9,901 articles
First Geneva Convention
First Geneva Convention (1864), the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field, signed 22 August 1864 in Geneva by 12 states; obliged care for all wounded, neutralized medical services, created the red cross emblem, and was revised in 1906, 1929, and 1949.
First information report
First information report (FIR), the police document recording first information of a cognizable offence in India (CrPC 154, now BNSS 173); mandatory registration per Lalita Kumari (2014), with zero FIR and e-FIR provisions.
First Nations Summit
First Nations Summit (FNS), BC First Nations political organization and one of three Principals of the British Columbia treaty negotiations process; named for the 1990 meeting that appointed First Nations members to the BC Claims Task Force; forum of about 150 First Nations, not a negotiating party.
First Partition of Poland
First Partition of Poland (1772): Russia, Prussia, and Austria annexed about a third of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under the August 5, 1772 treaty, engineered chiefly by Frederick II of Prussia amid the Russo-Turkish War and Bar Confederation.
First Step Act
First Step Act of 2018 (Public Law 115-391), US federal criminal justice reform law signed December 21, 2018: earned time credits, PATTERN risk tool, retroactive Fair Sentencing Act, reduced mandatory minimums, expanded good time credit.
First Treaty of Prairie du Chien
First Treaty of Prairie du Chien (Treaty with the Sioux, etc., 1825), a US-tribal treaty signed 19 August 1825 by commissioners William Clark and Lewis Cass with the Sioux, Chippewa, Sac and Fox, Menominee, Ioway, Winnebago, and Illinois River Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi, establishing intertribal peace and boundary lines.
First-sale doctrine
First-sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109 and also called copyright exhaustion, lets the owner of a lawfully made copy resell, lend, or give it away without permission; covers Bobbs-Merrill, Kirtsaeng, rental limits, and digital limits.
First-tier Tribunal
First-tier Tribunal: the first-instance general tribunal of the UK tribunal system, created by the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 on 3 November 2008. Hears first-instance appeals in seven chambers, with onward appeal to the Upper Tribunal on points of law.
Fish & Richardson
Fish & Richardson P.C. is a Boston-founded (1878) intellectual property law firm specializing in patent litigation, prosecution, and PTAB post-grant work, with 12 U.S. offices plus Munich and Shenzhen; early clients included Bell, Edison, and the Wright Brothers.
Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty
The Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) is an international agreement prohibiting the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or explosive devices; negotiations have been assigned to the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva since 1995.
Fitness to plead
Fitness to plead (fitness to stand trial, competency to stand trial) is the legal standard for a criminal defendant's capacity to understand and participate in trial, tested in England and Wales by the 1836 Pritchard criteria under the Criminal Procedure (Insanity) Act 1964.
Fitzgerald Inquiry
The Fitzgerald Inquiry (1987–1989), formally the Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct, led by Tony Fitzgerald QC, exposed systemic Queensland police and political corruption, jailed four ministers and Commissioner Terence Lewis, and produced over 100 reform recommendations.
Five Families
The Five Families are New York City's major Italian-American Mafia organizations: Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese, formed after the 1930–31 Castellammarese War under Lucky Luciano's Commission. Once controlling rackets citywide, they remain active in gambling and labor racketeering despite RICO-era prosecutions.
Five Points Gang
Five Points Gang: late-1890s New York street gang founded by Paul Kelly (Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli) in the Five Points slum, heir to the Dead Rabbits and Bowery Boys, tied to Tammany-era voter fraud.
Five Punishments (五刑)
Five Punishments (五刑, wu xing) is the generic Chinese term for the five standard penalties of the penal system: early versions centered on tattooing, nose and foot amputation, castration, and death; the Sui-Tang system used beatings, servitude, exile, and death.
Fixed-rate mortgage
Fixed-rate mortgage: home loan with an interest rate set at origination that never changes over the term; also called FRM. Dominant U.S. mortgage type (92% of household mortgages), priced off long-term Treasury yields with a term premium and prepayment option, favored by risk-averse borrowers.
FKU IK-3, Kharp
FKU IK-3, Kharp (Polar Wolf, Полярный волк) is a Russian special-regime men's penal colony in Kharp, Yamalo-Nenets Okrug, founded 1961, EU-sanctioned for torture, and where Alexei Navalny died in February 2024.
Flagellation
Flagellation, from Latin flagellare, is whipping oneself or others as punishment, penance, or ritual. Distinguished from mere flogging by its disciplinary, religious (Peter Damian, 1260 and 1349 Flagellants), and judicial histories.
Flaying
Flaying, or being flayed alive, is the deliberate removal of skin from a human or animal body, historically used as an execution method and punishment, attested in Assyrian reliefs.
Flor Contemplacion
Flor Contemplacion (Flor Ramos Contemplacion, 1953-1995), Filipina domestic worker hanged in Singapore on 17 March 1995 for the 1991 murders of Della Maga and Nicholas Huang; her execution triggered a Philippines-Singapore diplomatic crisis and R.A. 8042.
Florence Y. Pan
Florence Y. Pan, born 1966, is an American jurist serving as a US circuit judge on the DC Circuit since 2022, appointed by President Biden.
Florian Teichtmeister child pornography scandal
Criminal case against Austrian actor Florian Teichtmeister (Burgtheater, Corsage), who was convicted in Vienna in September 2023 of possessing and producing 76,000 child sexual abuse files and received a two-year suspended sentence.
Florida Department of Corrections
The Florida Department of Corrections is the state agency running Florida's prison system, the nation's third-largest, with over 90,000 inmates and a $3.8 billion budget.
Florida District Courts of Appeal
Florida District Courts of Appeal are the state's six intermediate appellate courts, one per appellate district, reviewing most appeals and state agency action; the Sixth DCA, seated in Lakeland, began operating January 1, 2023.
Florida First District Court of Appeal
Florida First District Court of Appeal: Tallahassee-based intermediate appellate court, one of six Florida DCAs, created 1956-1957, covering 29 Panhandle and North Florida counties with 13 judges.
Florida property law
Florida property law: the statutes and case law governing land conveyance, recording, marketable title, homestead, tenancy by the entirety, and property taxation, centered on Title XL (Chapters 689-719) of the Florida Statutes.
Florida School for Boys
Florida School for Boys, also called the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, was a Florida state reform school in Marianna, opened 1900 and closed 2011, notorious for abuse; USF excavated 55 unmarked graves, and a 2024 law created $20 million in victim compensation.
Florida State Prison
Florida State Prison (FSP) near Raiford and Starke, Bradford County, is Florida's maximum-security men's prison and the site of the state execution chamber, where lethal injection and electric chair executions are carried out.
Florida State University Chi Omega murders
Florida State University Chi Omega murders: Ted Bundy's January 15, 1978 night attacks on the Chi Omega sorority house in Tallahassee, killing Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman, and the 1979 Miami trial built on bite-mark evidence.
Flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict
Flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict are the four maritime-law categories of lost sea goods that statutorily define "wreck" under the UK Merchant Shipping Act 1995 and similar laws in Ireland, Singapore, Canada, and The Bahamas.