780 articles
Real estate owned
Real estate owned (REO, also OREO, bank-owned): property a lender owns after an unsuccessful foreclosure auction or deed in lieu. Sold as-is via MLS with financing and title insurance, usually at a modest discount, unlike auction or short-sale channels.
Real property
Real property is land and things permanently attached to it, distinct from personal property. Covers freehold and nonfreehold estates, easements, fixtures, feudal origins, US state governance, and comparative property-law systems.
Reasonable person
The reasonable person is a hypothetical ordinary, prudent adult used as the objective benchmark for negligence in common law, established in Vaughan v. Menlove (1837), adjusted for children and disability, and measured by juries.
Rebekah Vardy
Rebekah Vardy (born Rebekah Nicholson, 1982) is an English media personality, wife of footballer Jamie Vardy, who lost the 'Wagatha Christie' libel case against Coleen Rooney in 2022 and was ordered to pay over £1.4m in costs.
Recognition of foreign adoption orders
Recognition of foreign adoption orders is the set of private-international-law rules by which one state gives legal effect to an adoption finalized in another, so the parent-child relationship survives the border.
Recognition of foreign divorces
Recognition of foreign divorces is the body of rules by which a state gives legal effect to a divorce granted by another country's courts or authorities.
Recognition of foreign divorces in Commonwealth jurisdictions
Recognition of foreign divorces in Commonwealth jurisdictions is how Commonwealth courts treat divorces granted abroad, mainly through domicile, residence tests, and the 1970 Hague Convention.
Recognition of talaq in secular courts
Recognition of talaq in secular courts is the process by which civil judiciaries decide whether a unilateral Islamic divorce pronounced abroad dissolved a marriage for their own law.
Red flag law
A red flag law, also called an extreme risk law, is a United States state law allowing courts to temporarily bar dangerous people from possessing firearms.
Reimbursement
Reimbursement in law: repayment of money paid for another or of benefits wrongly retained, enforced through restitution, unjust enrichment, subrogation, ERISA plan recovery, and equitable tracing.
Relocation (child custody)
Relocation, also called a move-away dispute, is a contested application by a separated or divorced parent to move a child's residence a substantial distance from the other parent.
Rent regulation
Rent regulation, also called rent control or rent stabilization, is the body of laws limiting residential rents and often the conditions for ending tenancies, in force since the First World War.
Rent-to-own
Rent-to-own, or rental-purchase, is a contract letting consumers lease goods or homes and buy them later; goods terms run up to 18 months with no credit checks, housing deals set a future sale price, with option fees of 1%-7%.
Rental agreement
A rental agreement is a written or oral contract granting a tenant the right to occupy property for short periods, typically month to month, in exchange for rent.
Renting
Renting, also known as contract rent, is paying a landlord for the temporary use of a property under a lease, covering housing, commercial space, land, or equipment.
Res ipsa loquitur
Res ipsa loquitur, Latin for "the thing speaks for itself," is a tort-law evidence doctrine from Byrne v Boadle (1863) letting plaintiffs infer negligence when an accident of a type that ordinarily signals negligence occurs under the defendant's control.
Rescission (contract law)
Rescission in contract law is the undoing of a contract ab initio, restoring the parties to their pre-contract positions. Also called avoidance, it operates unilaterally, mutually, or by court order, and is barred by affirmation, delay, or failed counter-restitution.
Residential tenancy regimes by jurisdiction
A residential tenancy regime is the body of law governing private rented homes; this comparison contrasts jurisdictions requiring legal grounds for eviction with those allowing simple notice.
Restitution in English law
Restitution in English law, also called the law of unjust enrichment, lets a claimant recover a benefit gained at their expense. Recognized in Lipkin Gorman (1991), structured by four questions including the unjust factor and defences.
Restitution of unlawfully exacted taxes
Restitution of unlawfully exacted taxes is the recovery of tax paid to a public authority without legal power to demand it, as in the English Woolwich principle.
Restraining order
Restraining order, also called protection or protective order: a court order restricting contact and behavior toward a protected person. Key facts: US adoption 1970s, violation rates 7.1–81.3%, permanent orders linked to reduced violence, Lautenberg gun ban.
Restraint of trade
Restraint of trade, also called non-compete law, is the common law doctrine under which covenants restricting a person's trade or business are prima facie void unless reasonable in the interests of the parties and the public, established by Nordenfelt (1894).
Resulting trust
Resulting trust: an equitable trust arising by operation of law (Latin resultare, to bounce back) when an express trust fails, is incompletely disposed of, or a transferor's intent is presumed. Automatic and presumed types; purchase-money variant displaced in English law by common intention constructive trusts.
Richard Epstein
Richard A. Epstein, American legal scholar; University of Chicago and NYU law professor, Hoover fellow; author of Takings (1985), Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995), and The Classical Liberal Constitution (2014), third most cited US legal scholar 2009-2013.
Right of way
Right of way: a legal easement permitting passage over another's land between a dominant and servient estate, created by express grant, implication, necessity, or prescription (typically 20 years' unopposed use).
Right to be forgotten
The right to be forgotten (right to erasure, GDPR Article 17) lets individuals request delisting of personal data from search results. Established by the 2014 CJEU Google Spain ruling; balanced against free expression; no US equivalent.
Right to Buy
Right to Buy: statutory scheme letting eligible English social tenants buy their home at a discount, Housing Act 1980/1985; over two million homes sold; discounts cut to £16,000–£38,000 regional caps from 21 November 2024.
Right to property
Right to property: the legal guarantee of owning, using, and not being arbitrarily deprived of property, also called protection of possessions. Key forms: UDHR Article 17, ECHR Protocol 1 (1952), US Fifth Amendment Takings Clause, South African Constitution section 25, Indian Article 300-A.
Riparian water rights
Riparian water rights give landowners bordering a waterbody rights to reasonable use of its water, attached to the land and not lost by non-use; the doctrine predominates in the eastern United States, contrasting with western prior appropriation.
Roman law
Roman law: the legal system of ancient Rome from the Twelve Tables (c. 450 BC) to Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis (529–534), basis of continental civil law and a major influence on common law.