9,901 articles
Balfour v Balfour
Balfour v Balfour [1919] 2 KB 571, English Court of Appeal case establishing the intention to create legal relations doctrine: a husband's £30 monthly maintenance promise to his wife was a domestic arrangement, not a contract, rebuttable presumption in spousal agreements.
Bali Nine
The Bali Nine: nine Australians arrested in Bali in April 2005 smuggling over 8 kg of heroin; ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran executed in 2015; five survivors repatriated December 2024.
Baltasar Garzón
Baltasar Garzón, Spanish ex-magistrate of the Audiencia Nacional known as the 'superjuez'; ordered Pinochet's 1998 London arrest under universal jurisdiction; convicted and disqualified in the 2012 Gürtel wiretap case, later ruled arbitrary by the UN Human Rights Committee; now a lawyer and FIBGAR president.
Ban (law)
Ban (law): a legal prohibition of an activity, product, or substance, via statute, constitutional amendment, administrative order, or writ of prohibition. Covers creation, legality and proportionality limits, US alcohol Prohibition 1920–1933, and unintended consequences.
Bancroft Davis
Bancroft Davis (John Chandler Bancroft Davis, 1822–1907) was an American diplomat, Court of Claims judge, and ninth Supreme Court Reporter of Decisions (1883–1902), editing United States Reports volumes 108–186 and serving in the Alabama claims arbitration.
Bandidos Motorcycle Club
Bandidos Motorcycle Club, founded March 1966 in San Leon, Texas, by Donald Chambers, is a one-percent outlaw motorcycle club and one of the world's largest OMGs, known for the fat Mexican patch, RICO convictions, and Hells Angels rivalry.
Banditry
Banditry is armed robbery and related property violence by outlaws outside state authority, also a political label criminalizing challenges to state power; studied via Hobsbawm's social banditry, Blok's critique, and cases from medieval Europe to Nigeria.
Bangladesh Bank robbery
The Bangladesh Bank robbery, also called the Bangladesh Bank heist, was a 2016 theft of $81 million via fraudulent SWIFT payments, attributed to North Korean hackers.
Bangladesh–India border
The Bangladesh–India border, also called the India–Bangladesh frontier, is the 4,096 km land boundary created by the 1947 Radcliffe Award, settled in key respects by the 1974 and 2015 Land Boundary Agreements and the 2014 maritime arbitration.
Bank Secrecy Act
The Bank Secrecy Act, formally the Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act of 1970, is a United States federal law requiring financial institutions to report cash transactions and suspicious activity.
Banking Regulation Act, 1949
Banking Regulation Act, 1949 (originally Banking Companies Act) is India's primary banking law, Act 10 of 1949, empowering RBI to license, inspect, direct, and wind up banking companies, extended to cooperative banks in 1966 and 2020.
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy: court-supervised legal process resolving debts of individuals or businesses unable to pay, via liquidation or repayment plans; U.S. chapters 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15; distinct from insolvency and from UK corporate insolvency.
Bankruptcy in the United States
Bankruptcy in the United States is a federal process under the Bankruptcy Code in which individuals, businesses, and municipalities gain debt relief through Chapter 7 liquidation or Chapter 11 and 13 reorganization.
Banns of marriage
Banns of marriage: public church announcements of an intended marriage (from 'ban'), required on three Sundays; prescribed churchwide at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, still used by Anglican and Catholic churches, replaced by common licences in some cases.
Banting murders
The Banting murders, also called the Sosilawati Lawiya murders, killed four people at a Banting, Selangor farm on August 30, 2010; three men retain final Malaysian death sentences, one was acquitted.
Bantu Authorities Act, 1951
The Bantu Authorities Act, 1951, later the Black Authorities Act, was a South African apartheid statute making chiefs and headmen agents of the white government in the reserves.
Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act, 1970
The Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act, 1970 was an apartheid-era South African law assigning black South Africans citizenship of ethnic homelands, later renamed the Black States Citizenship Act.
Bar (law)
The bar is the collective of lawyers licensed to practice in a jurisdiction; admission requires a law degree, bar exam, and character and fitness review. Covers the term's 1300s origin, bar associations, unified versus voluntary bars, and the NextGen UBE transition.
Bar association
Bar association: professional organization of lawyers, also called the bar, Law Society, or Bar Council. Ranges from voluntary societies (ABA, founded 1878) to mandatory integrated bars with admission and disciplinary powers; independence from government is a recognized international standard.
Bar associations in Latin America
Bar associations in Latin America, known as colegios de abogados, are mandatory membership corporations; in Argentina, registration with the local colegio is required to practice law.
Bar Council of India
Bar Council of India (BCI), statutory regulator under the Advocates Act, 1961 (Adhivakta Adhiniyam) for India's legal profession and legal education; sets advocate conduct standards, recognizes law degrees, supervises State Bar Councils, but does not enrol advocates or discipline law students.
Bar examination
Bar examination: the US licensing test for lawyers, historically essay-based since 1855, now the NCBE UBE (MBE, MEE, MPT) transitioning to the laptop-based NextGen UBE from July 2026.
Bar topnotchers in the Philippines
Bar topnotchers in the Philippines are the examinees with the highest ratings on the Philippine Bar Examinations, administered by the Supreme Court, which lists the top 20.
Barack Obama judicial appointment controversies
Barack Obama judicial appointment controversies: disputes over Senate filibusters of his lower-court nominees, the 2013 Reid nuclear option, the blocked D.C. Circuit seats, the 52.5% second-term confirmation rate, and the unvoted 2016 Merrick Garland Supreme Court nomination.
Barack Obama Supreme Court candidates
Barack Obama Supreme Court candidates: Sonia Sotomayor (2009, first Latina justice, 68-31), Elena Kagan (2010, 63-37), and Merrick Garland (2016, never confirmed after Scalia's death).
Barbara Ann Crancer
Barbara Ann Crancer (born 1938), daughter of Jimmy Hoffa and sister of James P. Hoffa, was a St. Louis County associate circuit judge 1992-2008 who sued the Justice Department for the FBI's Hoffa file.
Barbara B. Crabb
Barbara B. Crabb, full name Barbara Brandriff Crabb, is an American jurist and senior United States district judge for the Western District of Wisconsin since 1979.
Barbara Daly Baekeland
Barbara Daly Baekeland, American socialite and model who married Bakelite heir Brooks Baekeland; murdered November 17, 1972 in her London penthouse by her son Antony, later dramatized in Savage Grace.
Barbara Fried
Barbara H. Fried (Barbara Fried), Stanford Law School Saunders Professor emerita, legal scholar of distributive justice, taxation, and Robert Hale; mother of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, sued by the FTX estate in 2023.
Barbara Graham
Barbara Graham (Barbara Wood Graham, 1923–1955), "Bloody Babs," was executed by gas at San Quentin on June 3, 1955, for the 1953 murder of Burbank widow Mabel Monahan; her contested trial inspired I Want to Live! and later reassessments.