The proceeding in which an administrative law judge hears and decides issues that arise when an administrative agency charges a person or a firm with an agency violation.
Adjudication
A federal or state government agency established to perform a specific function.
Administrative Agency
The body of law created by administrative agencies in order to carry out their duties and responsibilities
Administrative Law
One who presides over an administrative agency hearing and has the power to administer oaths, take testimony, rule on questions of evidence, and make determinations of fact.
Administrative Law Judge (ALJ)
The procedure used by administrative agencies in the administration of law.
Administrative Process
The organizational structure, consisting of government bureaus and agencies, through which the government implements and enforces the laws.
Bureaucracy
A doctrine based on the U.S. -Constitution, which has been construed to allow Congress to delegate some of its power to administrative agencies to make and implement laws.
Delegation Doctrine
A statute enacted by Congress that authorizes the creation of an administrative agency and specifies the name, composition, and powers of the agency being created.
Enabling Legislation
The final decision of an administrative agency on an issue
Final Order
An agency's disposition in a matter other than a rulemaking. An administrative law judge's initial order becomes final unless it is appealed.
Initial Order
An administrative agency rule that is simply a statement or opinion issued by the agency explaining how it interprets and intends to apply the statutes it enforces.
Interpretive Rule
An administrative agency rule that carries the same weight as a congressionally enacted statute.
Legislative Rule
A procedure in agency rulemaking that requires notice, opportunity for comment, and a published draft of the final rule.
Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking
The actions of administrative agencies when formally adopting new regulations or amending old ones.
Rulemaking
Capable of serving as the basis of a lawsuit.
Actionable
The deliberate intent to cause harm, which exists when a person makes a statement either knowing that it is false or showing a reckless disregard for whether it is true
Actual Malice
In tort law, the use by one person of another person's name, likeness, or other identifying characteristic without permission and for the benefit of the user.
Appropriation
Any word or action intended to make another person fearful of immediate physical harm.
Assault
A doctrine under which a plaintiff may not recover for injuries or damage suffered from risks he or she knows of and has voluntarily assumed.
Assumption of Risk
The unexcused, harmful or offensive, intentional touching of another.
Battery
A person, such as a customer or a client, who is invited onto business premises by the owner of those premises.
Business Invitee
Wrongful interference with another's business rights.
Business Tort
An act or omission without which an event would not have occurred.
Causation in Fact
A rule in tort law that reduces the plaintiff's recovery in proportion to the plaintiff's degree of fault, rather than barring recovery completely.
Comparative Negligence
A monetary award equivalent to the actual value of injuries or damage sustained by the aggrieved party.
Compensatory Damages
A rule in tort law that completely bars the plaintiff from recovering any damages if the damage suffered is partly the plaintiff's own fault.
Contributory Negligence
Wrongfully taking or retaining possession of an individual's personal property and placing it in the service of another.
conversion
A tort committed in cyberspace.
Cyber Tort
Money sought as a remedy for a breach of contract or a tortious action
Damages
Anything published or publicly spoken that causes injury to another's good name, reputation, or character.
Defamation
An economically injurious falsehood made about another's product or property.
Disparagement of Property
A state statute that imposes liability on the owners of bars and taverns for injuries resulting from accidents caused by intoxicated persons when they contributed to the intoxication.
Dram Shop Act
The duty of all persons, as established by tort law, to exercise a reasonable amount of care in their dealings with others.
Duty of Care
Any misrepresentation, either by misstatement or by omission of a material fact, knowingly made with the intention of deceiving another and on which a reasonable person would and does rely to his or her detriment.
Fraudulent Misrepresentation
A state statute stipulating that persons who provide emergency services to someone in peril cannot be sued for negligence.
Good Samaritan Statute
A wrongful act that is knowingly committed.
Intentional Tort
Defamation in writing or other form having the quality of permanence (such as a digital recording).
Libel
Professional misconduct or the lack of the requisite degree of skill as a professional.
Malpractice
A theory under which liability is shared among all firms that manufactured and distributed a particular product during a certain period of time.
Market Share Liability
The failure to exercise the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise in similar circumstances.
Negligence
An action or failure to act in violation of a statutory requirement.
Negligence Per
A legal right, exemption, or immunity granted to a person or a class of persons.
Privilege
The liability of manufacturers, sellers, and lessors of goods to consumers, users, and bystanders for injuries or damages that are caused by the goods.
Product Liability
Legal cause, which exists when the connection between an act and an injury is strong enough to justify imposing liability.
Proximate Clause
A salesperson's often exaggerated claims concerning the quality of property offered for sale.
Puffery
Monetary damages that may be awarded to a plaintiff to punish the defendant and deter similar conduct in the future.
Punitive Damages
The standard of behavior expected of a hypothetical "reasonable person.
Reasonable Person Standard
A doctrine under which negligence may be inferred simply because an event occurred, if it is the type of event that would not occur in the absence of negligence.
Res Ipsa Loquitur
Defamation in oral form.
Slander
The publication of false information about another's product, alleging that it is not what its seller claims
Slander of Quality (Trade Libel)
The publication of a statement that denies or casts doubt on another's legal ownership of any property, causing financial loss to that property's owner.
Slander of Title
Bulk e-mails sent in large quantities without the consent of the recipients
Spam
Liability regardless of fault.
Strict Liability
A civil wrong not arising from a breach of contract.
Tort
The entry onto, above, or below the surface of land owned by another without the owner's permission.
Trespass to Land
The unlawful taking or harming of another's personal property or the interference with another's right to the exclusive possession of his or her personal property.
Trespeass to Personal Property
A product that is defective to the point of threatening a consumer's health and safety.
Unreasonably Dangerous Product
A guilty (prohibited) act. The commission of a prohibited act is one of the two essential elements required for criminal liability.
Actus Reus
The intentional burning of another's building.
Arson
A standard of proof under which if there is any reasonable doubt that a criminal defendant committed the crime with which she or he has been charged, then the verdict must be "not guilty.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
The unlawful entry or breaking into a building with the intent to commit a felony.
Burglary
A wrong against society proclaimed in a statute and punishable by society through fines, imprisonment, or death.
Crime
A crime that occurs online, in the virtual community of the Internet, as opposed to the physical world.
Cyber Crime
Any misrepresentation knowingly made over the Internet with the intention of deceiving another and on which a reasonable person would and does rely to his or her detriment.
Cyber Fraud
A hacker whose purpose is to exploit a target computer to create a serious impact, such as sabotage.
Cyberterrorist
A situation occurring when a person is tried twice for the same criminal offense.
Double Jeopardy
Unlawful pressure brought to bear on a person, causing the person to perform an act that she or he would not otherwise have performed.
Duress
The fraudulent appropriation of funds or other property by a person to whom the funds or property has been entrusted.
Embezzlement
A defense in which the defendant claims that he or she was induced by a public official�usually undercover�to commit a crime that he or she would not otherwise have committed.
Entrapment
In criminal procedure, a rule under which any evidence that is obtained in violation of the accused's rights guaranteed by the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as well as any evidence derived from illegally obtained evidence,
Exclusionary Rule
The fraudulent making or altering of any writing in a way that changes the legal rights and liabilities of another.
Forgery
A group of citizens called to decide, after hearing the state's evidence, whether a reasonable basis exists for believing that a crime has been committed and that a trial ought to be held.
Grand Jury
A person who uses one computer to break into another.
Hacker
The theft of personal information, such as a person's name, driver's license number, or Social Security number, to access the victim's financial resources.
Identity Theft
A charge by a grand jury that a named person has committed a crime.
Indictment
A formal accusation or complaint (without an indictment) issued in certain types of actions (usually criminal actions involving lesser crimes) by a government prosecutor.
Information
The wrongful taking and carrying away of another person's personal property with the intent to permanently deprive the owner of the property.
Larceny
Mental state, or intent. Normally, a wrongful mental state is as necessary as a wrongful act to establish criminal liability.
Mens Rea
Engaging in financial transactions to conceal the identity, source, or destination of illegally gained funds.
Money Laundering
The attempt to acquire financial or other personal information from consumers by sending e-mail messages that purport to be from a legitimate business.
Phishing
The process by which a defendant and the prosecutor in a criminal case work out a mutually satisfactory disposition, subject to court approval.
Plea Bargaining
Reasonable grounds for believing that a person should be arrested or searched.
Probable Cause
The act of forcefully and unlawfully taking personal property of any value from another.
Robbery
An order granted by a public authority, such as a judge, that authorizes law enforcement personnel to search particular premises or property.
Search Warrant
The legally recognized privilege to protect oneself or one's property against injury by another.
Self Defense
The giving of testimony that may subject the testifier to criminal prosecution.
Self Incrimination
A variation of phishing that involves some form of voice communication.
Vishing
Nonviolent crime committed by individuals or corporations to obtain a personal or business advantage.
White Collar Crime
A mark used by one or more persons, other than the owner, to certify the region, materials, mode of manufacture, quality, or other character-istic of specific goods or services.
Certification Mark
A subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the Internet, extends a computer's software or storage capabilities.
Cloud Computing
A mark used by members of a cooperative, association, labor union, or other organization to certify the region, materials, mode of manufacture, quality, or other characteristic of specific goods or services.
Collective Mark
The exclusive right of an author to publish, print, or sell an intellectual production for a statutory period of time.
Copyright
A trademark in cyberspace.
Cyber Mark
The act of registering a domain name that is the same as, or confusingly similar to, the trademark of another and then offering to sell that domain name back to the trademark owner.
Cyber Squatting
A network that can be used by persons located (distributed) around the country or the globe to share computer files.
Distributed Network
An Internet address consisting of a series of letters and symbols used to identify site operators on the Web.
Domain Name
Property resulting from intellectual, creative processes.
Intellectual Property
In the context of intellectual property law, an agreement permitting the use of a trademark, copyright, patent, or trade secret for certain limited purposes.
License
A government grant that gives an inventor the exclusive right or privilege to make, use, or sell his or her invention for a limited time period.
Patent
The sharing of resources (such as files, hard drives, and processing styles) among multiple computers without the need for a central network server.
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Networking
A mark used in the sale or advertising of services to distinguish the services of one person from those of others.
Service Mark
The image and overall appearance of a product.
Trade Dress
A name used in commercial activity to designate a particular business.
Trade Name
Information or a process that gives a business an advantage over competitors that do not know the information or process.
Trade Secret
A word, symbol, sound, or design that has become sufficiently associated with a good or has been registered with a government agency.
Trademark
A doctrine providing that the judicial branch of one country will not examine the validity of public acts committed by a recognized foreign government within its own territory.
Act of State Doctrine
A clause in a contract designating the official language by which the contract will be interpreted in the event of a future disagreement over the contract's terms
Choice-of-Language Clause
A clause in a contract designating the law (such as the law of a particular state or nation) that will govern the contract.
Choice-of-Law Clause
The principle by which one nation defers to and gives effect to the laws and judicial decrees of another nation. This recognition is based primarily on respect.
Comity
A government's taking of a privately owned business or personal property without a proper public purpose or an award of just compensation.
Confiscation
A bank in which another bank has an account (and vice versa) for the purpose of facilitating fund transfers
Correspondent Bank
A contract between a seller and a distributor of the seller's products setting out the terms and conditions of the distributorship.
Distribution Agreement
The selling of goods in a foreign country at a price below the price charged for the same goods in the domestic market.
Dumping
The sale of goods and services by domestic firms to buyers located in other countries.
Export
The seizure by a government of a privately owned business or personal property for a proper public purpose and with just compensation.
Expropriation
A provision in a contract stipulating that certain unforeseen events�such as war, political upheavals, or acts of God�will excuse a party from liability for nonperformance of contractual obligations.
Force Majeure Clause
A worldwide system in which foreign currencies are bought and sold.
Foreign Exchange Market
A provision in a contract designating the court, jurisdiction, or tribunal that will decide any disputes arising under the contract.
Forum Selection Clause
A written instrument, usually issued by a bank on behalf of a customer or other person, in which the issuer promises to honor drafts or other demands for payment by third parties in accordance with the terms of the -instrument.
Letter of Credit
A status granted by each member country of the World Trade Organization to other member countries.
Normal Trade Relations (NTR) Status
A set limit on the amount of goods that can be imported.
Quota
A doctrine that immunizes foreign nations from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts when certain conditions are satisfied.
Sovereign Immunity
A tax on imported goods.
Tariff
A formal written agreement negotiated between two or more nations.
Treaty