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An affirmative defense to a civil lawsuit or criminal charge is a fact or set of facts other than those alleged by the plaintiff or prosecutor which, if proven by the defendant, defeats or mitigates the legal consequences of the defendant's otherwise unlawful conduct.
An innocent owner defense is a concept in United States law providing for an affirmative defense that applies when an owner claims innocence of a crime and so the property should not be forfeited. It is defined in section 983(d) of title 18 of the United States Code ( 18 U.S.C. § 983(d) ) and is part of the Code that defines forfeiture laws ...
A defense of justification is the product of society's determination that the actual existence of certain circumstances will operate to make proper and legal what otherwise would be criminal conduct. A defense of excuse, contrarily, does not make legal and proper conduct which ordinarily would result in criminal liability; instead, it openly ...
Although federal courts often hear tort cases arising out of common law or state statutes, there are relatively few tort claims that arise exclusively as a result of federal law. The most common federal tort claim is the 42 U.S.C. § 1983 remedy for violation of one's civil rights under color of federal or state law, which can be used to sue ...
In a civil proceeding or criminal prosecution under the common law or under statute, a defendant may raise a defense (or defence) [a] in an effort to avert civil liability or criminal conviction. A defense is put forward by a party to defeat a suit or action brought against the party, and may be based on legal grounds or on factual claims.
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld, in a 5–4 ruling, the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults, in this case with respect to homosexual sodomy, though the law did not differentiate between homosexual and heterosexual sodomy. [1]
The 26-page decision repealed Georgia’s law restricting access to abortion after six weeks, before many people become aware that they are pregnant. Judge rules Georgia's six week abortion ban ...
The enactment of the Code predated the enactment of civil codes in 1866 in Dakota Territory and 1872 in California based on the work of New York-based law reformer David Dudley Field II. [2] In 1889, Field expressly conceded that point in a written article; he credited his lack of awareness of the contemporaneous Georgia project "to the ...