Law
The term is used in situations where the law is changed, making a previously committed lawful act now unlawful. Sir Stuart Bell used the term "retrospectivity" to describe the Thomas Legg audit of MPs' expenses. Usually the terms ex post facto law or retroactive law are used. An example for a retrospective or retroactive law in force is the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN Code), a convention which governs the formal scientific naming of animals, of which the 4th edition is effective since 2000. All previous editions of the ICZN Code, or previous other rules and conventions have no force any more today, and the scientific names published back in these times are to be evaluated only under the present edition of the ICZN Code.
Read more about this topic: Retrospective
Famous quotes containing the word law:
“They are free, but not entirely free. For Law is despot over them, and they fear him much more than your men fear you.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
“A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)