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Record Sealing
Record sealing is the practice of sealing or, in some cases, destroying court records that would otherwise be publicly accessible as public records. The term is derived from the tradition of placing a seal on specified files or documents that prevents anyone from reviewing the files without receiving a court order. The modern process and requirements to seal a record and the protections it provides vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and even between civil and criminal cases. Generally, record sealing can be defined as the process of removing from general review the records pertaining to a court case. However, the records may not completely disappear and may still be reviewed under limited circumstances; in most instances, it requires a court order to unseal records once they are sealed. In the United States, some states order records to be destroyed after they are sealed. Once a record is sealed, in some states, the contents are legally considered never to have occurred and ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Record
Public records are documents or pieces of information that are not considered confidential and generally pertain to the conduct of government. For example, in California, when a couple fills out a marriage license application, they have the option of checking the box as to whether the marriage is "confidential" (Record will be closed, and not opened to public once recorded) or "public" (record will become public record once recorded). Essentially, if the marriage record is public, a copy of the record can be ordered from the county in which the marriage occurred. Other examples of public records includes information pertaining to births, deaths, and documented transaction with government agencies. History Since the earliest organised societies, with taxation, disputes, and so on, records of some sort have been needed. In ancient Babylon records were kept in cuneiform writing on clay tablets. In the Inca empire of South America, which did not have writing, records were kept via an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trade Secret
Trade secrets are a type of intellectual property that includes formulas, practices, processes, designs, instruments, patterns, or compilations of information that have inherent economic value because they are not generally known or readily ascertainable by others, and which the owner takes reasonable measures to keep secret. Intellectual property law gives the owner of a trade secret the right to restrict others from disclosing it. In some jurisdictions, such secrets are referred to as confidential information. Definition The precise language by which a trade secret is defined varies by jurisdiction, as do the particular types of information that are subject to trade secret protection. Three factors are common to all such definitions: A trade secret is information that * is not generally known to the public; * confers economic benefit on its holder the information is not publicly known; and * where the holder makes reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy. In internation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Privacy Law
Privacy law is the body of law that deals with the regulating, storing, and using of personally identifiable information, personal healthcare information, and financial information of individuals, which can be Personally identifiable information (PII) gathering, collected by governments, public or private organisations, or other individuals. It also applies in the commercial sector to things like trade secrets and the liability that directors, officers, and employees have when handing sensitive information. Privacy laws are considered within the context of an individual's privacy rights or within reasonable expectation of privacy. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to privacy. The interpretation of these rights varies by country and are not always universal. Classification of privacy laws Privacy laws can be broadly classified into: * General privacy laws that have an overall bearing on the personal information of individuals and affect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Legal Procedure
Procedural law, adjective law, in some jurisdictions referred to as remedial law, or rules of court, comprises the rules by which a court hears and determines what happens in civil, lawsuit, criminal or administrative proceedings. The rules are designed to ensure a fair and consistent application of due process (in the U.S.) or fundamental justice (in other common law countries) to all cases that come before a court. Substantive law, which refers to the actual claim and defense whose validity is tested through the procedures of procedural law, is different from procedural law. In the context of procedural law, procedural rights may also refer not exhaustively to rights to information, access to justice, and right to counsel, rights to public participation, right to confront accusers as well as the basic presumption of innocence (meaning the prosecution regularly must meet the burden of proof, though different jurisdictions have various exceptions), with those rights encompa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Judicial Legal Terminology
The judiciary (also known as the judicial system, judicature, judicial branch, judiciative branch, and court or judiciary system) is the system of courts that adjudicates legal disputes/disagreements and interprets, defends, and applies the law in legal cases. Definition The judiciary is the system of courts that interprets, defends, and applies the law in the name of the state. The judiciary can also be thought of as the mechanism for the resolution of disputes. Under the doctrine of the separation of powers, the judiciary generally does not make statutory law (which is the responsibility of the legislature) or enforce law (which is the responsibility of the executive), but rather interprets, defends, and applies the law to the facts of each case. However, in some countries the judiciary does make common law. In many jurisdictions the judicial branch has the power to change laws through the process of judicial review. Courts with judicial review power may annul the laws and r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Expungement
In the common law legal system, an expungement proceeding is a type of lawsuit in which a first time offender of a prior criminal conviction seeks that the records of that earlier process be sealed or destroyed, making the records nonexistent or unavailable to the general public. If successful, the records are said to be "expunged". '' Black's Law Dictionary'' defines "expungement of record" as the "Process by which record of criminal conviction is destroyed or sealed from the state or Federal repository." While expungement deals with an underlying criminal record, it is a civil action in which the subject is the petitioner or plaintiff asking a court to declare that the records be expunged. A very real distinction exists between an expungement and a pardon. When an expungement is granted, the person whose record is expunged may, for most purposes, treat the event as if it never occurred. A pardon (also called "executive clemency") does not "erase" the event; rather, it consti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Court Clerk
A court clerk (British English: clerk to the court or clerk of the court ; American English: clerk of the court or clerk of court ) is an officer of the court whose responsibilities include maintaining records of a court, administer oaths to witnesses, jurors, and grand jurors as well as performing some quasi-secretarial duties. United Kingdom England and Wales In the magistrates' courts of England and Wales, where the bench will usually have no legal qualifications, the justices' clerk will be legally qualified. The magistrates decide on the facts at issue; the clerk advises them on the law relating to the case. Scotland Clerks of court can be found at every level of the Courts of Scotland, with a legally qualified clerk acting as legal adviser to justices of the peace in justice of the peace courts. In the sheriff courts the clerk is known as a sheriff clerk, and the sheriff clerks are responsible for the administration and running of all cases in the court. Clerks also sup ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (officially abbreviated Fed. R. Civ. P.; colloquially FRCP) govern civil procedure in United States district courts. The FRCP are promulgated by the United States Supreme Court pursuant to the Rules Enabling Act, and then the United States Congress has seven months to veto the rules promulgated or they become part of the FRCP. The Court's modifications to the rules are usually based upon recommendations from the Judicial Conference of the United States, the federal judiciary's internal policy-making body. Although federal courts are required to apply the substantive law of the states as rules of decision in cases where state law is in question, the federal courts almost always use the FRCP as their rules of civil procedure. States may determine their own rules, which apply in state courts, although 35 of the 50 states have adopted rules that are based on the FRCP. History The Rules, established in 1938, replaced the earlier procedures und ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classified Information
Classified information is material that a government body deems to be sensitive information that must be protected. Access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of people with the necessary security clearance and need to know, and mishandling of the material can incur criminal penalties. A formal security clearance is required to view or handle classified material. The clearance process requires a satisfactory background investigation. Documents and other information must be properly marked "by the author" with one of several (hierarchical) levels of sensitivity—e.g. restricted, confidential, secret, and top secret. The choice of level is based on an impact assessment; governments have their own criteria, including how to determine the classification of an information asset and rules on how to protect information classified at each level. This process often includes security clearances for personnel handling the information. Some corporations and non-governm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Witness Protection
Witness protection is security provided to a threatened person providing testimonial evidence to the justice system, including defendants and other clients, before, during, and after a trial, usually by police. While a witness may only require protection until the conclusion of a trial, some witnesses are provided with a new identity and may live out the rest of their lives under government protection. Witness protection is usually required in trials against organized crime, where law enforcement sees a risk for witnesses to be intimidated by colleagues of defendants. It is also used at war crime, espionage and national security issues trials. Witness protection by country Not all countries have formal witness protection programs; instead, local police may implement informal protection as the need arises in specific cases. Canada Canada's Witness Protection Program Act received royal assent on June 20, 1996. The program is run by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seal (device)
A seal is a device for making an impression in wax, clay, paper, or some other medium, including an embossment on paper, and is also the impression thus made. The original purpose was to authenticate a document, or to prevent interference with a package or envelope by applying a seal which had to be broken to open the container (hence the modern English verb "to seal", which implies secure closing without an actual wax seal). The seal-making device is also referred to as the seal ''matrix'' or ''die''; the imprint it creates as the seal impression (or, more rarely, the ''sealing''). If the impression is made purely as a relief resulting from the greater pressure on the paper where the high parts of the matrix touch, the seal is known as a ''dry seal''; in other cases ink or another liquid or liquefied medium is used, in another color than the paper. In most traditional forms of dry seal the design on the seal matrix is in intaglio (cut below the flat surface) and therefore the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paternity (law)
Paternity law refers to body of law underlying legal relationship between a father and his biological or adopted children and deals with the rights and obligations of both the father and the child to each other as well as to others. A child's paternity may be relevant in relation to issues of legitimacy, inheritance and rights to a putative father's title or surname, as well as the biological father's rights to child custody in the case of separation or divorce and obligations for child support. Under common law, a child born to a married woman is presumed to be the child of her husband by virtue of a "presumption of paternity" or presumption of legitimacy. In consideration of a possible non-paternity event (which may or may not include paternity fraud) these presumptions may be rebutted by evidence to the contrary, for example, in disputed child custody and child support cases during divorce, annulment or legal separation. In the case of a father not married to a child's mot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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