To put into action, practice, or force; to make use of something, such as a right or option.
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The performance of an act or obligation before it is legally due. In patent law, the publication of the existence of an invention that has already been patented or has a patent pending, which are grounds for denying a patent to an invention that has substantially the same structure and function as the earlier invention.
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The unjustifiable denial by a party to a contract of any intention to perform contractual duties, which occurs prior to the time performance is due.
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The U.S. Constitution provides that "[t]he judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one [S]upreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish" (art. III, § 1). The federal court system is thus three tiered, with the Supreme Court at the top, the district trial courts at the base, and the circuit courts of appeals in the middle. States, likewise, have trial courts (district courts), courts of appeals, and supreme courts.
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In 1963, the Supreme Court banned the Lord's Prayer and Bible reading in public schools in Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 83 S. Ct. 1560, 10 L. Ed. 2d 844. The decision came one year after the Court had struck down, in Engel v. Vitale, a state-authored prayer that was recited by public school students each morning (370 U.S. 421, 82 S. Ct. 1261, 8 L. Ed. 2d 601 [1962]). Engel had opened the floodgates; Schempp ensured that a steady flow of anti-prayer rulings would continue into the 1990s. Schempp was in many ways a repeat of Engel: the religious practices it concerned were nominally different, but the logic used to find them unconstitutional was the same. This time, the majority went one step further. Demolishing the arguments used to defend school prayer, it issued the first concrete test for determining violations of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.
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A person who prepares the plan and design of a building or other structure and sometimes supervises its construction.
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Establishment of territorial sovereignty over portions of the Arctic and its seabed has become increasingly attractive to many nations for military purposes or as a source of minerals
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A failure to take into proper consideration the facts and law relating to a particular matter; an arbitrary or unreasonable departure from precedents and settled judicial custom.
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Improper use of authority by someone who has that authority because he or she holds a public office.
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The right to teach as one sees fit, but not necessarily the right to teach evil. The term encompasses much more than teaching-related speech rights of teachers.
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The taking and receiving of anything in good part as if it were a tacit agreement to a preceding act, which might have been defeated or avoided if such acceptance had not been made. The act of a person to whom a thing is offered or tendered by another, whereby he or she receives the thing with the intention of retaining it, such intention being evidenced by a sufficient act.
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Mishaps that are peculiar to travel by sea or to normal navigation; accidents caused at sea by the action of the elements, rather than by a failure to exercise good handling, working, or navigating of a ship. Such accidents could not have been avoided by the exercise of nautical skill or prudence.
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A defense, facts offered by a party against whom proceedings have been instituted to diminish a plaintiff's cause of action or defeat recovery to an action in negligence, which entails proving that the plaintiff knew of a dangerous condition and voluntarily exposed himself or herself to it.
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Establishments that exist for the aid and protection of individuals in need of assistance due to disability, such as insane persons, those who are physically handicapped, or persons who are unable to properly care for themselves, such as orphans.
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