The term sentence in law refers to punishment that was actually ordered or could be ordered by a trial court in a criminal procedure. A sentence forms the final explicit act of a judge-ruled process as well as the symbolic principal act connected to their function. The sentence can generally involve a decree of imprisonment, a fine, and/or punishments against a defendant convicted of a crime. Those imprisoned for multiple crimes usually serve a concurrent sentence in which the period of imprison...
Jun 17, 2021•9 min•Season 9Ep. 12
Although African Americans quickly began legal challenges to such provisions in the 19th century, it was years before any were successful before the U.S. Supreme Court. Booker T Washington, better known for his public stance of trying to work within societal constraints of the period at Tuskegee University, secretly helped fund and arrange representation for numerous legal challenges to disfranchisement. He called upon wealthy Northern allies and philanthropists to raise funds for the cause. The...
Jun 16, 2021•12 min•Season 4Ep. 35
A marriage certificate (sometimes called: marriage lines by the British) is an official statement that two people are married. In most jurisdictions, a marriage certificate is issued by a government official only after the civil registration of the marriage. In some jurisdictions, especially in the United States, a marriage certificate is the official record that two people have undertaken a marriage ceremony. This includes jurisdictions where marriage licenses do not exist. In other jurisdictio...
Jun 15, 2021•12 min•Season 11Ep. 7
A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime which the individual did not commit. Although such confessions seem counterintuitive, they can be made voluntarily, perhaps to protect a third party, or induced through coercive interrogation techniques. When some degree of coercion is involved, studies have found that subjects with low intelligence or with mental disorders are more likely to make such confessions. Young people are particularly vulnerable to confessing, especially when stre...
Jun 14, 2021•20 min•Season 10Ep. 8
A pour-over will is a testamentary device wherein the writer of a will creates a trust, and decrees in the will that the property in his or her estate at the time of his or her death shall be distributed to the Trustee of the trust. Such a device was always void at English common law, because it was not deemed a binding trust, in that the testator can change the disposition of the trust at any time and therefore essentially execute changes to the will without meeting the formalities required for...
Jun 11, 2021•9 min•Season 8Ep. 17
In law, a conviction is the verdict that usually results when a court of law finds a defendant guilty of a crime. The opposite of a conviction is an acquittal (that is, "not guilty"). In Scotland and in the Netherlands, there can also be a verdict of "not proven", which counts as an acquittal. There are also cases in which the court orders that a defendant not be convicted, despite being found guilty; in England, Wales, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand the mechanism for this is a discharge. Fo...
Jun 10, 2021•22 min•Season 9Ep. 911
Native American people. From 1778 to 1871, the government tried to resolve its relationship with the various native tribes by negotiating treaties. These treaties formed agreements between two sovereign nations, stating that Native American people were citizens of their tribe, living within the boundaries of the United States. The treaties were negotiated by the executive branch and ratified by the U.S. Senate. It said that native tribes would give up their rights to hunt and live on huge parcel...
Jun 09, 2021•16 min•Season 4Ep. 34
A marriage license (or marriage license in Commonwealth spelling) is a document issued, either by a religious organization or state authority, authorizing a couple to marry. The procedure for obtaining a license varies between jurisdictions and has changed over time. Marriage licenses began to be issued in the Middle Ages, to permit a marriage which would otherwise be illegal (for instance, if the necessary period of notice for the marriage had not been given). Today, they are a legal requiremen...
Jun 08, 2021•12 min•Season 11Ep. 6
The right of self-defense (also called, when it applies to the defense of another, alter ego defense, defense of others, defense of a third person) is the right for people to use reasonable or defensive force, for the purpose of defending one's own life (self-defense) or the lives of others, including –in certain circumstances– the use of deadly force. If a defendant uses defensive force because of a threat of deadly or grievous harm by the other person, or a reasonable perception of such harm, ...
Jun 07, 2021•15 min•Season 10Ep. 7
A special needs trust, also known in some jurisdictions as a supplemental needs trust, is a specialized trust that allows the disabled beneficiary to enjoy the use of property that is held in the trust for his or her benefit, while at the same time allowing the beneficiary to receive essential needs-based government benefits. A Special Needs Trust is a specific type of irrevocable trust that exists under Common Law. Several Common Law nations have established specific statutes relative to the cr...
Jun 04, 2021•16 min•Season 8Ep. 16
Bail is a set of pre-trial restrictions that are imposed on a suspect to ensure that they will not hamper the judicial process. Bail is the conditional release of a defendant with the promise to appear in court when required. In some countries, especially the United States, bail usually implies a bail bond, a deposit of money or some form of property to the court by the suspect in return for the release from pre-trial detention. If the suspect does not return to court, the bail is forfeited and ...
Jun 03, 2021•10 min•Season 9Ep. 10
Milestones of national franchise changes. 1789: The Constitution grants the states the power to set voting requirements. Generally, states limited this right to property-owning or tax-paying white males (about 6% of the population). 1790: The Naturalization Act of 1790 allows free white men born outside of the United States to become citizens, though not necessarily the right to vote. 1792–1838: Free black males lost the right to vote in several Northern states including in Pennsylvania and in N...
Jun 02, 2021•8 min•Season 4Ep. 33
Common-law marriage, also known as non-ceremonial marriage, sui iuris marriage, informal marriage, or marriage by habit and repute, is a legal framework where a couple may be considered married without having formally registered their relation as a civil or religious marriage. The original concept of a "common-law marriage" is one considered valid by both partners but not formally recorded with a state or religious registry, nor celebrated in a formal civil or religious service. In effect, the a...
Jun 01, 2021•9 min•Season 11Ep. 5
In law, provocation is when a person is considered to have committed a criminal act partly because of a preceding set of events that might cause a reasonable person to lose self control. This makes them less morally culpable than if the act was premeditated (pre-planned) and done out of pure malice (malice aforethought). It "affects the quality of the actor's state of mind as an indicator of moral blameworthiness". Provocation is often a mitigating factor in sentencing. It rarely serves as a leg...
May 31, 2021•14 min•Season 10Ep. 6
An asset-protection trust is any form of trust which provides for funds to be held on a discretionary basis. Such trusts are set up in an attempt to avoid or mitigate the effects of taxation, divorce and bankruptcy on the beneficiary. Such trusts are therefore frequently proscribed or limited in their effects by governments and the courts. The asset-protection trust is a trust that splits the beneficial enjoyment of trust assets from their legal ownership. The beneficiaries of a trust are the be...
May 28, 2021•27 min•Season 8Ep. 15
Double jeopardy is a procedural defense (primarily in common law jurisdictions) that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same (or similar) charges following an acquittal in the same jurisdiction. A variation in civil law countries is the peremptory plea, which may take the specific forms of autrefois acquit ('previously acquitted') or autrefois convict ('previously convicted'). These doctrines appear to have originated in ancient Roman law, in the broader principle non bis i...
May 27, 2021•19 min•Season 9Ep. 99
Voting rights in the United States, specifically the enfranchisement and disenfranchisement of different groups, has been a moral and political issue throughout United States history. Eligibility to vote in the United States is governed by the United States Constitution and by federal and state laws. Several constitutional amendments (the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-sixth specifically) require that voting rights of U.S. citizens cannot be abridged on account of race, color, previous condit...
May 26, 2021•11 min•Season 4Ep. 32
A domestic partnership is a legal relationship between two individuals who live together and share a common domestic life, but are not married (to each other or to anyone else). People in domestic partnerships receive benefits that guarantee the right of survivorship, hospital visitation, and others. The term is not used consistently, which results in some inter-jurisdictional confusion. Some jurisdictions, such as Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S. states of California, Maine, Nevada, Oregon ...
May 25, 2021•19 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Coercion is compelling a party to act in an involuntary manner by use of threats, including propaganda or force. It involves a set of various types of forceful actions that violate the free will of an individual to induce a desired response, for example: a bully demanding lunch money from a student or the student gets beaten. These actions may include extortion, blackmail, torture, threats to induce favors, or even sexual assault. In law, coercion is codified as a duress crime. Such actions are ...
May 24, 2021•13 min•Season 10Ep. 5
A life insurance trust is an irrevocable, non-amendable trust which is both the owner and beneficiary of one or more life insurance policies. Upon the death of the insured, the trustee invests the insurance proceeds and administers the trust for one or more beneficiaries. If the trust owns insurance on the life of a married person, the non-insured spouse and children are often beneficiaries of the insurance trust. If the trust owns "second to die" or survivorship insurance which only pays when b...
May 21, 2021•18 min•Season 8Ep. 14
Self-incrimination is the act of exposing oneself generally, by making a statement, "to an accusation or charge of crime; to involve oneself or another in a criminal prosecution or the danger thereof". Self-incrimination can occur either directly or indirectly: directly, by means of interrogation where information of a self-incriminatory nature is disclosed; or indirectly, when information of a self-incriminatory nature is disclosed voluntarily without pressure from another person. In many legal...
May 20, 2021•11 min•Season 9Ep. 8
Acquisition of nationality. There are various ways a person can acquire United States nationality, either at birth, by naturalization, or through court decisions and/or treaties. Birth within the United States. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The language has been codified in the Immigration and Nationality Ac...
May 19, 2021•19 min•Season 4Ep. 30
A civil union (also known as a civil partnership) is a legally recognized arrangement similar to marriage, created primarily as a means to provide recognition in law for same-sex couples. Civil unions grant most or all the rights of marriage except the title itself. Denmark was the first country to legalize civil unions in 1989, however most other developed democracies did not begin establishing civil unions until the 1990s or early 2000s, often developing them from less formal domestic partners...
May 18, 2021•17 min•Season 11Ep. 3
Automatism is a rarely used criminal defense. It is one of the mental condition defenses that relate to the mental state of the defendant. Automatism can be seen variously as lack of voluntariness, lack of culpability (unconsciousness) or excuse (Schopp). Automatism means that the defendant was not aware of his or her actions when making the particular movements that constituted the illegal act. For example, Esther Griggs in 1858 threw her child out of a first floor window believing that the hou...
May 17, 2021•20 min•Season 10Ep. 3
In American estate planning parlance, an incentive trust is a trust designed to encourage or discourage certain behaviors by using distributions of trust income or principal as an incentive. A typical incentive trust might encourage a beneficiary to complete a degree, enter a profession, or abstain from harmful conduct such as substance abuse. The beneficiary might be paid a certain amount of money from the trust upon graduating from college, or the trust might pay a dollar of income from the tr...
May 14, 2021•11 min•Season 8Ep. 13
In the United States, the exclusionary rule is a legal rule, based on constitutional law, that prevents evidence collected or analyzed in violation of the defendant's constitutional rights from being used in a court of law. This may be considered an example of a prophylactic rule formulated by the judiciary in order to protect a constitutional right. The exclusionary rule may also, in some circumstances at least, be considered to follow directly from the constitutional language, such as the Fift...
May 13, 2021•17 min•Season 9Ep. 6
United States nationality law details the conditions in which a person holds United States nationality. In the United States, nationality is typically obtained through provisions in the U.S. Constitution, various laws, and international agreements. While the domestic documents often use citizenship and nationality interchangeably, nationality refers to the legal means in which a person obtains a national identity and formal membership in a nation and citizenship refers to the relationship a nati...
May 12, 2021•18 min•Season 4Ep. 29
Cohabitation is an arrangement where two people are not married but live together. They are often involved in a romantic or sexually intimate relationship on a long-term or permanent basis. Such arrangements have become increasingly common in Western countries since the late 20th century, being led by changing social views, especially regarding marriage, gender roles and religion. More broadly, the term cohabitation can mean any number of people living together. To "cohabit", in a broad sense, m...
May 11, 2021•15 min•Season 11Ep. 2
The age of criminal responsibility is the age below which a child is deemed incapable of having committed a criminal offence. In legal terms, it is referred to as a defense of infancy, which is a form of defense known as an excuse so that defendants falling within the definition of an "infant" are excluded from criminal liability for their actions, if at the relevant time, they had not reached an age of criminal responsibility. After reaching the initial age, there may be levels of responsibilit...
May 10, 2021•17 min•Season 10Ep. 3
An interest in possession trust is a trust in which at least one beneficiary has the right to receive the income generated by the trust (if trust funds are invested) or the right to enjoy the trust assets for the present time in another way. The beneficiary with the right to enjoy the trust property for the time being is said to have an interest in possession and is colloquially described as an income beneficiary, or the life tenant. Beneficiaries of a trust have an interest in possession if the...
May 07, 2021•18 min•Season 8Ep. 12
