Force-initiation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force-initiation
The initiation of force is the start, or beginning, of the use of physical and/or legal coercion, violence, or restraint. This is to be distinguished from retaliatory force and violence. It can be understood as the difference between two or more individuals getting into a fist-fight: whoever "threw the first punch" is the initiator of force, or aggressor, while the person(s) attacked--the victim(s)--are using non-initiatory or retaliatory force if they fight back. It also is contrasted with the non-aggression principle which supports force only in self-defense.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_force
(Redirected from Legal force)
The 'rule of law', in its most basic form, is the principle that no one is above the law. Thomas Paine stated in his pamphlet Common Sense (1776): "For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."
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Perhaps the most important application of the rule of law is the principle that governmental authority is legitimately exercised only in accordance with written, publicly disclosed laws adopted and enforced in accordance with established procedural steps that are referred to as due process. The principle is intended to be a safeguard against arbitrary governance, whether by a totalitarian leader or by mob rule. Thus, the rule of law is hostile both to dictatorship and to anarchy.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_diligence#As_a_concept_in_civil_litigation
Due diligence in civil litigation is the effort made by an ordinarily prudent or reasonable party to avoid harm to another party. Failure to make this effort may be considered negligence. This is conceptually distinct from investigative due diligence, involving a general obligation to meet a standard of behavior. Quite often a contract will specify that a party is required to provide due diligence.

It is not correct to confuse due care and due diligence. Due care should be spelled out in full as duty of care. It is a legal concept by itself. Duty of care may be very wide, far reaching, and also a grey area subject to argument. Basically, parents owe their infant a duty of care in everything. As the infant grows to be a child, to be an adolescent, an adult, the duty of care and its scope become less and less. Fundamentally, a duty of care is a moral duty to care. When legal acknowledgment is extended to this moral obligation, then this duty becomes a legal requirement. Inversely, the legislature sets the duty in the statute. Then we consider this duty as legal and amoral ["a-", without, not having to consider the moral aspect].

When read carefully, care is the passive mode; diligence is the active mode.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_diligence#As_a_criminal_defense
... a standard or contract requirement.

[edit] As a criminal defense

In criminal law, due diligence is the only available defense to a crime that is one of strict liability (i.e. a crime that only requires an actus reus and no mens rea). Once the criminal offense is proven, the defendant must prove on the beyond a reasonable doubt that they did everything possible to prevent the act from happening. It is not enough that they took the normal standard of care in their industry - they must show that they took every reasonable precaution.

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Association

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associate

Associate

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• A term used by some companies instead of employee.
• A term used to signify an independent (often self employed) person working as if directly employed by the company of which they are an associate. Such a person may be an associate of more than one company.
• The term for the lowest level of attorney in a United States law firm. See Associate (business rank)

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• Associate company, an accounting and business valuation concept.
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• Associate member
• Associate, a person who has some dealings with another, possibly a friend. Often used for business partners.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association

Association may refer to:

• Voluntary association, a group of individuals who voluntarily enter into an agreement to accomplish a purpose
  • 501(c) non-profit organization
  • Professional association
  • Alumni association, an association of former students of a college or university
  • An industry trade group is also known as a trade association
  • Sports association

Associations in various fields of study:

• Association (statistics), comes from two variables that are related
• Association (psychology), something linked in memory or imagination with a thing or person
• Archaeological association, in archaeology, the relationship between objects found together
• Association (ecology), a set of organisms which appear together and cover areas in a roughly uniform way
• Association (astronomy), combined or co-added group of astronomical exposures
• Genetic association
• Association (object-oriented programming), in object-oriented programming, a relationship between classes

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[edit] See also

• Associate
• Interpersonal relationship

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_relationship

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Friendships consist of mutual liking, trust, respect, and often even love and unconditional acceptance. They usually imply the discovery or establishment of similarities or common ground between the individuals.[2] Internet friendships and pen-pals may take place at a considerable physical distance. Brotherhood and sisterhood can refer to individuals united in a common cause or having a common interest, which may involve formal membership in a club, organization, association, society, lodge, fraternity, or sorority. This type of interpersonal relationship relates to the comradeship of fellow soldiers in peace or war. Partners or co-workers in a profession, business, or common workplace also have a long term interpersonal relationship.

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Agency

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(law)

Agency is an area of commercial law dealing with a contractual or quasi-contractual tripartite, or non-contractual set of relationships when an Agent is authorized to act on behalf of another (called the Principal) to create a legal relationship with a Third Party.^[1] Succinctly, it may be referred to as the relationship between a principal and an agent whereby the principal, expressly or impliedly, authorizes the agent to work under his control and on his behalf. The agent is, thus, required to negotiate on behalf of the principal or bring him and third parties into contractual relationship. This branch of law separates and regulates the relationships between:

• Agents and Principals;
• Agents and the Third Parties with whom they deal on their Principals' behalf; and
• Principals and the Third Parties when the Agents purport to deal on their behalf.

The common law principle in operation is usually represented in the Latin phrase, qui facit per alium, facit per se, i.e. the one who acts through another, acts in his or her own interests and it is a parallel concept to vicarious liability and strict liability in which one person is held liable in Criminal law or Tort for the acts or omissions of another.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(law)#Agency_relationships

Agency relationships are common in many professional areas.

• employment procurement
• real estate transactions (real estate brokerage, mortgage brokerage). In real estate brokerage, the buyers or sellers are the Principals themselves and the broker or his/her salesperson who represents each Principal is his/her Agent.
• financial advice (insurance agency, stock brokerage, accountancy)
• contract negotiation and promotion (business management) such as for publishing, music, movies, theatre, show business and sport.

Employment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment
Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as: "A person in the service of another under any contract of hire, express or implied, oral or written, where the employer has the power or right to control and direct the employee in the material details of how the work is to be performed." Black's Law Dictionary page 471 (5th ed. 1979).

In a commercial setting, the employer conceives of a productive activity, generally with the intention of generating a profit, and the employee contributes labour to the enterprise, usually in return for payment of wages. Employment also exists in the public, non-profit and household sectors. To the extent that employment or the economic equivalent is not universal, unemployment exists.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment#Opponents_of_capitalism

Opponents of capitalism, such as Marxists oppose the capitalist employment system, considering it to be unfair that the people who contribute the majority of work to an organization do not receive a proportionate share of the profit and that full employment is rarely reached under capitalism.

Other "isms": Marxist communism reorders the hierarchy to suggest that all all citizens of a society are equal owners, and are thus entitled to equal share of the wealth of the society.

The ideal sentiment of this ideology is not bad. The challenge becomes the manner by which the wealth of the society is distributed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment#Alternatives

A developing model of employment, as practiced by such companies as Semco, Google, DaVita, Freys Hotels and Linden Labs, seeks to set aside the "master-servant relationship" implicit in the traditional employment contract. The concommitant employment practices are often grouped under the heading Workplace democracy, and are characterised by high levels of employee engagement; principles-based rather than rules-based work relations; and a problem-solving approach to workplace conflict. In this model management (including its employment function) effectively becomes a domain shared between managers and staff. The resurgent New Unionism movement promotes this employment model, and seeks to extend it.

When an individual entirely owns the business for which he or she labours, this is known as self-employment. Self-employment often leads to incorporation. Incorporation offers certain protections of one's personal assets. Laws of incorporation vary from state to state with Delaware having the most incorporated businesses of any state in the U.S.

Workers who are not paid wages, such as volunteers, are generally not considered as being employed. One exception to this is an internship, an employment situation in which the worker receives training or experience (and possibly college credit) as the chief form of compensation.

Those who work under obligation for the purpose of fulfilling a debt, such as an indentured servant, or as property of the person or entity they work for, such as a slave, do not receive pay for their services and are not considered employed. Some historians suggest that slavery is older than employment, but both arrangements have existed for all recorded history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_redistribution

Income redistribution refers to a political policy intended to even the amount of income individuals are permitted to earn.^{[citation needed]}

The basic premise of the redistribution of income is that money should be distributed to benefit the poorer members of society, and that the rich have an obligation to assist the poor.^{[citation needed]} Thus, money should be redistributed from the rich to the poor, creating a more financially egalitarian society.^{[citation needed]} Proponents of redistribution typically say that the rich exploit the poor or otherwise gain unfair benefits. Therefore, redistributive practices would be justified in order to redress the balance.^{[citation needed]}

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Today, income redistribution occurs in some form in most democratic countries, most commonly through income-adjusted taxes (in which the amount of tax paid is directly connected to one's income), some of which goes to fund welfare programs to assist the poor or to all the society.

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status

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_(law)
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A person's status is a set of social conditions or relationships created and vested in an individual by an act of law rather than by the consensual acts of the parties, and it is in rem, i.e. these conditions must be recognised by the world. It is the qualities of universality and permanence that distinguish status from consensual relationships such as employment and agency.
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[edit] Identity/personality
In early laws, an outlaw was a person who, by judicial process, was deprived of all normal rights as a human being unless and until a court reversed itself through an affirmative act of inlawry. This was a form of civil death. Similarly, a slave was a chattel or possession, and had no legal personality except that, in the U.S., some of the Free States did allow limited legal personality. Legal personality could be surrendered voluntarily by becoming a monk or by travelling, e.g. the first provisions of the French Civil Code deny civil rights to foreigners. As an aspect of the social contract between a state and the citizens who owe it allegiance, most developed legal systems contain positive provisions defining each individual's legal identity and its attributes. All matters of social rank or caste are examples of personal status, the modern extremes of which would be nobility and the 200 million dalits, the untouchables of India.
Full age or minority are in many laws treated as aspects of personal status. The same thing is true of the loss of capacity by reason of insanity or other mental illness. This is of critical importance if a person wishes to enter into a marriage or a contract having travelled to a state where the age of minority is different or the form of marriage is apparently not consistent with the laws of the "home" state.
Fictitious persons or legal entities may be created by law through the act of incorporation and these corporations are quite separate from the natural persons who may be involved. The holders of some public offices are vested with the office, its terms are fixed by law, and every person within the state must recognise the existence of the office and its rights and duties, e.g. an archbishop or a corporation may represent a business association with its own purposes and capacities. It would be commercially inconvenient if the status of the entity changed depending on the laws of the place where commercial transactions were effected. For example, general partnerships have a separate legal personality in some states but not in others.

[edit] Personal Status
With some exceptions, it is universally accepted that marriage bonds lawfully entered into under the laws of any country[1], which changes the status of a person from "independent", "single" or "unmarried" to "a married person", will be recognized as such by all other countries in the world, and the partners to the marriage assume the status of husband and wife. That status goes with the people no matter where in the world the spouses may find themselves (except where local public policy is invoked). However, though they are recognized as husband and wife, pursuant to a marriage anywhere in the world, the mutual rights and duties owed by the spouses are determined by the law or custom of the country in which they find themselves.
Under normal circumstances, marriage exists until either one of the parties dies or until it is ended by legal process through nullity or divorce. The circumstances in which that status is to be brought to an end is of sufficient interest to the State that it usually regulates the circumstances in which the family relationship may be terminated. On the death of a spouse, the survivor's personal status changes to "widow" or "widower", and on the termination of the marriage, both of their status changes to "divorcee".
The emotional ties between parents and their children come into being through the natural blood relationship but the law attaches a series of right and duties to all involved. A child has the status of a minor. Another is the status of legitimacy. A legitimate child is usually defined as one born to parents who are married to each other; the child is illegitimate if the relationship is not recognized by the law, but usually has the opportunity to change status if the parents subsequently marry. Adoption usually creates a legal relationship similar to that of natural parent and child. In that event, legitimacy or otherwise of the child is not an issue. A parent does not have status as a parent. Issues may arise as to who is in the position of parent in relation to a child when there are issues of illegitimacy, surrogacy or other disputed parenthood.
When a child or other person incapable of looking after themselves requires care by someone who may not be his or her natural or adoptive parent. They are sometimes said to be wards of a legal guardian. This relationship, however, does not change the status of the child as a minor, and, like a parent, the guardian has no status, though rights and duties are expected between the people.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronin#Status
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[edit] Status
According to the Bushido Shoshinshu (the Code of the Samurai), a samurai was supposed to commit oibara seppuku (also "hara kiri" – ritual suicide) upon the loss of his master. One who chose to not honor the code was "on his own" and was meant to suffer great shame. The undesirability of ronin status was mainly a discrimination imposed by other samurai and by the daimyo (the feudal lords).

Like regular samurai, ronin wore their two swords.

During the Edo period, with the shogunate's rigid class system and laws, the number of ronin greatly increased. Confiscation of fiefs during the rule of the third Tokugawa shogun Iemitsu resulted in an especially large increase of ronin. During previous ages, samurai were easily able to move between masters and even between occupations. They would also marry between classes. However, during the Edo period, samurai were restricted, and were above all forbidden to become employed by another master without their previous master's permission. Also, low-level samurai, often poor and without choice, were forced to quit or escape their master.
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