Search the Dictionary

onstruction or interpretation; not directly expressed, but inferred. Constructive crimes (Law), acts having effects analogous to those of some statutory or common law crimes; as, constructive treason. Constructive crimes are no longer recognized by the courts. -- Constructive notice, notice imputed by construction of…

Custom, habit; usage. [R.] To observe this consuetude or law. Barnes .

o deliberate together; to confer. Let us consult upon to-morrow's business. Shak. All the laws of England have been made by the kings England, consulting with the nobility and commons. Hobbes.

Formed by consultation; resulting from conference. Consultary response (Law), the opinion of a court on a special case. Wharton.

A council or conference, as of physicians, held to consider a special case, or of lawyers restained in a cause. Writ of consultation (Law), a writ by which a cause, improperly removed by prohibition from one court to another, is returned to the court from which it came; -- so called because the judges, on consultation,…

e; to scorn. Thy pompous delicacies I contemn. Milton. One who contemned divine and human laws. Dryden.

tercation quarrel; dispute; as, a bone of contention. Contentions and strivings about the law. Titus iii. 9.

ated; litigious; having power to decide controversy. Contentious jurisdiction (Eng. Eccl. Law), jurisdiction over matters in controversy between parties, in contradistinction to voluntary jurisdiction, or that exercised upon matters not opposed or controverted.

onformed so many of them as were conterminous to the colonies and garrisons, to the Roman laws. Sir M. Hale.

bject of litigation; to defend, as a suit; to dispute or resist; as a claim, by course of law; to controvert. To contest an election. (Polit.) (a) To strive to be elected. (b) To dispute the declared result of an election.

sions; the act or power of refraining from indulgence of the sexual appetite, esp. from unlawful indulgence; sometimes, moderation in sexual indulgence. If they [the unmarried and widows] have not continency, let them marry. 1 Cor. vii. 9 (Rev. Ver. ). Chastity is either abstinence or continence: abstinence is that of…

ctions, and declaring every ship going to or from a port of England or her colonies to be lawful prize.

sight would be tired, if it were attracted by a continuity of glittering objects. Dryden. Law of continuity (Math. & Physics), the principle that nothing passes from one state to another without passing through all the intermediate states. -- Solution of continuity. (Math.) See under Solution.

dered contraband of war. [U.S.] Contraband of war, that which, according to international law, cannot be supplied to a hostile belligerent except at the risk of seizure and condemnation by the aggrieved belligerent. Wharton.

ons . . . had contracted marriage within the degrees of consanguinity . . . prohibited by law. Strype.

dictions infinite the slave. Wordsworth. Principle of contradiction (Logic), the axiom or law of thought that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time, or a thing must either be or not be, or the same attribute can not at the same time be affirmed and and denied of the same subject. It develops itself in three spe…

To violate; to nullify; to be inconsistent with; as, to contravene a law. Laws that place the subjects in such a state contravene the first principles of the compact of authority. Johnson.

k; contributive. Milton. Bonfires of contributory wood. Chapman. Contributory negligence (Law), negligence by an injured party, which combines with the negligence of the injurer in producing the injury, and which bars recovery when it is the proximate cause of the injury. Wharton.

A suit in law or equity; a question of right. [Obs.] When any man that had a controversy came to the king for judgment. 2 Sam. xv. 2.

A willful contempt of, and disobedience to, any lawful summons, or to the rules and orders of court, as a refusal to appear in court when legally summoned.