Law & Governance

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282 domain-specific abstractions whose origin domain is Law & Governance. They span 264 subdomains — sort by that column to group them, or click any subdomain to filter to it.

Abstraction	Subdomain	Description
Accord and satisfaction	Contract Law	A contract-law discharge in which parties agree to substitute a different performance and the debtor completes that performance, extinguishing the original obligation.
Acquiescence	Equity Law	As a result of acquiescence, the person whose rights are infringed may lose the ability to make a legal claim against the infringer, or may be unable to obtain an injunction against continued infringement.
Actual Notice	Civil Procedure	Actual notice is a legally recognized state in which information is conveyed so that the intended person in fact knows the relevant matter, unlike notice merely imputed by law.
Adjustment Clause	Insurance LawContract Law	A contract term that states how a claimed amount or benefit will be recalculated at settlement when specified facts—such as location loss allocation or misstated age—differ from the policy basis.
Advancement (inheritance)	Inheritance LawIntestate Succession	Advancement in inheritance law treats a substantial lifetime gift to an heir as an early portion of that heir's intestate share, so the gift is brought into the accounting used to equalize distribution at death.
Age of Majority	Civil StatusLegal Age Rules	A jurisdiction’s legally fixed age at which a person attains majority status and its specified, limited legal effects.
Agent provocateur	Law and Political SecurityProvocation and Entrapment	An infiltrator or operative who goes beyond observation to induce a target person or group toward unlawful or discrediting conduct, creating an evidentiary, political or repressive pretext that might not otherwise exist.
Alienation (property law)	Property Law	The voluntary transfer or conveyance of a property interest by its holder to another person through a legally recognized act.
Alluvion	Property Law	A property-law mode by which gradual imperceptible river deposits accede to riparian land and ownership follows the principal parcel.
Ambiguity (Law)	Statutory Contractual and Instrument Interpretation	A legally material condition in which authoritative text supports more than one reasonable meaning, triggering context-sensitive interpretive methods, evidentiary rules, and burden-allocating canons.
Analogia Legis	JurisprudenceCivil Law Methods and Statutory Reasoning	Fill a genuine legal gap by extending the rule for a regulated case to an unregulated but relevantly similar case because the rule's justificatory reason applies to both.
Analogy (law)	Legal Reasoning	A legal reasoning method extending a rule or precedent to an unresolved case because legally relevant similarities outweigh material differences.
Anti-alienation clause	Trusts and Pensions Law	A legal provision restricting a beneficiary's ability to transfer an interest and, within applicable limits, restricting creditors from reaching it.
Argumentum e Contrario	Legal Interpretation	A defeasible legal argument that draws a precisely scoped negative implication about an omitted case from a text's express treatment of a comparable case.
Assignment (law)	Contract and Property Law	Transfer an existing contractual or property right from an assignor to an assignee while preserving the obligor's underlying burden and carrying applicable defenses, notice rules, and priority constraints.
At-will employment	Us Labor LawEmployment Law	In United States labor law, at-will employment is an employer's ability to dismiss an employee for any reason (that is, without having to establish "just cause" for termination).
Audi alteram partem	Natural JusticeAdministrative Law	The natural-justice principle that no person should be judged adversely without a fair opportunity to know and answer the case, challenge opposing evidence, and present their own material.
Bad tendency	Us Constitutional LawFree Speech Doctrine	In United States law, the bad tendency principle was a test that permitted restriction of freedom of speech by government if it was believed that a form of speech had a sole tendency to incite or cause illegal activity.
Basic Structure Doctrine	Constitutional LawIndian Constitutional Law	A constitutional doctrine that prevents an amending legislature from destroying foundational features of the constitutional order, as identified and enforced by courts.
Beneficial interest	Trust LawEquity	A beneficial interest is the right that a person has arising from a contract to which they are not a party, or a trust.
Beneficium inventarii	Roman LawSuccession Law	Beneficium inventarii (literally benefit of the inventory) is a legal doctrine introduced into Roman law by Justinian I to limit the liability of heirs resulting from an insolvent estate.
Blackstone's ratio	Criminal LawCriminal Justice	In criminal law, Blackstone's ratio is the ratio between letting guilty go unpunished (error of impunity) and convicting innocent people, two forms of miscarriage of justice.
Blue pencil doctrine	Contract Law	A severability rule allowing a court to remove unenforceable contractual language while preserving the remainder when deletion leaves a coherent agreement without impermissible rewriting.
Born secret	Information LawUnited States Atomic Energy Information Law	Classify specified information by statutory subject matter from its creation rather than only through a later executive classification decision.
Breach of Contract	Contract Law	A legally cognizable failure to honor a binding contractual duty, including qualifying anticipatory repudiation.
Cabotage access rule	Transport Market Access	A host jurisdiction decides whether an outside carrier may provide a covered internal transport service under specified eligibility and service conditions.
Caveat emptor	Sales Law	A sales-law principle placing residual responsibility on a buyer to inspect and accept defects not protected by warranty, disclosure duty or statute.
Certainty in English law	English Private Law	The doctrinal requirement that voluntary obligations be sufficiently definite for an English court to identify and enforce their legal content.
Charter instrument	Institutional ChartersOrganizational Mandates	An effective charter records and enacts a bounded mandate for an undertaking or body under its governing regime.
Child Support	Family Law	A child-directed financial contribution allocated between parents living apart, with its payer, amount, recipient and payment route set by an agreement or applicable support rules.
Chilling effect	Public LawFree Speech DoctrineConstitutional Law	A chilling effect is the phenomenon in which an individual, organization, or group is prevented from exercising their legal rights, leading to self-censorship in the form of the restraint of information sharing or the abstinence from certain activities.
Civic lottery	Democratic GovernanceSortition and Deliberative Participation	A sortition procedure that randomly selects citizens for public office, deliberative bodies, or civic duties from an eligible population.
Civil death	Status Based Civil Disqualification	Describe a jurisdiction-created legal status in which a living person loses a broad cluster of civil capacities and rights, distinct from any single collateral consequence or biological death.
Collateral estoppel	Civil ProcedurePreclusion	The issue-preclusion doctrine barring relitigation of a fact or law issue already actually litigated, necessarily decided and covered by a final valid judgment under applicable party and fairness rules.
Collective self-defence	Public International LawLaw of Self Defence	A state's Article 51 claim to use necessary and proportionate defensive force after another state suffers an armed attack and requests assistance.
Common Employment	Labor LawTort Law	A historical employer-liability defense that barred certain worker claims for injury caused by a negligent fellow worker in the same service.
Commons-Based Peer Production	Law and EconomicsInformation Law	Decentralized production in which contributors self-select modular tasks, coordinate and integrate work through shared information, and govern inputs or outputs as a commons rather than chiefly by hierarchy or price.
Company Formation	Company FormationCorporate Law	Legal constitution of a company under a jurisdiction's registration and governance rules.
Competence (law)	Law and Mental Capacity	A decision-specific legal capacity standard determining whether a person can understand, participate in or make a particular legal choice or bear responsibility.
Comply or Explain	Corporate GovernanceFinancial Regulation	Comply or explain is a regulatory approach used in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and other countries in the field of corporate governance and financial supervision.
Conditional community disposition after finding of guilt	Criminal Sentencing	A post-guilt court disposition that permits a bounded community interval while specified future conduct can return the case for a judicial response.
Conditional limitation	Property Law	A property-law provision under which an estate or interest terminates automatically when a stated contingency occurs and another interest may take effect.
Conditional Technology Moratorium	Science and Technology PolicyResearch Governance	A defined technology activity is paused, or proposed for pause, until a stated safety, evidence, governance, or public-legitimacy condition permits reconsidering its resumption.
Confession and avoidance	Common Law PleadingCivil Procedure	Confession and avoidance, in pleading, relates to a plea which admits that the facts alleged in a declaration are true, but which shows new facts by which it is hoped to destroy the effect of the allegations admitted.
Connivance	Matrimonial LawEquitable Defenses	Connivance is knowing and active or passive cooperation with another's wrongdoing, including conduct that induces, permits, conceals, or strategically fails to oppose the act and may bar a later complaint about it.
Constitutional Hardball	Constitutional Politics	A high-stakes political use of a constitutionally defensible move that strains a settled background convention governing the constitutional order.
Constitutionalism	Constitutional TheoryPublic Law	Constitute public authority through higher-order norms while making the validity and legitimacy of its exercise depend on durable limits that current officeholders cannot remove at ordinary political will.
Constructive Eviction	Landlord Tenant LawLeasehold Remedies	A tenancy doctrine that treats landlord-attributable substantial interference and qualifying tenant departure as an eviction without physical ouster, with consequences set by governing law.
Consumer Protection	Consumer LawMarket Regulation	The legal, regulatory, organizational, and remedial practices that safeguard buyers and affected publics from fraud, unsafe products, misleading information, unfair terms, and other marketplace abuses.
Contingent Contract	ContractingContract Law	A binding agreement that specifies different obligations or outcomes depending on an uncertain future condition.
Contributory Negligence	Tort LawNegligence Law	A jurisdiction-dependent negligence defense that can bar recovery when the claimant's own failure of care proximately contributed to the injury.
Copyright	Intellectual Property LawCopyright Law	A territorial legal regime granting bounded exclusive control over qualifying original expression while preserving subject-matter limits, exceptions, and eventual public access.
Cornering the market	Competition Law	Acquiring control over enough supply of an asset or commodity to restrict competition and influence price.
Corporate accountability for human rights violations	Business and Human Rights LawInternational Human Rights Law	The mechanisms by which corporations are held answerable and remediate human-rights harms they cause or enable.
Corporate Personhood	Corporate Personality	A governing law recognizes an incorporated collective as a distinct juridical bearer of specified capacities in its own name, apart from its changing members.
Cost-plus contract	Government ContractingProcurement Law	A cost-plus contract, also termed a cost plus contract, is a contract such that a contractor is paid for all of its allowed expenses, plus an additional payment to allow for risk and incentive sharing.
Course of Dealing	Contract LawCommercial Contracts	A prior pattern of transactions between the same contracting parties used, under an applicable legal rule, to interpret or supplement their current agreement.
Cover (law)	Sales Law	A buyer's UCC sales remedy of making a reasonable, good-faith substitute purchase after seller breach and using its cost to measure expectation damages.
Criminal Compounding of an Offence	Criminal Law	A jurisdiction-defined offense involving a benefit bargained for suppressing a legally specified prosecution or disclosure route concerning another crime.
Criminal Conversation	Family Law Torts	Criminal conversation is a civil claim against a third party for sexual intercourse with the claimant's spouse during a legally actionable marriage.
Critical Race Theory	Race Conscious Legal and Institutional Analysis	A legal and interdisciplinary framework that examines how ostensibly neutral law, institutions, and discourse construct and reproduce systemic racial power beyond individual prejudice.
Cross-examination	Trial ProcedureEvidence Law	In law, cross-examination is the interrogation of a witness by one's opponent.
Decriminalization	Criminal LawLegal Reform	A formal change that removes criminal status or liability from specified conduct while defining its resulting legal treatment and remaining limits.
Deeds registration	Land Law and Property Registries	A land-record system that records instruments affecting title while leaving ownership to be established from the chain and legal effect of those deeds rather than guaranteeing a conclusive state title.
Defensive termination	Intellectual Property LawLicense Defenses	An intellectual-property license clause allowing a licensor to terminate granted rights if the licensee asserts specified infringement claims against the licensor.
Demise of the Crown	Constitutional Law of Commonwealth Realms	Transfer the constitutional capacities of the Crown automatically to a successor on a sovereign's death or qualifying abdication while preserving state continuity under jurisdiction-specific law.
Derivative Work	Copyright Law	Under U.S. copyright law, a work that recasts, transforms, or adapts a preexisting work, with new authorship and underlying rights assessed separately.
Dignity Taking	Property LawLaw and Society	Dignity taking is the destruction or confiscation of property rights from owners or occupiers, where the intentional or unintentional outcome is dehumanization or infantilization.
Discovery Doctrine	International LawFederal Indian Law	The discovery doctrine, or doctrine of discovery, is a disputed interpretation of international law during the Age of Discovery, introduced into United States municipal law by the US Supreme Court justice John Marshall in Johnson v.
Doctrine of Colourability	Constitutional LawFederalism	A constitutional-review doctrine that looks past legislative form to determine whether a body has indirectly exercised power it lacks authority to exercise directly.
Doctrine of equivalents	Patent Law	A patent-law doctrine allowing infringement when an accused element is not literal but is legally equivalent to a claimed element.
Doctrine of inherency	United States Patent Law	A United States patent-law doctrine allowing prior art to anticipate an unstated claim limitation only when that feature necessarily results from the reference’s express teaching.
Doctrine of Repair and Reconstruction	United States Patent LawPatent Exhaustion and Infringement	A United States patent-law boundary that permits an owner or authorized user to preserve a particular patented article, while treating work that in substance makes a new patented article as infringing reconstruction.
Dominant Factor Test	Gambling Law	A jurisdiction-dependent legal test that classifies a game by asking whether skill or chance is the predominant causal factor in its outcome under the game's character and ordinary operation.
Dominium directum et utile	Property Law History	The feudal-law division of ownership into a superior estate carrying lordship and incidents and a useful estate carrying possession, use and profit.
Duty of Prudence	Trustee Prudent Administration	Require a trustee to administer a trust with context-sensitive reasonable care, skill, and caution, judged through the trust's purposes, terms, distribution needs, and circumstances.
Duty to Rescue	Obligations and Liability	Impose a jurisdiction-specific legal obligation to take reasonable, feasible steps to aid or summon aid for a person in serious peril when a recognized trigger applies and assistance does not create disproportionate danger or conflict.
Election of remedies	Civil Remedies Law	A civil-procedure doctrine requiring a claimant entitled to inconsistent remedies for one wrong to choose among them so recovery does not become duplicative or logically contradictory.
Eminent Domain	Compulsory Acquisition and Takings	A sovereign legal power to compel the transfer or burdening of a protected property interest for an authorized public purpose through prescribed condemnation procedures and compensation, despite the owner’s refusal to sell.
Employment Contract	Labor LawContract Law	An agreement through which a worker undertakes personal work for an employer under specified conditions in exchange for remuneration, creating or governing an employment relationship.
En ventre sa mere	Succession and Compensation	A conceived but unborn child is treated as in being at an earlier legal date for a specified beneficial entitlement, subject to the governing rule and later birth.
Endorsement test	Constitutional LawEstablishment Clause	A historically used U.S. Establishment Clause test asking whether informed observers would read government conduct as official endorsement or disapproval of religion.
English unjust enrichment law	English Private LawUnjust Enrichment and Restitution	Classify a defendant's receipt as actionable unjust enrichment in English law through enrichment, claimant-relative expense, a recognized unjust factor, and absence of a defense, with restitution as the prima facie response.
Entry into Force	LegislationTreaty Law	In law, coming into force or entry into force (also called commencement) is the process by which legislation, regulations, treaties and other legal instruments come to have legal force and effect.
Equality before the law	Constitutional and Human Rights Law	A legal principle requiring governing rules and institutions to apply the law without arbitrary status-based privilege or disadvantage and to provide equal legal protection.
Essentialia negotii	Contract Law	The legally indispensable terms that parties must settle for a particular kind of agreement to be sufficiently definite and capable of forming an enforceable contract.
Estate planning	Trusts Estates Probate and Incapacity Planning	A coordinated legal and financial process arranging property management, incapacity, probate, tax, and transfers before a person's death.
Estoppel in English law	English Private Law	A family of English-law doctrines that can prevent a party from asserting a right or factual position inconsistent with a legally significant earlier representation, assumption or conduct.
Event of default	Contract Law	A contractually defined occurrence that activates specified remedies or enforcement rights for a nondefaulting party.
Evidence (law)	Evidence and Procedure	Govern how proposed proof enters and operates in a legal proceeding through jurisdiction-specific rules of relevance, admissibility, authentication, privilege, exclusion, weight, burdens, and factfinder responsibility.
Ex factis jus oritur	International LawLegal Maxims	An international-law maxim that legal consequences arise from relevant facts, balanced against the principle that unlawful acts should not generate legal rights.
Ex nunc	Temporal Effect of Legal ActsCivil Law	A legal temporal-effect rule under which an act, decision, or change operates from its effective moment forward rather than retroactively.
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio	Private Law	The illegality doctrine that can bar a claimant from obtaining a civil remedy founded on or sufficiently connected to the claimant's own unlawful conduct.
Exclusion clause	Contract Law	A contractual term seeking to exclude, limit or qualify a party’s liability, duty or remedy that would otherwise arise.
Executive privilege	Constitutional LawSeparation of Powers	A qualified governmental confidentiality doctrine under which an executive may resist compelled disclosure of certain internal communications or information, subject to constitutional balancing and exceptions.
Exigent circumstance	Criminal ProcedureFourth Amendment Law	Once entry is obtained, the plain view doctrine applies, allowing the seizure of any evidence or contraband discovered in the course of actions consequent upon the exigent circumstances.
Extrinsic fraud	Civil Procedure and Equity	Fraud collateral to the merits of a case that prevents a party from fairly presenting a claim or defense and can support exceptional relief from a judgment under applicable law.
Filing (law)	Court Procedure	A rule-governed submission event in which an identified document reaches an authorized tribunal or public body through a permitted channel, acquires an official filing time and record association, and becomes available for the procedural effects assigned to that filing.
Forum non conveniens	Civil ProcedureConflict of Laws	A discretionary doctrine by which a court that has jurisdiction declines a case because an available alternative forum is substantially more appropriate after balancing private and public interests.
Four Unities	Property LawCommon Law Real Property	The four unities is a concept in the common law of real property that describes conditions that must exist in order to create certain kinds of property interests.
Fraud	Criminal LawTort Law	Intentional deception used to obtain an unlawful or unfair benefit or to deprive another of a legally protected right under a governing civil or criminal rule.
Free scientific research	Jurisprudence	A jurisprudential method that interprets and fills gaps in positive law through disciplined inquiry into social facts, values, equity and the nature of things rather than text alone.
Freedom of Testation	Succession Law	Freedom of testation is a person's legally recognized power to direct estate distribution by will, subject to the governing succession law's protected-claimant limits.
Fundamental Breach	Common Law Contract	A historical common-law doctrine under which an exceptionally grave breach was said automatically to defeat an exclusion clause—a rule-of-law theory later rejected in English law and laid to rest in Canadian law.
Gift (Property Law)	Property Law	Transfer a present property interest voluntarily and without consideration through donative intent, legally sufficient delivery, and acceptance, subject to type-specific formalities and revocation rules.
Golden rule (law)	Statutory Interpretation	A statutory-interpretation rule directing a court to depart from an ordinary grammatical reading when that reading would produce an absurd, inconsistent or repugnant result.
Good guy clause	Commercial Real Estate LawLease Guarantees	A commercial-lease guarantee provision, especially in New York, that releases a personal guarantor from future rent liability after timely notice, payment through surrender and compliant vacancy of the premises.
Hard Cases Make Bad Law	Judicial InterpretationLegislative Drafting	A legal caution against shaping a general rule around an exceptional case without testing its wider reach.
Harmless Error	Appellate Review	An appellate doctrine that leaves a judgment undisturbed despite a proven trial error when the governing standard finds the error did not affect substantial rights or did not contribute sufficiently to the outcome to require reversal.
Head of state succession	Constitutional Governance	The constitutional process that determines who assumes the office, powers or interim duties of a head of state when a vacancy, incapacity, removal or term transition occurs.
Hicklin Test	Obscenity LawEnglish Common Law	The Hicklin test is a legal test for obscenity established by the English case R. v Hicklin (1868).
Hostile work environment	United States Employment Law	A United States employment-law claim in which discriminatory harassment is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter working conditions and create an abusive environment.
Imperfect self-defense	Criminal LawPartial Defenses	A partial criminal-law doctrine in some jurisdictions that mitigates homicide when a defendant honestly but unreasonably believed deadly force was necessary, without producing a complete acquittal.
Implied authority	Agency and Contract Law	An agent's legal power to bind a principal for acts reasonably necessary or customary to carry out authority manifested through a role, conduct, or surrounding circumstances rather than express words.
Implied repeal	Statutory Interpretation	A statutory doctrine under which a later enactment renders irreconcilably inconsistent provisions of an earlier enactment inoperative without expressly naming their repeal.
Implied Warranty	Sales LawLandlord Tenant Law	An implied warranty is a legally supplied assurance in a qualifying transaction even when no express promise states it.
Impossibility of performance	Contract Law	The doctrine or principle of impossibility, impossibility of performance or impossibility of performance of contract is a doctrine in contract law, and in this context, the "impossibility defense" is a defense offered against a claim for nonperformance.
Impracticability	United States Contract LawExcuse of Performance	Excuse a contractual duty when an unallocated supervening contingency, whose nonoccurrence was a basic assumption, makes performance impracticable without the obligor's fault.
Imputation (law)	Legal Reasoning	The legal attribution of knowledge, intent, conduct or responsibility to a person or entity whether or not it was subjectively possessed in fact.
Inclusion rider	Entertainment Contracting	A negotiated contract provision requiring specified diversity, inclusion or opportunity standards in casting, hiring or production staffing.
Injury (law)	Torts Remedies and Justiciability	Classify an invasion of a legally protected interest or a legally cognizable detriment as injury, keeping that status distinct from factual harm, actionable wrong, causation, standing, and remedy under the governing jurisdiction.
Integration clause	Contract Law	A contract provision declaring the writing to be the parties' complete and final agreement on its subject and superseding prior or contemporaneous negotiations and representations.
Interlocutory injunction	Civil ProcedureInterim Relief	A court's provisional, binding direction governing conduct during an unresolved dispute to protect the possibility of effective adjudication or relief.
Intervention (International Law)	Public International Law	Assess coercive interference by one state in matters another state is legally entitled to decide, distinguishing prohibited intervention and use of force from consent, Security Council authorization, self-defense, and noncoercive influence.
Invitation to treat	Contract Law	A communication inviting others to make offers rather than itself expressing a presently binding willingness to contract upon acceptance.
Judicial deference	Public LawStandards of Review	A doctrine or posture in which a reviewing court gives weight, latitude or decisional priority to another institution's judgment within a defined field, standard and constitutional boundary.
Jurisdiction	Jurisdiction Law	Jurisdiction is the legally recognized authority of a court, legislature, regulator, or other institution to hear matters, make binding decisions, prescribe rules, or enforce law over specified persons, subject matter, territory, acts, or procedural stages.
Jurisdictional fact	Common Law Administrative Law	An objective statutory criterion whose actual satisfaction conditions official power or a mandated outcome and is judicially determinable when challenged.
Juror Misconduct	Jury TrialsCriminal Procedure	A juror's violation of court rules or duties—such as outside communication, independent research, experiments, or undisclosed bias—that threatens decision-making from admitted evidence and lawful instructions.
Jury selection	Judicial Process and Civic Selection	The legally governed process that constructs a trial jury from a community source pool through random sampling, qualification, voir dire and permitted challenges.
Kompetenz-kompetenz	Arbitration Law	The jurisdictional doctrine that a court or arbitral tribunal may rule on the existence and scope of its own competence.
Latent defect	Property and Construction Law	A property or construction fault that a reasonably thorough pre-transaction or pre-completion inspection would not have revealed.
Law in action	Sociolegal StudiesLegal Realism	Law in action is a legal theory, associated with legal realism, that examines the role of law, not just as it exists in the statutes and cases, but as it is actually applied in society.
Law of the case	Civil and Appellate Procedure	A common-law doctrine under which legal rulings made earlier in the same litigation ordinarily govern later stages unless a recognized reason permits reconsideration.
Law of the Horse Critique	Legal ScholarshipLegal Field Formation	A legal-field objection to grouping disputes by a shared subject when existing doctrines explain them without a distinct cross-cutting principle.
Law without the state	Legal TheoryTransnational Law	Law without the state (also called transnational stateless law, stateless law, or private legal orderings) is law made primarily outside of the power of a state.
Lease	Lease LawProperty Rights	A lease allocates possession or use of identified property for a term while retaining a legally defined residual interest.
Lease purchase contract	Consumer and Real Property Contracts	An agreement combining a lease with a binding or option-based pathway for the lessee to purchase the rented property under stated future terms.
Legal Doctrine	Legal DoctrineAdjudication	An authority-grounded reusable rule, test, standard, or decision framework that connects recurring legal questions to legal consequences within a jurisdiction.
Legal Fiction	Jurisprudence	An authorized legal as-if premise gives specified consequences to a status or event despite a gap from ordinary fact or prior legal form.
Legal Formalism	JurisprudenceAdjudication Theory	A descriptive or normative theory of adjudication in which judges derive outcomes from authoritative legal rules and accepted facts through disciplined, often deductive reasoning that limits recourse to policy or personal morality.
Legal Framework	Legal Institutions	A legal framework is an organized configuration of legal authorities, substantive duties or permissions, institutional roles, procedures, enforcement mechanisms, and remedies that jointly govern a defined activity, relationship, risk, or policy domain within a jurisdiction.
Legal liability	Civil LiabilityTort Law	In law, liable means "responsible or answerable in law; legally obligated".
Legal malpractice	Professional ResponsibilityTort Law	Legal malpractice is the term for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, or breach of contract by a lawyer during the provision of legal services that causes harm to a client.
Legal Offense	Criminal Law	A legal offense is a jurisdiction-defined act, omission, course of conduct, or prohibited state of affairs whose specified elements and required mental state or liability standard expose a legally responsible person or entity to criminal or regulatory prosecution and sanction.
Legal Procedure	Procedural LawAdjudication	An institutionally authorized and rule-governed sequence through which a court or legal body receives, tests, decides, records, reviews, or enforces a matter.
Legal Right	JurisprudenceRights Law	An institutionally recognized claim, liberty, power, or immunity held by a legal person or class and given legal consequences, protection, remedy, or enforceability within a jurisdiction.
Legal Syllogism	Legal Reasoning	A deductive legal-argument schema deriving a case-specific legal consequence from an accepted general legal rule and a case characterized under its conditions.
Legal System	Comparative LawJurisprudence	A legal system is an organized order of recognized norms, sources, institutions, offices, procedures, interpretive practices, and enforcement arrangements through which a polity or community creates, identifies, applies, contests, and changes law.
Liability of trustees inter se in English law	English Trust LawCotrustee Liability	The English trust-law rules allocating responsibility and contribution among co-trustees when a breach of trust produces joint exposure but fault, knowledge or benefit differs between them.
Line of hereditary succession	Hereditary Title Succession	Order eligible persons for inheritance of a hereditary office, title, or entitlement by applying a declared grant, statute, custom, kinship rule, and disqualification regime.
Linguistic rights	Language and Human Rights Law	Human and civil rights governing individuals' and communities' ability to use, maintain, learn, transmit, and receive public or private services in chosen languages.
Liquidated Damages	Contract LawDamages	A contract's advance monetary measure for a specified breach, subject to the governing law's penalty and interpretation limits.
Lord Advocate's Reference	Scots LawCriminal Procedure	In Scottish law, a Lord Advocate's Reference is a procedure by which the Lord Advocate can refer a point of law that has arisen during the course of solemn proceedings to the High Court of Justiciary sitting as the Court of Criminal Appeal, for a determination.
Major Questions Doctrine	United States Administrative LawStatutory Interpretation	An exceptional U.S. federal interpretive doctrine asking whether Congress clearly authorized a consequential power claimed by an agency.
Marketable title	Property LawReal Estate Title	A real-property title sufficiently free from reasonable doubt and litigation risk that a prudent buyer can be compelled in equity to accept it under the contract.
Mater semper certa est	Family Law	The Roman-law presumption that legal maternity is conclusively established by the fact of giving birth.
Materiality (law)	—	The legal threshold by which a fact, omission, representation, or piece of evidence is significant enough to matter under the governing legal issue or decision.
Matrix Scheme	Consumer ProtectionMass Marketed Sales Schemes	A recruitment-dependent sales arrangement in which buying a low-value product places a participant in a queue for a higher-value reward, with delivery triggered or funded by enough later purchases.
Merger doctrine (property law)	Property LawReal Property	In the law of real property, the merger doctrine stands for the proposition that the contract for the conveyance of property merges into the deed of conveyance; therefore, any guarantees made in the contract that are not reflected in the deed are extinguished when the deed is conveyed to the buyer of the property.
Miller test	Us Constitutional LawObscenity Law	The United States three-prong obscenity test requiring prurient appeal, patently offensive depiction of legally defined sexual conduct, and absence of serious LAPS value in the work as a whole.
Mistake (contract law)	Contract Law	A contract-law doctrine governing when an erroneous belief existing at formation prevents agreement, makes a transaction void or voidable, or supports a limited remedy.
Mitigation of Damages	Damages	Limit recovery after a legal wrong by excluding loss the injured party could reasonably have avoided, while allowing reasonable mitigation costs and leaving the wrongdoer liable for unavoidable or reasonably incurred residual loss.
Monism and dualism in international law	International LawJurisprudence	The terms monism and dualism are used to describe two different theories of the relationship between international law and domestic law.
Monopolization	United States Antitrust Law	The United States antitrust offense of possessing monopoly power in a relevant market and willfully acquiring or maintaining it through exclusionary conduct rather than superior performance or lawful accident.
Mosaic Effect	Law and PolicyInformation Security and Privacy	Recognize that separately innocuous information fragments can, when linked and interpreted together, disclose a sensitive fact or damaging picture absent from every fragment in isolation.
Motion to strike (court of law)	Civil Procedure	A motion to strike is a request by one party in a United States trial requesting that the presiding judge order the removal of all or part of the opposing party's pleading to the court.
Negative and Positive Rights	Constitutional LawInternational Human Rights Law	A legal-right distinction between duties to refrain from interference and duties to protect, facilitate, or provide, which can coexist within one right.
Negotiorum gestio	Civil LawRoman LawLaw of Obligations	A civil-law quasi-contract in which a person voluntarily and usefully manages another's affairs without prior authority, creating duties of prudent management and, when legal conditions are met, reimbursement rather than profit.
Nemo iudex in causa sua	Natural JusticeAdministrative Law	The natural-justice principle that no person or body should adjudicate a matter in which it has a disqualifying interest, protecting impartiality and, in some systems, the appearance as well as actuality of unbiased judgment.
Newbury principles	Planning Law	A test requiring development conditions to serve a planning purpose, fairly relate to the development, and remain reasonable.
Non Bis in Idem	Criminal and Procedural LawFinality and Multiple Proceedings	Bar a renewed criminal prosecution or punishment after a qualifying final acquittal or conviction by testing the same person, criminal nature, finality, identity of the matter, jurisdictional reach, and narrowly defined exceptions.
Non-compete clause	Employment and Contract Law	A contractual restrictive covenant limiting a party’s ability to perform competing work or business after or during a relationship.
Non-refoulement	International Refugee and Human Rights Law	A legal principle barring a state from transferring a person to a territory where specified persecution, torture, or other grave harm faces a real risk.
Non-retroactivity	Temporal Application of Legal Rules	A legal temporal-application principle that bars a later rule from worsening the legal consequences of conduct completed before that rule took effect, with jurisdiction- and field-specific exceptions.
Non-violation nullification of benefits	International Trade Law	A WTO dispute claim alleging that a measure consistent with an agreement nevertheless upsets a negotiated benefit that could reasonably have been expected.
Nondelegation doctrine	Constitutional LawAdministrative LawSeparation of Powers	The doctrine of nondelegation (or non-delegation principle) is the theory that one branch of government must not authorize another entity to exercise the power or function which it is constitutionally authorized to exercise itself.
Nuisance (Law)	Nuisance	Nuisance law addresses legally sufficient interference with private land use or a public right, with distinct protected interests and claimant routes.
Nuremberg principles	International Criminal LawInternational Law	Seven International Law Commission formulations that distill individual criminal responsibility, official-capacity and superior-orders limits, fair-trial entitlement, the core international crimes, and complicity from the postwar Nuremberg legal settlement.
Obiter Dictum	Judicial Precedent	An obiter dictum is a judicial statement outside the grounds necessary to decide the case, whose later force depends on the statement, court, and precedent context.
Occupatio	Property Law	A Roman-law mode of original acquisition by taking possession of an ownerless thing with intent to own it.
Offer of Judgment	Civil LitigationSettlement Procedure	A formal civil-litigation offer under a governing rule, with prescribed response terms and possible post-offer cost consequences if an unaccepted offer meets that rule's judgment benchmark.
Offer of proof	Evidence LawTrial Record Preservation	A trial-court explanation of excluded or challenged evidence that states what the evidence would show and why it is admissible, preserving the issue for review.
Paraphrasing of copyrighted material	Copyright Law	A copyright-analysis problem asking whether a restatement reproduces protected expression substantially enough to infringe despite changing the literal wording.
Parker immunity doctrine	United States Federal Antitrust	A U.S. federal antitrust doctrine that attributes a challenged restraint to deliberate state policy under actor-specific articulation and supervision rules.
Part exchange	Contract and Commercial Law	A transaction in which one party supplies an existing good or service plus money or other consideration toward acquiring another good or service.
Partial agreement	International Organization Law	A Council of Europe cooperation framework in which only a subset of member states participates in and finances a major activity under the organization’s institutional umbrella.
Partial Verdict	Federal Criminal Procedure	A federal criminal jury's unanimous return for agreed defendants or counts while other defendants or counts remain unresolved.
Partially disclosed principal	Agency Law	A principal–agent situation in which a third party knows the agent acts for someone else but does not know that principal's identity.
Penal damages	Contract LawAgreed Remedies	A stipulated contract sum characterized as punishment rather than a proportionate pre-estimate or protection of a legitimate interest, and therefore restricted or unenforceable in many common-law systems.
Perfection (law)	Secured Transactions Law	The legally prescribed step that makes a security interest effective against third parties and establishes its priority posture.
Periculum in Mora	Civil ProcedureInterim Relief	Periculum in mora, Latin for "danger in delay", in Italian law and other civil law systems, is one of two conditions which must be asserted in actions aimed at obtaining a protective order or injunction, the other condition being fumus boni iuris, corresponding to the common law concept of a Prima facie case.
Perjury	Criminal Law	Perjury (also known as forswearing) is the intentional act of swearing a false oath or falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding.
Perpetration through another person	International Criminal Law	Attributes principal responsibility under ICC Article 25(3)(a) when an actor controls a crime's commission through another person who performs its material acts.
Pinkerton liability	United States Conspiratorial Liability	Attribute a U.S. federal conspirator's criminal liability for a co-conspirator's substantive offense when it was committed in furtherance of the conspiracy, within its scope, and reasonably foreseeable.
Political question	Constitutional Law	A United States justiciability doctrine under which federal courts decline constitutional disputes committed to political branches or lacking judicially manageable standards.
Polycentric Law	Legal PluralismLegal Theory	A legal arrangement with overlapping, partly autonomous centers of rule, adjudication, or enforcement coordinated through jurisdiction, recognition, conflict, and appeal mechanisms.
Presumption of Constitutionality	Constitutional LawJudicial Review	A jurisdiction- and claim-sensitive judicial-review starting rule that treats an enacted law as initially valid while allowing a constitutional challenge to defeat it.
Presumption of innocence	Criminal Procedure	The presumption of innocence is a legal principle that every person accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty.
Principle of legality in criminal law	Criminal Law	The rule that no one may be convicted or punished for conduct not clearly criminalized by accessible law before the conduct occurred.
Principle of typicality	Legal Theory	A legality principle requiring conduct and sanctions to fit predefined legal categories, especially barring analogy in criminal liability.
Privity of contract	Contract Law	The doctrine of privity of contract is a common law principle which provides that a contract cannot confer rights or impose obligations upon anyone who is not a party to that contract.
Probable cause	United States LawFourth Amendment Standards	A United States constitutional standard requiring a practical, fact-based probability of crime or evidence before arrests, searches or warrants, assessed under the totality of circumstances.
Procedural defense	Legal Procedure	A legal defense that contests the legitimacy, timing, forum, or conduct of a proceeding rather than resolving the underlying merits of the charge or claim.
Procedure in conflict of laws	Conflict of Laws	The forum-law principle that a court ordinarily applies its own procedural rules while using choice-of-law analysis for issues characterized as substantive.
Property Qualification	Electoral LawSuffrage	A legal eligibility rule that conditions voting, candidacy, officeholding, or another civic privilege on property ownership, occupancy, income, tax status, or a minimum asset value.
Proportionality (law)	Public Law	A legal principle requiring a measure that limits rights or imposes burdens to remain suitably related to a legitimate aim, often through suitability, necessity and balancing tests.
Proprietary estoppel	Property LawEquitable Estoppel	An equitable doctrine allowing relief where a property owner gives an assurance of rights, the claimant reasonably relies on it to their detriment, and repudiation would be unconscionable.
Purcell principle	United States Election Law	A U.S. election-law doctrine counseling courts against changing election rules close to an election because late intervention may confuse voters and administrators.
Quasi-Contract	RestitutionContract Law	A quasi-contract is a legal characterization of a restitutionary obligation imposed independently of actual agreement when one party has received or managed a benefit under circumstances that make retention without compensation or restoration legally unjust.
Quasi-delict	Civil LawExtra Contractual Liability	A civil-law category of nonintentional extra-contractual fault, especially negligence, that creates an obligation to repair damage despite the absence of a prior contract or wilful delict.
Quasi-property	Property and Unfair Competition Law	A legally protected interest that resembles selected incidents of property against specified parties or conduct without conferring full ownership against the world.
Quiet-title action	Property LawCivil Procedure	A civil action asking a court to determine a stated property interest against adverse claims, with effects bounded by the governing jurisdiction's rules.
Race to the courthouse	Property and Creditor Priority Law	An informal label for recording-priority rules under which the first claimant to file or record a qualifying instrument gains priority over later filings.
Ratification	Public and Private Law	A legally authorized act confirming an earlier agreement, agent act, constitutional proposal, or treaty so it acquires binding effect under the governing legal system.
Real Party in Interest	Civil Procedure	The person or entity that owns or is authorized to enforce a claim under governing law and therefore is ordinarily the proper named party to prosecute it.
Reasonable time	Contract LawCommon Law	Reasonable time is that amount of time which is fairly necessary, conveniently, to do whatever is required to be done, as soon as circumstances permit.
Rechtsstaat	German JurisprudenceConstitutional Theory	Rechtsstaat (; lit. "state of law"; "legal state") is a doctrine in continental European legal thinking, originating in German jurisprudence.
Reconciliation (family law)	Family Law	The legally significant resumption of marital cohabitation and relationship by spouses who were separated.
Rectification (law)	Private Law	An equitable remedy correcting a written instrument so it records the parties' legally established prior common intention.
Remoteness in English law	Tort LawContract LawDamages	A head-specific limit on compensation for factually linked loss, tested against the applicable ex ante responsibility standard in English law.
Rent control	Landlord Tenant LawHousing Law	Jurisdiction-specific limits on rent levels or increases for covered residential tenancies.
Repugnancy in Indian Instrument Construction	Indian Instrument ConstructionDeed and Contract InterpretationTestamentary Interpretation	An irreconcilable conflict between operative clauses of one legal instrument, resolved under the priority rule for that instrument after whole-document reconciliation fails.
Requirements Contract	Commercial ContractsContract Law	A supply contract in which the seller agrees to furnish the buyer's actual requirements for specified goods or services and the buyer commits to obtain those requirements exclusively from that seller, with quantity governed by good faith and applicable legal limits.
Res Judicata	Civil ProcedureClaim Preclusion	In its claim-preclusion sense, the rule that an effective final judgment closes the same claim to a later independent suit by bound litigants, including previously available grounds.
Rescue Doctrine	Tort LawLaw of Negligence	A jurisdiction-dependent tort doctrine treating reasonable rescue as a foreseeable response to defendant-created peril, potentially allowing an injured rescuer to recover from the danger creator.
Right of Self-Defense	Defensive JustificationsCriminal Law	A legal justification that can make otherwise wrongful defensive force lawful when it responds to a qualifying threat under jurisdiction-specific requirements such as necessity, proportionality, and reasonable perception.
Right of survivorship	Property LawConcurrent Estates	Right of survivorship is a recurring identity in social sciences, humanities, and arts defined by this frozen evidence: In property law, a concurrent estate or co-tenancy is any of various ways in which property is owned by more than one person at a time.
Right to Health	Human Rights LawEconomic Social and Cultural Rights	The right to health is the economic, social, and cultural right to a universal minimum standard of health to which all individuals are entitled.
Right to privacy	Law and Human RightsPrivacy Rights and Doctrines	Protect persons against arbitrary or unlawful interference with private life, family, home, correspondence, bodily and decisional autonomy, or personal information, subject to the governing legal system's scope and justified limitations.
Right to rest and leisure	Human Rights LawLabor Law	The right to rest and leisure is the economic, social and cultural right to adequate time away from work and other societal responsibilities.
Rigid constitution	Constitutional LawConstitutional Amendment	Separates constitutional alteration from ordinary lawmaking by requiring an additional or more demanding legal amendment procedure.
Rooker–Feldman Doctrine	United States Federal JurisdictionCivil ProcedureFederal Courts	A narrow U.S. federal-jurisdiction doctrine barring lower federal district courts from hearing cases brought by state-court losers whose alleged injury is caused by a completed state judgment and whose federal suit invites review and rejection of that judgment.
Rule according to higher law	Legal Philosophy	The jurisprudential principle that enacted governmental law is legitimate or enforceable only insofar as it conforms to superior standards of justice or fundamental law.
Rule Against Perpetuities	Property LawFuture Interests	A jurisdiction-dependent property-law validity rule that limits how remotely certain future interests or powers may vest or terminate.
Saisine	French Succession LawCivil LawInheritance Law	French legal heirs' immediate seisin of a deceased person's assets, rights and actions by operation of law.
Seaworthiness (law)	Maritime Law	The maritime-law condition that a vessel, crew and equipment are reasonably fit for the voyage, cargo and risks contemplated by a contract or statute.
Secured transaction	Commercial LawSecured Credit	A secured transaction is a loan or a credit transaction in which the lender acquires a security interest in collateral owned by the borrower and is entitled to foreclose on or repossess the collateral in the event of the borrower's default.
Service ex juris	Civil ProcedureConflict of LawsService of Process	Service ex juris is legal notice of an upcoming proceeding given to a defendant who resides outside of the jurisdiction of the court.
Shelter Rule	Property Law	The doctrine that a transferee generally inherits a protected transferor's priority or enforcement rights even when the transferee could not independently obtain that protected status.
Side letter (contract law)	Contract LawAncillary Contractual Instruments	A legally operative ancillary agreement used to clarify, supplement, or amend matters outside the principal contract.
Skepticism in law	JurisprudenceLegal Realism	Skepticism in law is a school of jurisprudence that was a reaction against the idea of natural law, and a response to the formalism of legal positivists.
Small but significant and non-transitory increase in price	Competition Law	A competition-law hypothetical-monopolist test that expands a candidate market until a small durable price increase would be profitable.
Soft law	Nonbinding Normative Instruments	Guide conduct through formally nonbinding recommendations, declarations, standards, or codes whose practical influence arises from authority, coordination, reputation, interpretation, and anticipated hardening.
Stand-your-ground law	Criminal LawSelf Defense Law	A jurisdiction-specific self-defense rule removing an otherwise applicable duty to retreat before justified defensive force in a place where the actor may lawfully be, while retaining imminence, necessity, proportionality, and other local conditions.
Standard form contract	Contract and Consumer Law	A prewritten agreement whose terms are supplied predominantly by one party for repeated transactions and offered with little or no opportunity for individual negotiation.
Standard of Civilisation	International LawHistory of International Law	Scholars came to recognise that speaking of civilisation largely functioned as "an elusive cultural marker than achievable legal standard." Japanese legal scholar Tsurataro Senga noted that when Europeans speak of civilisation or civilised states, they are largely doing so from their own subjective worldviews.
Standing (law)	Procedural LawJusticiability	A justiciability requirement that a claimant possess a legally sufficient connection to the challenged conduct and injury to invoke a court's remedial authority.
Substantive equality	Human Rights LawEquality and Nondiscrimination	An equality framework that evaluates actual access, outcomes and structural disadvantage and permits differentiated measures when identical treatment would reproduce exclusion.
Sunset provision	Public Law	A legal clause that causes a statute, regulation, program or authority to expire on a specified date unless renewed by further action.
Supranational aspects of international organizations	International LawInternational Organizations	Many international organizations also have supranational aspects, meaning that decisions can be made by the organization as a whole that are binding on member states that disagree.
Surrender (law)	Property LawLeasehold Estates	Consensual yielding of a leasehold estate to the reversioner so the tenancy ends.
Suspect Classification	United States Constitutional Law	A suspect classification is a governmental sorting rule that triggers strict scrutiny under U.S. equal-protection doctrine.
Tacking (law)	Property Law	A property-law doctrine allowing a present claimant to combine a predecessor's qualifying period of possession or priority with their own when legally sufficient privity connects them.
Take-or-pay commitment	Contract DesignSupply and Service Agreements	An agreed minimum payment remains due when a buyer chooses not to take or use covered supply or services that the counterparty has committed to provide.
Tax Deduction	Tax Law	Tax Deduction is a recurring tax law, public finance identity in which an allowed amount is subtracted from taxable income rather than directly from tax liability.
Test (law)	Legal Reasoning	A structured doctrinal criterion used by a court or other legal decision maker to resolve a recurring question of fact, law or mixed application.
Totality of the circumstances	Legal Reasoning and Adjudication	A legal mode of analysis that evaluates all relevant facts and their interactions in context rather than making one factor or bright-line rule dispositive.
Totality Principle	Criminal SentencingCommon Law	A sentencing rule for multiple offences or an existing sentence that structures components so the overall sentence reflects all offending behavior yet remains just and proportionate.
Tracing (Law)	Equity and Trusts	The evidential process of identifying value from an original asset through substitutions and mixtures so a claimant can determine what rights may attach to traceable proceeds.
Trespass	Tort Law	Select the governing trespass branch and jurisdiction, then test protected interest, intrusion, authorization, fault, harm, defenses, and remedy without importing rules from a different branch.
Trial penalty	Criminal ProcedurePlea Bargaining	In the United States, the trial penalty refers to the difference between the smaller sentence offered to a defendant in a plea bargain prior to a criminal trial versus the larger sentence the defendant could receive if they elect to go to trial.
Trust (law)	Trust Law	A legal relationship in which a trustee holds and administers property or rights for beneficiaries or a legally permitted purpose under fiduciary duties.
Ultimate Fact	Factfinding	Determine from evidentiary and subsidiary facts whether a legally material element or issue is factually satisfied, producing the factfinder's controlling factual conclusion without collapsing it into the governing conclusion of law.
Ultrahazardous activity	Tort LawStrict Liability	An ultrahazardous activity in the common law of torts is one that is so inherently dangerous that a person engaged in such an activity can be held strictly liable for injuries caused to another person, even if the person engaged in the activity took every reasonable precaution to prevent others from being injured.
Unconscionability in English law	English Private LawContract and Equity	A narrow equitable basis for withholding enforcement where one party knowingly exploits another's serious disadvantage in procuring a transaction, alongside but distinct from duress and undue influence.
Underdeterminacy (Law)	Constitutional InterpretationInterpretation Construction Theory	Diagnose a legal text as underdeterminate when its recovered communicative content constrains a dispute but does not uniquely fix the doctrine or outcome, leaving a construction choice among compatible options.
Undisclosed principal	Agency LawPrincipal Third Party Relations	An agency-law principal whose existence or identity is unknown to the third party when an agent contracts apparently on the agent's own behalf, yet who may later acquire rights and liabilities under qualified rules.
Undue influence in English law	English Private Law	An equitable doctrine allowing a transaction to be set aside when improper relational influence prevents it from being treated as the free and informed exercise of a party's will.
Unenforced law	—	A formally valid law that authorities routinely do not enforce, producing little practical consequence for violation.
Universal jurisdiction	International Criminal Law	Universal jurisdiction denotes legal doctrine that some acts can be tried regardless of where they occurred, particularly applied to war crimes within international criminal law.
Unowned Property	Property LawOriginal Acquisition and Ownerless Assets	A legally ownable resource has no present private titleholder, so a jurisdiction-specific priority rule determines whether first possession can create title, the sovereign receives it, a custodian administers it, or appropriation remains barred.
Usufruct	Property LawCivil Law Real Rights	A limited real right that separates use and enjoyment of another's property, including taking its fruits, from the power to alienate or destroy the underlying asset, subject to preservation and return duties.
Vacant possession	Property Law	A conveyancing obligation to deliver property so the entitled recipient can immediately and exclusively occupy and substantially use it without occupants, impediments or adverse claims.
Void contract	Contract Law	Classify an apparent contractual arrangement as legally incapable of producing enforceable contractual obligations from the relevant time because a constitutive validity rule fails or the legal order denies effect.
Voidable contract	Contract LawContract Validity	A contract that is initially valid and enforceable but that an entitled party may rescind because of a recognized defect, unless that party affirms or loses the avoidance right.
Voting Trust	Corporate Law	Place corporate shares into a trustee voting capacity under a written instrument while defining the contributors' beneficial interests.
Waiver	Waiver Doctrine	A legally recognized relinquishment of an existing right or defined future claim class through a manifestation whose required knowledge and effective scope depend on governing law.
Wealth maximization	Law and EconomicsJurisprudence	Wealth maximization is a normative principle in welfare economics that seeks to maximize the total “economic surplus” in society by summing individuals’ willingness to pay for desired goods, services, or states of affairs.
Weight Fraud	Legal MetrologyConsumer ProtectionTrade Regulation	Deceptive misrepresentation of a product or shipment’s weight—through false labels, manipulated scales, included packaging, retained water or adulterants, or misstated freight data—to obtain an improper economic advantage.
Wigmore chart	Evidence Law	A graphical legal-evidence method that decomposes a disputed proposition into linked facts, inferences, corroborations, objections, and ultimate claims.
Will contract	Succession LawContract Law	A will contract is an enforceable agreement in which a promisor undertakes to make, not revoke, or dispose of property by will in exchange for present consideration or performance.