DICTIONARY OF LAW Second Edition W. J. Stewart DICTIONARY OF THE LAW. Copyright © SECOND EDITION 2001 W. J. STEWART. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™. PerfectBound™ and the PerfectBound™ logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Adobe Acrobat E-Book Reader edition v 1. November 2002 eISBN 0-00-715865-3 The authors hereby assert their moral right to be identified as the authors of this work and the publishers undertake to observe such assertion and imposed the same condition on the licensees. Print edition first published in 2002 by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. First published 1996 COPYRIGHT © FIRST EDITION 1996 W. J. STEWART AND ROBERT BURGESS. Contents Foreword to Second Edition IN MEMORIAM Preface to First Edition A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Table of Cases Table of Statutes About the Author Copyright Cover About the Publisher Foreword to Second Edition IN MEMORIAM Professor R.A. (‘Bob’) Burgess 1946–99 Co-author of the First Edition Most work has gone towards meeting the original mission, which was to have a modern contemporary work that would be useful in the ordinary working life of most users. The introduction of European human rights law and devolution within the UK has spawned a con- siderable addition to the lexicon. I have also tried to ensure that other legislative and judicial developments over the last five years have been reflected in the text. While the dictionary is not intended to state the law, in defining legal concepts this is inevitable, and when these concepts are changed by decision or legislation, the definitions have had to change too. I have taken the opportunity to add some words omitted from the last edition where I have seen that they still appear in current materials or in materials people are still required to read. Notwithstanding a recent judicial pronouncement that Latin should not be used, it still is. All the law’s ‘hard words’ remain in the texts of the law, which live as long as the law itself. One technical issue has arisen. That is the matter of the use of the let- ter ‘J’ in Latin words. Here we encounter the well-known division between Latin as a language and Latin as a legal language. Even the classical periods of Latin and Roman law do not coincide. The medieval epoch spawned some curious Latin and much legal Latin. ‘J’ is used as a consonant and ‘i’ for the vowel. The vast improvement in the content of the Internet has allowed me to read very many more legal texts from abroad, so permitting some enhancement to entries and the presence of some new ones. The v foreword to second edition downside is that I had no excuse with this edition for a trip to the Bodelian, as I did the last time. Not everything about progress is good. Finally, thanks to Professor Rebecca Wallace of the School of Law at Napier University, Cowan Ervine at Dundee University and P. B. Mathews of Withers, Solicitors, London, for reading the text and pro- posed amendments and saving me from many errors and omissions. I am solely responsible for those that remain. W. J. Stewart, Tollcross, March 2001 vi Preface to First Edition The law has been well served by ‘dictionaries’. Well before Dr Johnson started on his English Dictionary, words used by lawyers had been set out as an aid to comprehension: Rastell, The Exposicions of the Terms of the Laws of England (1526) and for Scotland in Skene, De Verborum Significatione: The Exposition of the Terms and Difficill Wordes etc (1597). This reflects the fact that the law has its own vocabulary and uses ordinary words of the English language in special senses. The early dictionaries were dictionaries of ‘hard words’. (Note that old ‘books of entries’ were in fact alphabetically arranged collections of precedents or styles and not dictionaries in the ordinary sense.) Many of the words used by lawyers today still fall into the category of ‘hard words’. This dictionary therefore meets the same need today as that of the oldest dictionaries: of making these peculiar legal words intelligible to the ordinary reader. However, there are words other than hard words in this dictionary. Modern legislation uses ordinary English words, which acquire additional meanings from this very spe- cial context. A selection of such words is included. Ordinary words and phrases of the English language as judicially considered are not generally collected here – they are collected in a special kind of dic- tionary sometimes called a ‘judicial dictionary’, e.g. in England, Stroud (Sweet and Maxwell) and in Scotland, Stewart (Green). In modern times different types of legal tables arranged alphabeti- cally that are not dictionaries have appeared, so it is important to say what this book is not. It is not an ‘Everyman’s own lawyer’ – a com- pendium of legal advice set out alphabetically. Thus, the book should not, under any circumstances be used as a substitute for legal advice, although it will be most helpful in assisting the layman to understand letters written by the few lawyers who are not yet able to appreciate the change of register required when writing to clients. It is not always a mere glossary that simply sets out the denotation of the terms alpha- vii preface to first edition betically listed. However, it is at least a glossary of most of the signifi- cant words likely to be found by students who are studying law as part of their general degree studies. It is also at least a glossary of very many of the core terms encountered by law degree students in their first years of study. It is not an encyclopedia: the encyclopedia tells all there is to know. That cannot be done in a book this size. In any event, modern lexicography prefers dictionaries to avoid the encyclopedic entry. For reasons stated below, we have deviated from this counsel of perfection in respect of a small number of entries. Having said what the book is not, what is it? It is a concise dictionary incorporating a glossary of selected important terms. It is defined by its readers. The book is written to be of use to the person who buys it. Primarily the dictionary is written for the person studying law as part of another degree, the term most often used in the UK for such stud- ies being Business Law. The orientation and selection of terms is directed primarily towards those needs – European law and institu- tions, company law and legal aspects of finance are deliberately more prominently represented here than in other similar texts. The attempt to satisfy this category of reader explains the more encyclopedic entry and explains the table of cases and statutes. The secondary audience, an audience at the front of our minds in the course of writing, is the general lay public. Television reports of famous (and infamous!) trials, proceedings in the House of Commons, the law report pages of the quality press and the need to decipher and decode communications from banks, building societies and ‘the authorities’ all require a tool to translate the terminology, or jargon, of the law into something more meaningful. This we have tried to do. We hope our text should be easily understood by readers who are not uni- versity or college undergraduates. The senior legal secretary and the paralegal, the accountant, doctor, nurse and the surveyor are examples of readers who fall between the two foregoing categories of reader. In their own field they will know many more terms than appear in this book, but inevitably there will be an overlap with the unfamiliar, and this book should be a useful companion in that regard. Much of the talk in lexicography, linguistics and literary theory is of exclusion. We have been keenly aware of the issue of the use of gen- der-specific language and have gone some considerable way to take viii preface to first edition account of this. The law itself is inter-textual and for centuries has been what would now be called by some phallocentric. As our task is merely to explain rather than proselytise, we have left a number of gender-specific references that reflect the law we seek to explain. We hope our female readers will not feel as excluded as they might with other similar books. As has been made clear, this is a book that is a subset of the classic ‘English dictionary’. The people who live in England no longer have a monopoly over the language that ferment- ed in their land. Nonetheless, English law has rather followed the English language in its travels around the world. Thus, in many coun- tries where English is the main language it will be found that English law is at the heart of the legal system. As a result, the dictionary should be useful well beyond the shores of the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand being obvious examples. To meet the issue of exclusion, we have tried to incorporate points from these jurisdictions where they have made their own contribution to English legal terminology, although we have not attempted to note every local divergence.