In English law, a black letter law is the area of law characterized by technical rules, rather than those having a more conceptual basis. These laws establish the basic standard elements for a particular field of law, and are generally known and free from doubt or dispute. It may be, for example, the standard elements for a contract or the technical definition of battery; contract, tort, and land law are typical black letter law subjects, whereas administrative law, for example, would be considered considerably less black letter.
In the American legal system, a black-letter law is instead just a well-established case law.
Read more about Black Letter Law: History and Etymology, Similar Phrases
Famous quotes containing the words black, letter and/or law:
“For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law, the principle of order in me, around me, and in the world.... I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: “I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.””
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“I prefer to make no new declarations [on southern policy beyond what was in the Letter of Acceptance]. But you may say, if you deem it advisable, that you know that I will stand by the friendly and encouraging words of that Letter, and by all that they imply. You cannot express that too strongly.”
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“The image cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness, which idea can never claim. An idea is derivative and tamed. The image is in the natural or wild state, and it has to be discovered there, not put there, obeying its own law and none of ours. We think we can lay hold of image and take it captive, but the docile captive is not the real image but only the idea, which is the image with its character beaten out of it.”
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