorising him to practise as a solicitor (in this Act referred to as a “practising certificate”).</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The Practicing Certificate is renewed annually, and for <a href=\"https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/news-articles/pc-fees-2022-2023\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2022-2023 costs £286</a>.</p>\n<hr />\n<p>¹For clarity, <a href=\"https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/47/section/20?timeline=false\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">&quot;solicitor&quot; is a regulated term</a>, unlike &quot;Lawyer&quot; and:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Anyone can call themselves a lawyer, regardless of whether they have any professional legal qualifications or not. <a href=\"https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/choosing/legal-jargon-explained/#:%7E:text=Anyone%20can%20call%20themselves%20a,professional%20legal%20qualifications%20or%20not.\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Source</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "united-states", "california", "lawyer", "bar-association" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90933, "body": "<p>U.S. law says in <a href=\"https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">17 U.S.C. 102(b)</a></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In no case does copyright protection for an original work of\nauthorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of\noperation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in\nwhich it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such\nwork.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>So, if you do not copy wording, just information and ideas, there should not be copyright violations. I do not see the WSJ TOS mentioning a license required to summarize or rewrite their material.</p>\n<p>It is fundamental that copyright protects the expression of ideas (among other things) but <em>not</em> ideas or information. The subtlety with &quot;information&quot; is that, in some places like most of Europe a collection of organized information of non-copyrightable material can be copyrighted as a whole.</p>\n<p>That is not the case in the U.S. although there was an unsuccessful attempt in the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act of 2003/4.</p>\n<p>Also, plagiarism, appropriation of ideas without attribution, is an academic integrity issue, not a legal issue.</p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "copyright", "intellectual-property", "internet", "journalism", "freedom-of-press" ]

[ { "answer_id": 51366, "body": "<p>We could start with what the statutes say (<a href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=HSC&amp;division=102.&amp;title=&amp;part=1.&amp;chapter=3.&amp;article=2.\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">HSC 102425</a>)</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(a) The certificate of live birth for a live birth occurring on or\nafter January 1, 2016, shall contain those items necessary to\nestablish the fact of the birth and shall contain only the following\ninformation; (1) Full name and sex of the child.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>It says nothing about the form of that name. Therefore, any prohibition of the letter Æ (or æ) etc. would have to come from the administrative interpretation of California Department of Public Health, Vital Records. There is a <a href=\"http://www.avss.ucsb.edu/MANUALS/Handbook.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">long handbook</a>, which on p. 112 states the rule regarding child names. The rules note that</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The form must be completed using the 26 alphabetical characters of the\nEnglish language with appropriate punctuation, if necessary.</p>\n<p>No pictographs (☺), ideograms (⇑), diacritical marks (è, ñ, ē, ç), or\nextraneous entries are allowed.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>So the short answer is, unless you feel like making a court case out of the matter and you have a lot of money, this name will not be allowed. The rule might be challenged in court as exceeding statutory authority, and might well be deemed to discriminate w.r.t. race and national origin. The rule could be defended on grounds of necessity, if we presume that the department is incapable of recording information other than the 26 letters and &quot;appropriate punctuation&quot; (undefined, presumably only apostrophe). It's not that in principle Unicode doesn't exist, it's that their system may not be capable of dealing with it (numerous problems would arise from the non-unique mapping from visual representation to Unicode number). There does not seem to be a court ruling on the matter.</p>\n\n", "score": 62 } ]

[ "united-states", "california", "children", "name" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90936, "body": "<p>The ordinance is 2012-269 was signed by Mayor Parker in 2012 you can find it as</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.houstontx.gov/health/2012-269.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer\">AN ORDINANCE AMENDING CHAPTER 20 OF THE CODE OF ORDINANCES, HOUSTON, TEXAS, RELATING TO FEEDING THOSE IN NEED; CONTAINING FINDINGS AND OTHER PROVISIONS RELATING TO THE FOREGOING SUBJECT; PROVIDING FOR SEVERABILITY; AND DECLARING AN EMERGENCY.</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The section amended landed in <a href=\"https://library.municode.com/tx/houston/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=COOR_CH20FODR_ARTVCHFOSE\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Chapter 20, Article V: Charitable Food Service.</a></p>\n", "score": 5 } ]

[ "texas", "local-ordinance", "houston" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90928, "body": "<p><a href=\"https://www.consumerprotectionbc.ca/about-us/our-authority-governance/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Consumer Protection BC</a>, the consumer-protection authority in British Columbia, <a href=\"https://www.consumerprotectionbc.ca/2011/12/whats_your_refund_policy/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">says</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Retail sales aren’t bound by BC law to provide mandatory returns or refunds.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>refund policies are not regulated by law. It is up to the consumer to find out a store’s policy. We promise it’s not difficult to do this. Just ask the nearest salesperson you see and ask “what is your return policy?”</p>\n</blockquote>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "consumer-protection", "british-columbia" ]

[ { "answer_id": 86405, "body": "<p>In the US, detention does not add anything: we can generalize the principle to any time when a student is in the custody of the teacher (classroom, field-trip, sporting event...). One question, for the scenario that you describe, is whether the injury was foreseeable.\nSuppose the injury is an abdominal aortic aneurysm – this is not foreseeable. The question that the court would ask is whether a person exhibiting reasonable caution and care would know that there is a possibility that the child has some condition. The details regarding this condition &quot;not being easily noticeable&quot; are essential to the outcome of the case. A child coughing up blood should be immediately treated medically, it is not reasonable to assume that a child who sneezes (once) is in imminent danger.</p>\n<p>The teacher's response is also important, and again this is a very fact-intensive inquiry. A child who has a heart attack should not be told &quot;go talk to the nurse&quot; (let's assume that the teacher correctly notices that this is a heart attack happening), 911 is the correct (minimal) remedy. Perhaps using the auto-defibrillator also part of the reasonable standard of care for a teacher (assuming there is one, and that the teacher has been trained how to use it).</p>\n<p>Then finally, the teacher is not liable if their actions / inactions don't cause the injury. In the case where a student suddenly dies, the fact that the teacher didn't somehow prevent the death doesn't make the teacher liable. But if the child is bleeding and the teacher decides &quot;We can deal with this when detention is over&quot; and the child bleeds to death in the interim, we would conclude that the teacher's lack of care caused the child's death.</p>\n<p>The school might also be liable on various grounds, for example if the school has no nurse and has no practical way for the teacher to contact emergency medical services. Some school policy which unreasonably restricts the teachers exercise of reasonable care could make the school liable.</p>\n<p>At any rate, &quot;the child died&quot; does not cause absolute liability, what confers liability is the actions and inactions of a party.</p>\n", "score": 6 } ]

[ "children", "school", "punishment", "detention" ]

[ { "answer_id": 52634, "body": "<h1>Short Answer</h1>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I was wondering if it exists the possibility of signing a legal\nagreement before impregnation that states legally that both parents\ncompromise into offering shared physical custody of the child to each\nother in case of divorce or separation.</p>\n<p>Do theses types of contract exists? are they legal? I currently live\nin Switzerland, but the question is meant generally.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Agreements of this type are not valid in Switzerland, the U.S., Australia, or any other jurisdiction of which I am aware. There are some fine nuances to this general rule, however, that are explored below.</p>\n<p>Obviously, of course, there are many countries in the world, and there could be an outlier out there somewhere.</p>\n<h3>Exceptions For Choice of Family Religion Agreements</h3>\n<p>In particular, in some countries, such as Israel and India, the substantive family law rules that apply to a married couple and their children are governed by the religion of that family as determined by law. Thus, Muslims families and Hindu families in India, for example, are governed by different laws related to child custody.</p>\n<p>In these countries, there is a legislatively approved set of family laws for each faith, but the laws for members of one religion are not the same as the laws for members of another religion, and there are typically rules to determine which sets of family law to apply in cases where the parents of a child belong to different religions.</p>\n<p>Pre-nuptial agreements in these countries may govern, to some extent, how a married couple's religion is determined for intra-national choice of law purposes, although they cannot specifically resolve custody issues on a pre-dispute basis.</p>\n<h1>U.S. Law</h1>\n<h3>In General</h3>\n<p>This would not be enforceable in most U.S. states. Agreements between parents in matters involving children (even post-dispute) are generally not legally binding, because the court has an independent duty to evaluate the best interests of the child under the circumstances as they actually present themselves. Courts can and do appoint third-party guardians ad litem to evaluate the best interests of the children when they have any reason to doubt the judgment of the parents.</p>\n<p>Put another way, pre-nuptial agreements and post-nuptial agreements, may govern property division and maintenance and restoration of name and inheritance rights and enforcement of economic provision rules, in the event of death or divorce, but may not govern parental responsibilities or child support or the circumstances under which the marriage may be terminated.</p>\n<h3>Post-Dispute Agreements</h3>\n<p>In practice, if parents come to a post-dispute agreement that happens to track the outlines of a non-binding pre-dispute agreement regarding parenting time and parental responsibilities, and the agreed resolution seems reasonable after perfunctory due diligence, a Court would usually ratify that agreement without much second guessing.</p>\n<p>But, the pre-dispute agreement would be only marginally relevant in the event of a dispute and would not have legal validity. It might be considered by a court as one factor among many in addressing the parenting dispute, as a source of ideas for a resolution and to ascertain the expectations and perspectives of the parents, but would not be given much weight in most cases.</p>\n<h3>Exceptions For Dispute Resolution Method Agreements</h3>\n<p>The exception would be that in some jurisdictions, a mediation or arbitration clause for parenting disputes in a material agreement would be honored, although the same substantive law would apply, in theory.</p>\n<h3>Exceptions For Assisted Contraception And Surrogacy Agreements</h3>\n<p>Note, however, that most jurisdictions in the U.S., do honor and give legal effect to a contract regarding the intended parent in a medically assisted conception or surrogacy contract, in which a pregnancy arises through some means other than intercourse between a man and a woman which of the source of the sperm and egg from that man and that woman that gives rise to a fertilized egg (e.g. cases of sperm donation, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, etc.).</p>\n<p>In those cases, the default rule is generally that the legal parents of the resulting child are the intended parents under the contract. But, this is purely an agreement governing paternity, and not parenting once a child is born.</p>\n<h1>Swiss Law</h1>\n<p>While I do not have first hand knowledge of Swiss law, a <a href=\"https://content.next.westlaw.com/Document/I1a75100d0ad111e598db8b09b4f043e0/View/FullText.html?transitionType=Default&amp;contextData=(sc.Default)&amp;firstPage=true&amp;bhcp=1\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">digest of Swiss law prepared by Westlaw</a> (a major law book publisher and online legal research provider) does state the rule of Swiss law clearly, however:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The areas a pre-nuptial agreement can cover are fairly limited. The\nfollowing cannot be determined in advance:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>The preconditions for a divorce, nullification or separation of a marriage are ultimately governed by law. Any agreements that are not\ncompliant with the law are invalid.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p><strong>Agreements on arrangements for children, in particular about parental responsibility, visiting rights or maintenance, made in\nadvance, are not binding.</strong></p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Any amounts saved in pension funds during a marriage are divided in the event of a divorce. Waiving such a division is only possible under\nvery restrictive conditions. Agreements in a marital contract that are\nnot compliant with the law are invalid.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This source also identifies the precise statutes and treaties that apply\nto resolve these questions of Swiss law.</p>\n<h1>Choice of Law and Forum Related Issues</h1>\n<p>There is also an implicit choice of law issue presented.</p>\n<h3>Choice Of Law and Forum Agreements Are Usually Void</h3>\n<p>Generally speaking, under U.S. law, these issues are governed in domestic cases by the state that is the &quot;home state&quot; of a particular child under a statutory test and the parents may not contractually agree to a choice of venue.</p>\n<p>In international cases by the state and country that are the home state and country of the child under a test established by treaty which may not be contractually agreed to in advance.</p>\n<p>Since the applicable statutory tests in the U.S. usually direct a court to apply the laws of the state with which the child has the strongest residential connection (except for Native American children whose family law disputes are subject to tribal law), and since laws relating to divorce and parenting are matters of state and not federal law for the most part (except as to choice of law and choice of forum issues, and certain federal welfare program guidelines for child support that states have economic incentives to comply with and all do), the law governing parental rights and responsibilities (and over the circumstances when a couple may get divorced) may change over time as the family (and each particular child) moves over the course of their lives.</p>\n<p>In international cases where there is not treaty in place between the potentially relevant countries (and in which diplomatic personnel or members of foreign royal families or families of heads of state are not involved), a U.S. court will generally apply the law of its own state in all cases where it has jurisdiction over the child, or of both parents. Jurisdictional disputes and inconsistent decrees are resolved in part through diplomatic channels at the national level in these cases.</p>\n<h3>There Is Little Variation In U.S. Substantive Custody Law</h3>\n<p>In practice, this isn't a very important observation in domestic cases, however, because almost every U.S. state gives judges extremely broad discretion to handle custody disputes on a case by case basis under a &quot;best interests of the child&quot; standard during the last several decades (even though this isn't constitutionally required), subject only to the barest U.S. constitutional limitations prohibiting decisions that amount to a termination of a legal parental relationship without certain forms of due process, and there aren't huge differences in the case law applying that standard in practice between states.</p>\n<p>The differences between particular judges in a particular county would typically be as great or greater than the difference between different states, when it comes to final outcomes in disputed and litigated cases.</p>\n<p>Before the best interests of the child standard was adopted more or less universally, many states had a sex specific &quot;tender years doctrine&quot; that presumptively gave custody of younger children to mothers and older children to fathers. But that standard was held to be unconstitutional because it discriminated based upon sex. In each state where the tender years doctrine or similar sex specific custody doctrines were held to be unconstitutional, the &quot;best interests of the child&quot; standard was adopted rather than a gender neutral standard that provided more guidance to judges such as a dictate to maintain the status quo as much as possible such as a &quot;primary caretaker presumption&quot; (which many judges applying the &quot;best interests of the child&quot; standard actually apply in practice).</p>\n<p>Most European countries also follow the &quot;best interests of the child&quot; rule for child custody.</p>\n<p>One of the big differences between jurisdictions in their laws typically involve issues like the standing of people other than parents to intervene in parenting litigation, such as grandparents, stepparents and social workers, and the rights of these third-parties vis-a-vis the legally recognized fathers and mothers of a child, and the circumstances under which an adoption and related relinquishment of parental rights is valid.</p>\n<p>The procedures that apply in family law cases also often differ significantly between jurisdictions.</p>\n<h3>Exception For Post-Dispute Choice of Law and Forum Agreements</h3>\n<p>However, once there has been a litigated dispute in the first instance, that jurisdiction will generally retain authority over the parenting of the child set forth in a decree. But if there is an agreement of the parents which has been ratified by a court regarding choice of law and venue that will be honored in a post-dispute settlement agreement. Also, there are typically statutory circumstances that cause the original jurisdiction to address a parenting dispute to lose authority over the child.</p>\n<p>For example, suppose that a couple divorces in England with a separation agreement approved by a court that states that the divorce court in London shall have continuing jurisdiction over future custody and child support disputes and the London divorce court approves that agreement. A U.S. or Swiss court would usually defer to the London divorce court for these matters at that point, unless some emergency or change of circumstances undermined the relevance of London to future disputes involving the child.</p>\n", "score": 3 }, { "answer_id": 52626, "body": "<h2>Such a contract is unenforceable</h2>\n<p>Family law is primarily concerned with the best interests of the <em>child(ren)</em>; not the wishes of the parents.</p>\n<p>If the relationship breaks down, the court will decide custody arrangements based on the law.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "divorce", "children" ]

[ { "answer_id": 79654, "body": "<blockquote>\n<p>Is it true that men are forced to pay child support for children they\ndidn't consent to having?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Yes.</p>\n<p>This is true in every U.S. jurisdiction, in the U.K., and in every jurisdiction of which I am aware in the E.U., and it is the rule in many other jurisdictions.</p>\n<p>The duty to pay child support in these jurisdictions flows from the relationship between the father and the child, and is not a contractual concept based upon consent.</p>\n<p>The primary exceptions to this general rule are cases where a parental relationship is legally terminated (e.g., in connection with the adoption of a child born out of wedlock), and cases in which someone becomes a sperm donor in a statutorily authorized arrangement that generally does not involve sexual intercourse.</p>\n<p>Historically, roughly speaking in the early 19th century, and earlier in English common law, and most other European and European-colonist jurisdictions, a man only had a duty to support the children of his wife or the children of his deceased former wife if he was a widower.</p>\n<p>Even further back, in the Roman empire from which the foundations of Roman civil law were derived, a father had a right in his sole and absolute discretion to commit infanticide, killing his infant children, a right which was a major political issue in the Roman empire from sometime in the 100s CE until it collapsed.</p>\n<p>Some jurisdictions, such as Japan, only established a legal duty to pay child support to a custodial parent in any circumstances in the late 20th century, although those jurisdictions still recognized the legal duty of a father to support a child in his custody.</p>\n<p>It is also worth noting that women in every country of which I am aware have a duty to support the children to which they give birth, whether or not they consented to impregnation (e.g. even if they were raped), or to giving birth (e.g. even if they wanted an abortion but were denied access to abortion by law or otherwise). This support obligation persists in almost every case, even if the woman's child is in the custody of another parent or guardian, and a woman is much more likely to face criminal prosecution for failure to support her child than an uninvolved father (although criminal prosecutions of men for non-support do happen). So, the claim that this constitutes sex discrimination is ill-founded.</p>\n", "score": 86 }, { "answer_id": 79675, "body": "<p>A picture valid for most modern jurisdictions, common and civil law alike.</p>\n<p>First, it is good to understand that the child support is owed to the child and not to their mother.</p>\n<p>It may be the mother who manages the child support, but it is clear that the mother manages the funds as an implied trustee of a child and not as a beneficiary.</p>\n<p>There are cases when both genetic parents are forced to pay child support for a child born by a surrogate mother and even more cases when the mother is forced to pay child support to a child who lives with the father.</p>\n<p>The whole idea of the child support stems from the fact that the child is not an object owned by its parents, but a separate human being and even a citizen with its own rights, including, but not limited to, the right to get an adequate and responsible parental care until their adulthood.</p>\n<p>The moment when the child becomes a human being with its own rights varies by jurisdiction and is either the moment of birth, the moment of conception or some other point in between.</p>\n<p>The responsible parenting is owed by both parents and the obligation cannot be contractually altered or transferred to other parties because it does not emerge from a contract in the first place. The existence of a child alone implies the obligation.</p>\n<p>This is much like the taxes - you owe them, period.</p>\n<p>The rights of the child are legally protected to a higher extent and with a higher priority than almost whatever other rights the parents may have. This is because the child is considered a vulnerable member of the society.</p>\n<p>The question of the intent (or lack thereof) of conceiving a child is so much minor in this context that it is almost never considered in the court proceedings.</p>\n<p>This is a profound contrast to the penal proceedings where the intent is a central point. Being a parent is not a crime in itself, so the intent is not important. You are either a parent, or not - and the possible intent is only good as long as it helps determining your status as a parent.</p>\n<p>The parenting obligation can be transferred by other means, e.g. by adoption, but the whole adoption concept is also shaped around the interests and the rights of the child.</p>\n<hr />\n<p>In regard to the &quot;consensual sex&quot;:</p>\n<p>The traditional view of this thing is that both men and women engage in sexual intercourse with the clear knowledge that a conception is a possible outcome. Yes, it implies a great level of trust between the partners.</p>\n<p>As much traditional is the understanding that a woman cannot escape the parental obligations, but a man can - because he can plausibly deny the fathership.</p>\n<p>This possibility has never been a &quot;men's right&quot; in the first place, it was just that - a possibility to avoid fulfilling a legal and moral obligation.</p>\n<p>It is no more that much easy because of the technological and the social advance and not because something happened to the &quot;men's rights&quot;.</p>\n<p>It is also not much of a discrimination - the obligation is for both parents and this was never really disputed.</p>\n", "score": 38 }, { "answer_id": 79681, "body": "<p>As fraxinus said, child support is not supporting the mother, it's supporting the child. This is an obligation that, at least generally in western jurisdictions, both parents have. If, for whatever reason, the father gets to raise the child without the mother being involved, the mother will have to pay child support just in the same way that the father does in the other case, so, no gender discrimination here.</p>\n<p>However, there are cases in Germany, where a parent can sue &quot;someone&quot; for the cost of supporting a child. There have been cases when people have had offspring after being (voluntarily, but unsuccessfully) sterilized in a clinic, and successfully sued the clinic for damages. This was quite controversial (do basic human rights permit to equate the birth of a child with &quot;damage&quot;) at first, but the German constitutional court ruled that, while the birth itself can never be &quot;damage&quot;, the resulting financial obligation can, so, the clinic had to pay &quot;child support&quot;.</p>\n<p>Link (in German): <a href=\"https://www.anwalt24.de/fachartikel/gesundheit-und-arzthaftung/4212\" rel=\"noreferrer\">https://www.anwalt24.de/fachartikel/gesundheit-und-arzthaftung/4212</a></p>\n<p>If negligence can lead to the obligation to pay &quot;child support&quot;, criminal intent can possibly as well, even though I know of no such cases. So it would be interesting what happens if the pregnancy results from a criminal act by one parent. I wasn't able to find any such cases. Rape is different insofar as the victim gets awarded damages for the act itself, but an abortion after a rape is easily obtainable in Germany, so the decision to carry the child to term is not one the rapist forces on the mother.</p>\n<p>Proving that sperm was obtained, in a criminal way, against the will of the father, won't be easy in any case. And note that this does not negate the father's obligation to child support - it only <em>might</em> give the father a way to sue the mother for compensation. If the mother has no seizable income, the father will still be on the hook.</p>\n", "score": 11 }, { "answer_id": 79699, "body": "<p>The question is a bit awkward. Partners don't consent to having a child - that's a biological process. Partners consent (or not) to having sex, and to the terms under which it takes place (such as, types of birth control or not). Note that birth control does not <em>prevent</em> pregnancy; it just reduces the likelihood.</p>\n<p>So you have three different possible scenarios.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Both partners consented to sex, and adhered to the terms, which then resulted in a pregnancy. Regardless of the use of birth control, and regardless of whether the pregnancy was intended, the outcome will (usually) be the same. Note that in most jurisdictions the option of legal abortion does not change this; abortion is strictly the woman's decision (whether it should be that way is of course a matter of ongoing debate, and has been for decades).</li>\n<li>Both partners consented to sex, but the woman (as per the question - no sexism implied) failed to adhere to the terms (&quot;stealthing&quot;). Depending on jurisdiction, that may become a criminal matter.</li>\n<li>The man didn't consent to sex at all. This is rape and a criminal matter (and, yes, while most of the time women are the victims of rape, men can be, too).</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Ultimately, in all of these cases, before you talk about child support, you need to talk about child custody. If the father gets custody, usually he will not have to pay child support (but of course will have to support the child). And he may even be able to demand child support from the mother.</p>\n<p>Who gets custody is a question that will vary very much with jurisdiction. As a very general rule of thumb, if everything was consensual, odds are that either the mother will get custody, or there will be joint custody. In the last two cases, if he can prove it, the father may have a stronger case for getting custody - but it may also mean having to pursue this case criminally.</p>\n", "score": 4 } ]

[ "children", "sex-discrimination" ]

[ { "answer_id": 61349, "body": "<p>There is no legal reason that you can't carry your baby any way you want outside of your vehicle (as long as you aren't physically harming the child). Baby slings or &quot;baby wearing&quot; is recognized by many pediatric doctors as not just good for the child, but good for the parent too (<a href=\"https://childrensmd.org/browse-by-age-group/newborn-infants/should-you-wear-a-baby-sling/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">read more</a>).</p>\n<p>Some hospitals (it was this way for my children) won't let you leave the hospital after birth without placing the child in an approved child seat. This is hospital policy though, not law. The purpose here was to verify that you are capable of putting your child in the seat, have the seat restraints positioned correctly, and understand the placement in the vehicle. Improper use can result in injury or death and this is a lot easier to examine in the hospital room than it is in your car.</p>\n", "score": 52 }, { "answer_id": 61393, "body": "<h2><em>Hospital discharge</em> is a legally recognized event/act</h2>\n<p>... in which the hospital determines the patient no longer requires in-hospital care. Hospitals are under extreme scrutiny regarding discharge practices, in part <a href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0272989X07302130\" rel=\"noreferrer\">due to racist history</a> of discharging indigent or suspected-nonpaying patients prematurely. Further, they face consderable civil liability for a wrongful discharge.</p>\n<h2>Discharge planning is a mandatory part of hospital policy</h2>\n<p>Hospitals which wish to accept Medicaid patients must meet particular requirements outlined in <a href=\"https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/42/482.43\" rel=\"noreferrer\">42 CFR 482.43</a>: (excerpting):</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The discharge planning process and the discharge plan must be consistent with the patient's goals for care and his or her treatment preferences, ensure an effective transition of the patient from hospital to post-discharge care, and <strong>reduce the factors leading to preventable hospital readmissions</strong>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This <em>requires</em> the hospital to have a discharge plan for mothers which assures the child is going into a safe environment.</p>\n<p>This applies to hospitals who want to take part in the Medicare system. That will be every public or government-run hospital, as well as any other hospital unable to survive exclusively on private-insurer patients. Remember, hospitals <em>can't turn away</em> patients who are not stable enough to move or legally discharge, so they are stuck with a great many Medicare patients. Might as well get paid for them rather than try to pursue out-of-network payment from either Medicare or the patient directly.</p>\n<p>You could say &quot;Well, the hospital could refuse Medicare business, and tell the government to stuff it.&quot; That's true. However, when they find themselves in a malpractice lawsuit with a <em>private</em> patient, the plaintiffs certainly could compare this hospital's &quot;best practices&quot; with those of the industry at large. If the hospital's fell short, that would hurt them badly in the lawsuit. The excuse of &quot;Well, those other hospitals only do that to pursue Medicaid money&quot; would be a very poor sell for the ears of a jury.</p>\n<p>So effectively, the Federal government &quot;wags the dog&quot;: while it only has the legal reach to set standards for its own vendors, <em>so many</em> are its vendors that it can effectively set the industry standard <em>nonetheless</em>. Of course this isn't cloaked men in a &quot;star chamber&quot; deciding this; these regulations are arrived that in a highly public process. And most people involved in the process are highly favorable toward such policies.</p>\n<h2>Baby policy is very much part of that discharge planning</h2>\n<p>As for encouraging mothers to use proper car seats, the University of Maryland public health law attorneys <a href=\"https://www.law.umaryland.edu/media/SOL/pdfs/Programs/Public-Health-Law/Car_Seat_Issue_BRief.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer\">did a brief on the issue</a>. It identifies the issue as &quot;A major public-health imperative&quot;. Down on page 8 it says:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Hospitals that fail to provide a certain level of CPS education and support can face liability under state medical malpractice laws and common law principles. Providers of medical care are liable if a patient is injured because of the providers' violation of the standard of care, which varies within each state and for each medical profession, but is generally determined through expert witness testimony on what a typical provider of the same specialty and training would do in the same situation.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>That last sentence goes back to what I said about Medicaid &quot;wagging the dog&quot; by defining what typical providers do.</p>\n<p>They cannot hold you prisoner. You always have the option to leave the hospital without proper discharge. If you do leave without proper discharge, that relieves them of liability.</p>\n<p>As you very well know, you <a href=\"https://www.verywellfamily.com/us-car-seat-laws-by-state-4082814\" rel=\"noreferrer\">must use a proper child safety seat</a>. As I show above, the hospital has a duty to assure they are releasing the child into a safe situation. So it is entirely reasonable for them to ask, and you must put up with this. <strong>However, the hospital is not entitled to &quot;make up&quot; requirements where state law or other competent body has already defined them</strong>... so if state law, Underwriter's Laboratories (a nonprofit), NHSTA, etc. defines what a proper safety seat is (or APTA defines what safe baby travel on public transit is), that's the last word.</p>\n<p>There is no scenario here where you get to leave in an automobile without a proper\nsafety seat. If you're in a transit-rich city where a carless mom and &quot;going home on the Metro&quot; is a likely scenario, they should be satiated by showing them your transit pass and that you are equipped with whatever transit agencies require for that use.</p>\n<p>If push comes to shove, they can't hold your child hostage - but if you're down to pushing and shoving, they <em>could</em> pull a CPS (Child Protective Services) officer into the conversation, &quot;merely in a consulting capacity, of course&quot;. The hospital will do whatever CPS tells them to do. <em>As will you</em>.</p>\n", "score": 23 } ]

[ "united-states", "children" ]

[ { "answer_id": 75183, "body": "<blockquote>\n<p>Is it a crime to have child outside of wedlock?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Giving birth itself, regardless of the circumstances, is never a crime in the United States.</p>\n<p>Some sexual acts which can sometimes result in the conception of a child are crimes (most obviously rape and incest). Circumstances other than rape (including statutory rape and abuse of a position of trust rape), and incest, where a sexual act that can result in the conception of a child are a crime based upon the marital status of one or both of the parties to the sexual act are discussed below.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>If a legally married man has a child with another woman, what are the\nconsequences for that child?</p>\n<p>1- Who will be the legal father of this child in the child's birth\ncertificate?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>It depends upon how the process is handled. The mother's husband is the presumed parent whether or not he is listed on the birth certificate. In some states, &quot;the other man&quot; does not have the right to bring a paternity proceeding, although the husband or the mother would. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that this kind of limitation on paternity lawsuits is constitutional.</p>\n<p>But, if the mother indicates the biological father's name on the birth certificate (some states require the biological father's voluntary acknowledgement as well), that can supersede this presumption.</p>\n<p>The biological father always has some process (sometimes difficult for even a non-blameworthy father to comply with) to assert paternity in cases where the mother of the child is unmarried (or was unmarried at the time of conception at least), however, except that in a minority of U.S. states, rapists do not have the status of legal parents of their biological children with a rape victim.</p>\n<p>There is usually a statute of limitations for the paternity of a father shown on a birth certificate to be contested for the purpose of using that as a defense to a child support claim.</p>\n<p>Sometimes another statute of limitations applies, however, in other circumstances, such as a lawsuit to collect child support brought by the mother of the child, or the child, where paternity hasn't previously been established, or for inheritance purposes.</p>\n<p>The exact process by which paternity is established when the biological parents are not married differs from state to state and is the subject of several separate state specific answers at Law.SE. The process is frequently different when the mother is married to someone else than it is when the mother is not married.</p>\n<p>Some states (including California) permit a child to have more than two parents in some circumstances, and to have two parents who have the same sex in some circumstances.</p>\n<p>The fact of a genetic parent-child relationship is, as a general rule, neither necessary, nor sufficient, to establish a parent-child relationship, although it is a very important factor to be considered by a court.</p>\n<p>There is a special body of law governing paternity in cases of &quot;assisted reproduction&quot; (such as artificial insemination or when donated eggs are used or when there is a surrogate parent who gives birth to a child after having a fertilized egg from a different biological mother and father implanted in her). The majority rule in these cases, where assisted reproduction is intended and all parties to the process consent, is that an assisted reproduction agreement of the parties governs paternity. But not all possible scenarios have been the subject of clear law, and there is not uniformity among states regarding the relevant law.</p>\n<p>For example, there is not much guidance regarding the legal considerations that apply in a case where a man artificially inseminates a woman causing her to become pregnant without her consent or knowledge at the time that this happens, and only subsequently learns what happens, or when the sperm of an intended sperm donor is substituted for sperm by another donor, in an artificial insemination procedure to which the woman otherwise consented.</p>\n<p>Termination of parental rights and the parent-child relationship is something that, once established, is hard to effect legally in most cases and is a situation in which an indigent defendant facing a parental rights termination has a constitutional right to counsel. But termination of parental rights in adoptions, when the paternity of the father hasn't been established legally, can be done much more easily.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>2- Can this child use her/his biological father's last name?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>A child can have any name agreed to by the parents designated on the birth certificate. It is customary to assign a child the father's last name (unless no father is listed on the birth certificate or publicly disclosed), but in the United States, the issue of what someone is named is almost completely unregulated.</p>\n<p>The child's surname, for example, does not have to be either the father's surname or the mother's surname. Many children, for example, have surnames that are hyphenations of their father's surname and their mother's surname, even if the parents did not change their names upon marriage.</p>\n<p>The tradition in Iberia and much of Latin America is for children to take both their father's surname and their mother's surname in a double name surname which is often not hyphenated even though both parts of the name are part of the full surname. The U.S. allows parents to continue to follow this custom as a matter of law, although some governmental and private bureaucratic systems for dealing with people's names in computerized databases don't allow for these kinds of entries and also often disallow hyphens as characters in the name database entries.</p>\n<p>The process for naming a child when two parents are designated and they can't agree varies from state to state. Usually, a court would decide, or an unmarried mother would decide.</p>\n<p>Also, some states have the common law rule that your legal name includes any name by which you are commonly called and acknowledge as your own, even without a formal bureaucratic change on a birth certificate or other governmental legal process. Every state, however, also, at least, has a bureaucratic or court process by which a person's name can be changed.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>3- Is it a crime to have sex with another woman while you have\nmarried?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>In a large majority of U.S. jurisdictions, <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery_laws#United_States\" rel=\"noreferrer\">adultery is no longer a crime</a> (assuming the sexual act is consensual and not incestuous) including 33 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and the several U.S. territories. &quot;States which have decriminalised adultery in recent years include West Virginia (2010), Colorado (2013), New Hampshire (2014), Massachusetts (2018), and Utah (2019).&quot;</p>\n<p>Adultery is rarely enforced criminally in the 17 states, as of 2021, that still do have adultery laws on the books. This is, in part, due to doubts about the constitutionality of these crimes under federal and state constitutions, in part, due to changing norms, and in part, due to the limited benefit of a misdemeanor or felony prosecution to all persons involved (and the state) in such cases.</p>\n<p>The birth of a child who is conceived with a father other than the mother's husband while the mother is married is not automatically conclusive proof of the crime of adultery under either state law or under the U.S. Code of Military Justice.</p>\n<p>For example, under South Carolina law adultery involves either &quot;the living together and carnal intercourse with each other&quot; or, if those involved do not live together &quot;habitual carnal intercourse with each other&quot; which is more difficult to prove. Similarly, in Florida, the crime is &quot;Living in open adultery&quot;.</p>\n<p>Also, in the case of a prosecution of an unmarried man, knowledge that the woman is married would typically be an element of the crime of adultery, and it is similarly never a crime to be raped in the U.S., even if you are married.</p>\n<p>In 13 of the states where adultery is still a crime (Arizona, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Virginia), it is a petty offense (the maximum punishment in Maryland is a $10 fine), or is a misdemeanor. But it continues to be a felony in four states (Idaho, Oklahoma, Michigan, and Wisconsin) and is punishable most severely among those states in Michigan who someone convicted of adultery faces up to four years in prison.</p>\n<p>It is a crime that is actively enforced for active duty members of the U.S. military under the U.S. Code of Military Justice.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In the U.S. military, adultery is a potential court-martial offense,\nfalling under the General article (Art. 134). The Manual for\nCourts-Martial defines (para. 99) &quot;Extramarital sexual conduct&quot; as\nbeing: &quot;Elements.(1) That the accused wrongfully engaged in\nextramarital conduct as described in subparagraph c.(2) with a certain\nperson; (2) That, at the time, the accused knew that the accused or\nthe other person was married to someone else; and (3) That, under the\ncircumstances, the conduct of the accused was either: (i) to the\nprejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces; (ii) was\nof a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces; or (iii) to the\nprejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces and of a\nnature to bring discredit upon the armed forces&quot;. . . . The law\non adultery was revised in 2019 in order to include same-sex\nencounters in the offense.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Neither the U.S. military, nor any U.S. state, has penalties for adultery that differ depending upon whether or not the adultery results in the birth of child.</p>\n<p>The U.S. Supreme Court has not ruled on the constitutionality of adultery crimes since its ruling in <em>Lawrence v. Texas</em>, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) which decriminalized any kind of sex between consenting unmarried adults that does not constitute prostitution, as a matter of constitutional law (including sex between married adults with each other).</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>4- Is it crime to father a child outside of marriage?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>No (assuming that rape or incest is not an issue).</p>\n<p>Laws prohibiting unmarried consenting adults (or consenting adults who are married to each other) from having sex (including anal sex) or children (in non-incestuous relationships and not in violation of a position of trust) are unconstitutional in the United States pursuant to <em>Lawrence v. Texas</em>, 539 U.S. 558 (2003).</p>\n<p>So, even in states where there are laws prohibiting people who aren't married from having sex with each other or living with each other on the books (the former were called &quot;fornication&quot; laws, and the latter were laws prohibiting &quot;cohabitation&quot; of unmarried couples), those laws are unconstitutional (and in the case of laws barring cohabitation are also prohibited by federal fair housing statutes).</p>\n<p>Unconstitutional fornication laws, which effectively make all forms of sex outside marriage illegal remain in the law books without being formally repealed in six states: Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah.</p>\n<p><strong>Related Non-Criminal Matters</strong></p>\n<p><em>Civil Lawsuits Involving Adultery Or Rape</em></p>\n<p>In a handful of U.S. states a husband can bring a lawsuit for money damages (called alienation of affections or &quot;criminal conversation&quot; despite the fact that it is a civil lawsuit) against someone who has sex with his wife. The vast majority of U.S. states have abolished such lawsuits, however.</p>\n<p>In fiscal years 2000–2007, there were an average of 230 alienation of affections filings in North Carolina per year — a bit over 0.5% of the number of all divorces. The tort is also recognized in Hawaii, Illinois, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Utah, but it is frequently litigated only in North Carolina and in Mississippi.</p>\n<p>Many of the states where the tort is not commonly used impose restrictions on it that make it less attractive. In Illinois, Hawaii and New Mexico, these limitations make it exceedingly difficult to prevail in an alienation of affections case and recover substantial monetary damages. The standard of proof is lower in Utah and South Dakota, which continue to have actively litigated alienation of affections suits, although not used as often in these states as in North Carolina and Mississippi, for reasons that are presumably unrelated to the relevant legal standards that apply to these lawsuits.</p>\n<p>Also, in a rape case, a rape victim can bring a civil lawsuit for money damages against the rapist for assault and battery in most cases, and in those cases, many states allow a spouse of a rape victim to bring a parallel lawsuit against the person who committed the assault that is called a lawsuit for loss of consortium. The right to sue for loss of consortium is not specific to rape cases; it applies in all lawsuits for personal injury where it is available.</p>\n<p><em>Relevance To Divorce Cases</em></p>\n<p>In most U.S. state, divorce is granted without regard to marital fault and adultery is not considered in alimony awards or property divisions.</p>\n<p>While every U.S. state has some form of no fault divorce, and number of U.S. states also have fault based divorce, and a number of U.S. states, however, allow consideration of adultery as a form of marital fault in divorce proceedings, including how much, if any alimony is awarded and in property divisions.</p>\n<p>No state would consider being raped an act of marital fault, however, even if this caused a wife to give birth to a child whose biological father was not her husband, and even if the husband wanted her to have an abortion.</p>\n<p><em>Relevance To Children's Rights</em></p>\n<p>Adultery generally can be considered in child custody cases only to the extent that it impacts paternity or it was something that a child perceived personally, because every U.S. jurisdiction uses a &quot;best interests of the child&quot; standard for making child custody decisions, and because child support is subject to indirect federal regulation by conditioning federal welfare funding to states based upon following federal regulations related to child support.</p>\n<p>Parents do not automatically have priority over non-parents in proceedings to determine child custody although there is a strong presumption in favor of parents in such cases, even when termination of parental rights is not at issue. A legally recognized parent has a right to only minimal, roughly annual, sometimes supervised, visitation with a child.</p>\n<p>Parents do not have the full rights of a legal guardian with respect to their children and the rights that they do have with respect to their children are often not spelled out affirmatively in detail in statutes or case law.</p>\n<p>The U.S. Supreme Court has held that it is illegal for a U.S. law (including a state or local law) to treat a child born out of wedlock whose paternity is established differently from a child born to married parents. For example, the biological father of a child conceived in an act of prostitution with an unmarried mother can be legally established as the father of the child by the mother in every state. Prior to these rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, many states did not allow children born out of wedlock to inherit from the intestate estates of their fathers, and did not create a right to child support connected to children born out of wedlock.</p>\n<p>Also, it was historically much harder for a child with a U.S. citizen father and a non-U.S. citizen mother born outside the United States to claim citizenship than it is today, although this still requires a legal process to establish citizenship that is more difficult than for other children when paternity was not promptly legally established between that father and that child.</p>\n<p>But the courts have permitted fairly onerous burdens to be placed on a child or a father seeking to establish paternity in either an out of wedlock birth or a birth to a married woman when the biological father is not her husband.</p>\n", "score": 35 }, { "answer_id": 75167, "body": "<ol>\n<li><p>The father (who else would it be? Also, it is not compulsory in some jurisdictions to name the father on a birth certificate but that doesn't necessarily stop him from having contact or being liable for child support etc)</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Yes (or any other name they care to choose)</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>No (as long as both parties give their free and unfettered consent and are of legal age to do so)</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>No</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n", "score": 11 } ]

[ "united-states", "marriage", "children", "birth-certificate" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90798, "body": "<h2>The court is likely to refer it to the arbitrator to decide</h2>\n<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/australia\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;australia&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;australia&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-australia-tooltip-container\">australia</a></p>\n<p>Australia's laws follow the model UN codes as do most jurisdictions so this should be pretty universal.</p>\n<p>There are two basic principles going to jurisdiction in an arbitration agreement: the severability principle and the competence-competence principle.</p>\n<p>The severability principle is that an arbitration agreement is a separate (severable) contract from any other agreement between the parties even if they are in the same document. So, the fact that the contract has expired, or is even void, is irrelevant - the arbitration agreement stands or falls on its own. For the arbitration agreement to have expired, the expiration clause would need to be explicit that it includes the arbitration clause.</p>\n<p>The competence-competence principle is that the arbitrator has the authority (competence 1) to decide if they are allowed to be the arbitrator (competence 2). So, at first instance, it is the job of the arbitrator to decide whether there is or isn't a valid arbitration agreement and, therefore, whether they can continue with the arbitration. The parties are allowed to make submissions on this but only until the statement of defence is submitted. A decision by an arbitrator that they <em>do</em> have jurisdiction is one of the few things that a court can review, but only if referred to the court within 30 days.</p>\n<p>Therefore, unless the arbitration agreement is unenforcable on its face, the court will tell the parties to follow it.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "united-states", "court", "new-jersey", "arbitration" ]

[ { "answer_id": 37767, "body": "<p>No law in the US requires that parent and child have the same last name. It is usual that a child's name match that of at least one parent, but not required.</p>\n\n<p>A parent can change his or her name, without changing the names of any existing children. Also, when a child is adopted, the child's name need not be changed to match the name of the parents, or either of them. </p>\n\n<p>I have read of cases where a widow remarries, and takes the name of her new husband, but an adolescent child retains his or her birth surname. I suppose this would also be possible legally if it is the husband who changes name on remarriage, but i have not read of such a case.</p>\n\n<p>I think, but I am not sure, that a child's name could be changed to a different name than the name of either parent. It may be that this would only be done if the child is old enough to understand and agree to the change. </p>\n", "score": 5 }, { "answer_id": 37768, "body": "<p>Your legal name is your legal name and your child’s legal name is their legal name. For legal purposes you have to use your legal name.</p>\n\n<p>When you name your child there is a convention that they take the father’s or mother’s (or both) last name but you can give them any name you like (subject to names the state restricts).</p>\n\n<p>In general usage, you can call yourself and your child can call themselves anything they like - most people have different ‘handles’ in different circumstances.</p>\n", "score": 3 } ]

[ "united-states", "children", "name" ]

[ { "answer_id": 89084, "body": "<p>Various elements could be legal, or not. For example, it is legal to require students to do things in order to pass a class. It is legal to require a student to write a program for a course (entirely, or in part). It is legal for a teacher to give a &quot;group grade&quot;.</p>\n<p>It is not clear whether it is legal to require the student to assign copyright or license to the teacher / school – it may be legal to require a student to pay for their class, and copyright transfer might be valuable consideration for such a contract (assuming that there is a contractual relation at all as opposed to a statutory mandate – e.g. &quot;high school&quot;). If this is a public school, you can't make students pay for a mandatory class, therefore you cannot require assignment of copyright. It is very probably illegal for the student to access the educational records of other students, but the app could be developed with dummy data.</p>\n", "score": 30 } ]

[ "minor", "labor-law", "school", "personal-information" ]

[ { "answer_id": 64773, "body": "<h2>The <a href=\"http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/cth/consol_act/fla1975114/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Family Law Act 1975 (Cth)</a></h2>\n<p>Specifically ss69P-69T create the following presumptions about paternity:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>married to the mother</li>\n<li>cohabitation with the mother</li>\n<li>registered as the father</li>\n<li>by finding of the court</li>\n<li>by acknowledgment</li>\n</ul>\n<p>These presumptions are rebuttable under the procedures spelled out in the subsequent sections.</p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "australia", "children", "parental-rights", "child-support" ]

[ { "answer_id": 36894, "body": "<p>In Australia you can seek an injunction in a court of competent jurisdiction; for a family law matter this is the Family Court. You will usually have a hearing and a ruling within 24 to 48 hours. Given that you don’t know this, it’s probably something you will need a lawyer for.</p>\n", "score": 2 } ]

[ "united-kingdom", "children", "school", "parental-rights" ]

[ { "answer_id": 88049, "body": "<blockquote>\n<p>The real question is do they have to refund the rest of the summer camp fees if Bob is expelled due to his own intentional misbehavior?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Not if the contract was written by a good lawyer, or even by a merely competent lawyer. In that case, the contract will provide that there is to be no refund in the event of expulsion.</p>\n", "score": 38 }, { "answer_id": 88054, "body": "<h2>You are only entitled to a refund if there is a &quot;total failure of consideration&quot;</h2>\n<p>The child attended the camp, albeit briefly. Therefore, the camp has provided some of the consideration it was contracted to do, and there is no entitlement to a refund. The case on point is <a href=\"https://www.australiancontractlaw.info/cases/database/baltic-shipping-v-dillon\" rel=\"noreferrer\"><em>Baltic Shipping v Dillon</em></a> HCA (1993) 176 CLR 344, where Ms Dillon was not entitled to a refund of the fare for a cruise after the ship sank as there had not been a total failure of consideration; she had received a part of the cruise she paid for.</p>\n<p>Notwithstanding, it is a virtual certainty that the contract with the camp contains a valid no-refund clause in the circumstances.</p>\n<h2>Damages for breach</h2>\n<p>Whether there is a case for damages will depend on who, if anyone, broke the contract.</p>\n<p>On the facts as stated, it seems that Bob broke the contract by not conforming with the camp rules - this would give the camp the right to sue for any damages suffered and possibly terminate the contract.</p>\n<p>Assuming that the contract contains a provision allowing the camp to &quot;expel&quot; Bob, as it almost certainly does, then, provided they acted following that term, there is no breach by the camp.</p>\n<p>Bob and his parents might have a case if they did not follow the contract, which would implicitly include a right to natural justice and procedural fairness under the contract and any relevant camp policies and procedures. They would need to show that the camp did not follow its own procedures or did not treat Bob fairly under them and that this caused some quantifiable damage. However, given the nature of Bob's behaviour, a court would likely find that if the camp had done everything correctly, the result would have been the same (i.e. expulsion) and that, therefore, no damage arose.</p>\n", "score": 25 }, { "answer_id": 88051, "body": "<p>Typically in this scenario, the expulsion of a child from a private organization with a paid fee for admittance will not be refunded to the parents as in this case, the camp may not be able to fill the vacancy left by the child in a manner that could be productive, especially given space availability meant that not all who wished to go to the camp this year were able to do so and those who were waitlisted have made plans such that it's unreasonable to get in now. The money paid for admission is still going to pay for all materials and expenses for an anticipated X amount of camp attendees and have largely already been purchased by this point, even if X-1 are now in attendance. Typically, the refund period would have been offered to a certain date as to give camps notice to give a seat to a waitlisted applicant or revise the expenditures on materials to account for the lack of the anticipated attendance size.</p>\n<p>While most religious camps I attended as a child seemed to be voluntary in nature of the counselors and only lasted for a week or two at a time (a child that could get expelled in that span of time would have to be some kind of hell spawn) and may have been so cheap that any fee was minimum. Additionally, as part of a church's tax exempt status, they aren't allowed to make a profit from this, so all money coming in will be reinvested into the community for future projects.</p>\n<p>In addition, having attended Catholic school from K-12, the number of children who were expelled from the school were participating in activites that would have placed the school in a state of criminal and civil liability had their attendance been permitted to continue. These cases are mostly use of illicit drugs on my high school's grounds, though at least one memorable one incident from my point of view involved a boy who snapped a girl's bra (not just a sin by the church, but a crime of sexual assault. Also, the reason why it was so memorable was the offender was found out because he did it close to the school nurse's office while enroute to the library next door, which I happened to be in at the time. The school nurse happened to be the mother of my best friend and was like a second mother to myself. When she called the offender to have a word with her, she noted that I had actually jumped in fright. She later told me what had happened and asked why I jumped when she came into the library, to which I explained that I knew the tone of voice very well and the only times I heard it was when either my friend or myself were in a lot of trouble and at this point in my life, I didn't know what had happened, but I was certainly thanking God it wasn't my name that she was saying in that tone.).</p>\n", "score": 11 }, { "answer_id": 88089, "body": "<p>As others pointed out, the most likely scenario is that there was a contract which would have said the camp doesn't provide refunds for bad behavior expulsions. Setting aside that for a moment, the other very important part of this is that the camp has the cash in hand. That means if Bob's parent demands a refund and the camp says no, the parent has to engage the legal system. There's no magic button (unless they paid by CC within only a short time of them wanting a chargeback, but I digress) for Bob's parent to press that doesn't involve filing a law suit against the camp to get the refund. They're the ones that are going to have to explain to a judge that it's just a coincidence that they asked for a refund before camp started and that their kid was being obnoxious. The absence of a written contract doesn't mean Bob gets to do whatever he wants, it just means the definition of obnoxious is going to be decided by the judge, after the fact, rather than by a written contract.</p>\n", "score": 3 } ]

[ "united-states", "minor", "children" ]

[ { "answer_id": 90918, "body": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/canada\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" aria-label=\"show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;\" rel=\"tag\" aria-labelledby=\"tag-canada-tooltip-container\">canada</a></p>\n<p>I am aware of no case raising this fact pattern. However, much has been said about defamation where the plaintiff is not explicitly identified.</p>\n<p>To be successful in defamation, the plaintiff must show that the published expression &quot;would tend to lower the plaintiff's reputation in the eyes of a reasonable person&quot; and that the published expression &quot;<strong>in fact referred to the plaintiff</strong>&quot; (<em>Grant v. Torstar</em>, <a href=\"https://canlii.ca/t/27430#par28\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2009 SCC 61 at para. 28</a>).</p>\n<p>When the plaintiff is not named, the question is whether there is evidence from which an &quot;ordinary sensible person would draw the inference that the words referred to the plaintiff.&quot; That evidence must &quot;connect the [defamation] with the plaintiff.&quot; The plaintiff needs to show that it would be reasonable for a &quot;hypothetical sensible reader who knew the special facts&quot; to infer that the impugned expression referred to the plaintiff and that these special facts/circumstances were known in the community. See <em>S.G. v. J.C.</em>, <a href=\"https://canlii.ca/t/1f8z3#par24\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2001 CanLII 3041 (Ont. C.A.) at para. 24</a>; <em>Arnott v. College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan</em> (1953), <a href=\"https://canlii.ca/t/g79k5#par70\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">[1954] 1 D.L.R. 529 (Sask. C.A.) at para. 70</a>).</p>\n<p>For an argument that it should be possible for the person behind an avatar to sue for damage to the avatar's reputation, see Mark Lemley &amp; Eugene Volokh, &quot;Law, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality&quot; (2018) <a href=\"https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9622&amp;context=penn_law_review\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">166:5 U. Penn. L. Rev 1051</a>. That article is based in U.S. law, but I don't see their argument on this point to be limited to that context, given that is largely an argument from policy and first principles, rather than one based in legal doctrine.</p>\n", "score": 1 } ]

[ "defamation" ]