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:
“Street lamps come out, and lean at corners, awry,
Casting black shadows, oblique and intense....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“‘Tis the curse of service,
Preferment goes by letter and affection,
And not by old gradation, where each second
Stood heir to th’ first.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A quality is something capable of being completely embodied. A law never can be embodied in its character as a law except by determining a habit. A quality is how something may or might have been. A law is how an endless future must continue to be.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)