Law
In law, it is a term of art used to identify a legal classification that exists independently of other categorizations because of its singularity or due to the specific creation of an entitlement or obligation. For example, a court's contempt powers arise sui generis and not from statute or rule. The New York Court of Appeals has used the term in describing cooperative apartment corporations, mostly because this form of housing is considered real property for some purposes and personal property for other purposes.
When citing cases and other authorities, lawyers and judges may say a sui generis case, or a sui generis authority, meaning it is a special one confined to its own facts, and therefore may not be of broader application. This is the modern view courts are holding when deciding judgments based on oil and gas leases.
Read more about this topic: Sui Generis
Famous quotes containing the word law:
“There is a law in each well-ordered nation
To curb those raging appetites that are
Most disobedient and refractory.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)