Legal Opinions of Counsel or Government Law Officers
In the United Kingdom and other common law countries, a legal opinion also refers to written legal advice on a point of law issued by either a barrister or advocate (often referred to as "counsel's opinion") or occasionally a senior government law officer, such as an attorney general.
The latter form of opinion is sometimes made available to the public either because of public pressure (see for example Lord Goldsmith's opinion on the Iraq War, Yoo memo), or because a general clarification of the law is called for (see for example, the Yorke–Talbot slavery opinion). In the United States, several state attorneys general issue attorney general's opinions.
Several areas of commercial practice call for formal legal opinions of counsel. The Legal Aid scheme in the United Kingdom requires a legal opinion showing reasonable prospects for success before the Legal Aid board will fund any claim. Insurance policies for professional negligence will frequently require an opinion of counsel before the insurer is required to pay out on any putative claim (sometimes called a QC clause, when it must be an opinion of leading counsel).
Read more about this topic: Legal Opinion
Famous quotes containing the words legal, opinions, counsel, government, law and/or officers:
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Most advice on child-rearing is sought in the hope that it will confirm our prior convictions. If the parent had wished to proceed in a certain way but was made insecure by opposing opinions of neighbors, friends, or relatives, then it gives him great comfort to find his ideas seconded by an expert.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“If the guardian or the mother
Tell the woes of willful waste,
Scorn their counsel and their pother,
You can hang or drown at last.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“I will never accept that I got a free ride. It wasn’t free at all. My ancestors were brought here against their will. They were made to work and help build the country. I worked in the cotton fields from the age of seven. I worked in the laundry for twenty- three years. I worked for the national organization for nine years. I just retired from city government after twelve-and-a- half years.”
—Johnnie Tillmon (b. 1926)
“For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
—Bible: New Testament, Galatians 2:19-20.
“You know, what I very well know, that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don’t know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God’s curse light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wifes and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel corporation.”
—Anthony Henley (d. 1745)