Legal Usage
A legal doctrine is a body of inter-related rules (usually of common law and built over a long period of time) associated with a legal concept or principle. For example the doctrine of frustration of purpose now has many tests and rules applicable with regards to each other and can be contained within a "bubble" of frustration. In a court session a defendant may refer to the doctrine of justification.
It can be seen that a branch of law contains various doctrines, which in turn contain various rules or tests. The test of non-occurrence of crucial event is part of the doctrine of frustration which is part of contract law. Doctrines can grow into a branch of law; restitution is now considered a branch of law separate to contract and tort.
Read more about this topic: Doctrine
Famous quotes containing the words legal and/or usage:
“There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.”
—H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)
“Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore!
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)