Intellect PlusLaw
452 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it. Page 8 of 8.
Is something good because gods command it, or commanded because it is good?Plato's dialogue Euthyphro poses a riddle still debated: is goodness commanded by the gods because it is good, or good merely because they command it? If the second, justice escap…
The Lindbergh case turned kidnapping into a job for the FBIAfter the heavily publicised Lindbergh kidnapping of 1932, Congress passed the Federal Kidnapping Act, letting the FBI investigate such cases just as the bureau was growing in siz…
Nobody has managed to define law, and some say we should keep tryingScholars have hunted for a universally acceptable definition of law and failed. One jurist argued the word means different, even irreconcilable, things in different settings. Thur…
Most American lawsuits end without ever reaching a trialAround 98 percent of civil cases in American federal courts are resolved without a trial. Even so, litigation can sprawl into a maze of claims, counterclaims and extra parties, ra…
Some identity thieves steal a name just to dodge an arrestNot every identity thief wants your money. Some give a stolen name to police when they are arrested, so the charges land on someone else. The real person may only find out years l…
Tobacco and opium were the first drugs governments tried to banLong before modern drug laws, tobacco smoking was outlawed by authorities in Russia, Austria, Germany, New Spain and the Ottoman Empire, and Qing emperors banned opium smoking in …- Should you save a great archbishop or your own mother from a fire?In 1793 William Godwin argued that if a fire forced you to choose between the archbishop Fénelon, whose work helps many, and a chambermaid, you should save Fénelon, even if the ch…
Nobody is legally an heir until the moment someone diesIn law you cannot be an heir while the person you expect to inherit from is still alive, because the exact list of who qualifies is fixed only at death. Until then, royal families…- Courts once used injunctions to break strikes, then to desegregate schoolsAn injunction is a court order telling someone to act or to stop, backed by the threat of contempt, fines or jail. American judges used this tool first against striking unions aro…
Venice wrote the first patent law in 1474, and its rules still holdOn 19 March 1474 the Republic of Venice offered protection for any new and ingenious device that was useful and had not been made before. That short statute is usually considered …
One human rights treaty became two because nations disagreed on prioritiesThe United Nations originally planned a single binding treaty of human rights. Members split over whether freedoms from state interference or guarantees like food and schooling ma…
How the law sorts one act into murder, manslaughter or no crime at allLegally, homicide means only that one person caused another's death, whether by an act or a failure to act. No intent is required, so an accident can qualify. What happens next de…
Why England ran a second court system to fix the first one's rigid rulesIn 1818 Lord Eldon vowed that Chancery would never deserve the old jibe that its justice varied like the length of the Chancellor's foot. That insult captured a real problem. Engl…- Why English-speaking courts built so many rules about what a jury may hearA treatise on American evidence law by John Wigmore ran to ten volumes, and in 1898 James Bradley Thayer noted that even English lawyers found the American rules bewildering. That…
The quiet crimes of money, from insider tips to trillions washed cleanOver 17 years, lawyer Matthew Kluger fed confidential deal information into a $37 million insider trading scheme, and in 2012 he received a record 12-year prison sentence. His cas…- From dry mouths and Song dynasty flies to arsenic tests in the courtroomIn ancient India, some accused people were handed a mouthful of dry rice and told to spit it back. The idea had a grain of logic: fear dries up saliva, so a guilty person might st…
How different countries price a lie told for money, from yuan bands to estafaA 2010 survey of fraud examiners estimated that the typical organisation loses five percent of its yearly revenue to deception, with a median loss of 160,000 dollars. Frauds by ow…- Religious liberty was coined by a Roman-era Christian writing from the losing sideThe earliest known use of the phrase freedom of religion, libertas religionis, comes from Tertullian, a Christian writer in the Roman world. His case was bold: worship follows con…
The printing press made free speech a fight, and a Finnish priest helped win itIn 1766 Sweden passed one of the world's first laws protecting a free press, pushed through largely by Anders Chydenius, a liberal priest and member of parliament from Ostrobothni…- One Swiss businessman's battlefield visit grew into the most ratified rules of warAfter the Battle of Solferino in 1859, Geneva businessman Henry Dunant found some 40,000 wounded soldiers left on the field with no medics, supplies or truce to reach them. His 18…
- Why a law court and courting someone share the same enclosed yardThe word court began as an enclosed yard, where a medieval sovereign and his entourage gathered to settle disputes. People travelled there to win the ruler's favour, which is why …
A crime usually needs two things at once: a guilty act and a guilty mindMost crimes require proof of both actus reus, the guilty act, and mens rea, the guilty mind. Swing a belt at one person, miss, and hit a bystander, and the law simply moves your i…
When does a habit become a law? Customary law tries to answerPlenty of people do the same thing out of habit, but only some shared behaviour counts as law. Customary law is the set of practices a community treats as binding, and the tricky …- A fake Rolex shows why suing in contract or tort changes the payoutBuy an antique Rolex for 100 pounds, discover it is a 50-pound fake, and learn the genuine watch would fetch 500. A contract claim gets you 450 pounds, the value you were promised…
- Lafayette drafted France's 1789 rights declaration with Thomas Jefferson at his sideThe first drafts of France's great charter of rights were written by the Marquis de Lafayette in consultation with his friend Thomas Jefferson, then the American envoy in Paris. A…
How the law slowly stopped treating violence at home as a private matterUntil 1973 the phrase domestic violence mostly meant unrest inside a country, as opposed to attacks from abroad. That year the British MP Jack Ashley used it in Parliament to mean…
A London cabbie, 20 shillings, and the strange reach of drink-driving lawOn 10 September 1897 a London taxi driver named George Smith became the first person convicted of driving a motor vehicle while drunk. He was charged under the drunk in charge cla…- The Athenian lawgiver behind the word draconian may have been a sacred snakeStealing a cabbage could supposedly cost you your life under Draco's code, which is why harsh rules have been called draconian since the 18th century. Yet almost nothing is known …
Casimir the Great found Poland built of wood and left it stonePolish schoolchildren still recite a rhyme about Casimir III: he inherited a country of wooden towns and left it walled in brick and stone. During his reign from 1333 to 1370, nea…- Lord Mansfield rode a pony 54 days to school and later reshaped English lawAt 13, William Murray set off alone from Perth to London on a pony his father gave him, a journey of some 400 miles that took 54 days. As Lord Mansfield he became the most powerfu…
William Blackstone's lectures turned English law into a bestsellerIn 1753 an Oxford lawyer with a stalled career began giving the first university lectures ever offered on English law. They made William Blackstone famous and led to his four-volu…
Pakistan's founder owned over 200 suits and never repeated a silk tieMuhammad Ali Jinnah was famously exacting about appearance. He dressed in heavily starched shirts with detachable collars, took pride as a barrister in never wearing the same silk…