The year and a day rule has been a common traditional length of time for establishing differences in legal status.
The phrase "year and a day rule" is associated with the former common law standard that death could not be legally attributed to acts or omissions that occurred more than a year and a day before the death.
It is elsewhere associated with the minimum sentence for a crime to count as a felony.
Read more about Year And A Day Rule: The Rule and Homicide, As A Sentence For Felons, Other Legal and Quasi-legal Uses of Year and A Day
Famous quotes containing the words year, day and/or rule:
“An ordinary man will work every day for a year at shoveling dirt to support his body, or a family of bodies; but he is an extraordinary man who will work a whole day in a year for the support of his soul. Even the priests, men of God, so called, for the most part confess that they work for the support of the body.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It was a day of cold
Raw silence, wind-blown
Surplice and soutane:
Rained-on, flower-laden
Coffin after coffin
Seemed to float from the door”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)
“The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)