9,901 articles
Abduction of Chloe Ayling
Chloe Ayling, a British glamour model, was abducted in Milan on 11 July 2017, drugged with ketamine and held captive near Turin for six days by Lukasz Herba, who was later convicted and sentenced.
Abdul Halim Khaddam (عبد الحليم خدام)
Abdul Halim Khaddam (عبد الحليم خدام), Syrian foreign minister 1970–84 and vice president 1984–2005, architect of Syria's Lebanon policy and the Taif Agreement; defected in 2005, founded the National Salvation Front, and died in Paris exile in 2020.
Abdul Karim Telgi
Abdul Karim Telgi (1961-2017), also Kareem Lala, Indian counterfeiter from Khanapur, Karnataka, mastermind of the fake stamp paper scam; convicted 2007 to 30 years and Rs 202 crore fine, died owing Rs 190 crore in tax.
Abdul Latif (અબ્દુલ લતીફ) (criminal)
Abdul Latif (Abdul Latif Abdul Wahab Sheikh), Gujarat don of Ahmedabad, bootlegger and Dawood Ibrahim associate; 97 cases, 1995 Delhi arrest, killed in 1997 police encounter; inspiration for Raees.
Abduwali Muse
Abduwali Muse is a Somali pirate who led the April 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama, held Captain Richard Phillips hostage, and received a 33-year sentence.
Abe Fortas
Abe Fortas served as a Supreme Court justice from 1965 to 1969. Appointed by President Johnson, he expanded students' rights before resigning over foundation payments.
Abe Reles
Abe "Kid Twist" Reles (1906-1941) was the Brooklyn hit man who led Murder, Inc., the New York syndicate's killing squad, then turned state's evidence in 1940; his testimony sent seven men to the electric chair before he fell from the Half Moon Hotel.
Abe Saffron
Abe Saffron (Abraham Gilbert Saffron, 1919-2006), nicknamed Mr Sin, was a Sydney Kings Cross nightclub owner and organised crime figure who built an empire on illegal liquor, gambling, prostitution and pornography, and was convicted of tax evasion in 1987.
Abeyance
Abeyance: legal state in which property or title is suspended, awaiting vesting in a claimant; from Old French abeance. Common law barred freeholds from abeyance (except the Crown), shaping contingent remainder rules.
Abhishek Singhvi (अभिषेक मनु सिंघवी)
Abhishek Manu Singhvi (अभिषेक मनु सिंघवी), born 1959 in Jodhpur, is a Supreme Court Senior Advocate, Congress Rajya Sabha MP from Telangana, former Additional Solicitor General of India, and counsel in landmark constitutional, telecom, and Tata cases.
Ableman v. Booth
Ableman v. Booth, 62 U.S. 506 (1859), unanimous Taney Supreme Court decision reversing Wisconsin's habeas release of Sherman Booth, holding state courts cannot free federal prisoners, and upholding the Fugitive Slave Act.
Abolition of Forced Labour Convention
Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (ILO Convention No. 105), adopted Geneva 25 June 1957, in force 17 January 1959; a fundamental ILO treaty complementing Convention No. 29 by prohibiting five state uses of forced labour, with 178 ratifications.
Abolition of slavery in Bolivia
The abolition of slavery in Bolivia was completed on 21 September 1851 by a constitution declaring every person born free, after gradual measures beginning with the 1826 constitution.
Abolition of slavery in Ecuador
The abolition of slavery in Ecuador was decreed in 1851 under General José María Urbina after his July coup in Guayaquil, gradually freeing over 3,000 enslaved people.
Abolition of slavery in Suriname
The abolition of slavery in Suriname took place on 1 July 1863, freeing about 45,000 enslaved people, though most had to keep working on plantations for ten more years.
Abolition of the indigénat
The abolition of the indigénat was the dismantling, between 1944 and 1946, of the regime of summary administrative sanctions France applied to colonial subjects across its empire.
Abortion in Australia
Abortion in Australia is legal in every state and territory and regulated as a healthcare service under state law, with no federal abortion law and gestational limits varying by jurisdiction.
Abortion in Germany
Abortion in Germany (Schwangerschaftsabbruch, Paragraph 218 StGB) is formally illegal but unpunished in the first 12 weeks after mandatory counseling and a three-day wait; the 1995 compromise followed Constitutional Court rulings of 1975 and 1993, and a 2024 commission recommended legalization.
Abortion in the United States
Abortion in the United States: legal status set state by state after Dobbs (2022) overruled Roe. About 1,126,000 clinician-provided abortions in 2025; 63% medication; 13 total-ban states; 142,000 interstate travelers.
Abortion law
Abortion law comprises statutes, constitutions, and rulings governing when abortion is legal, by whom, and to what gestational age. Covers legalization versus decriminalization, global liberalization trends, WHO guidance, and the post-Dobbs United States.
Abortion law in the United States by state
Abortion law in the United States is set state by state. After the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in 2022, 13 states banned abortion outright.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln, also known as Abe Lincoln or Honest Abe, was the 16th President of the United States and a lawyer who led the country through the Civil War.
Abstraction principle (law)
Abstraction principle (Abstraktionsprinzip): German private law rule that a property transfer's validity is independent of the underlying contract's validity, contrasted with causal systems like France; adopted in Germany, South Africa, and Estonia, with exceptions such as Fehleridentität and § 139 BGB.
Abu Ghraib prison (سجن أبو غريب)
Abu Ghraib (سجن أبو غريب), Iraq's largest prison west of Baghdad, built 1969, notorious under Saddam Hussein and for the 2004 U.S. detainee abuse scandal during the Iraq War; closed by Iraq in 2014.
Abu Salem
Abu Salem (Abu Salem Abdul Qayoom Ansari), Indian gangster of the Dawood Ibrahim gang, extradited from Portugal in 2005 under a 25-year sentence assurance, convicted in the 1993 Bombay bombings and a 1995 murder case; release pleas rejected, term ends 2030.
Abu Talib al-Karkhi
Abu Talib al-Karkhi (أبو طالب الكرخي) was a Shafi'i jurist of Baghdad's Karkh district and the most celebrated calligrapher of his age, dying in 1189; no specimens of his calligraphy survive.
Abu Zubaydah
Abu Zubaydah (Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn), stateless Palestinian captured in Pakistan in 2002; first CIA post-9/11 detainee, waterboarded 83 times at black sites in Thailand, Poland, and Lithuania; ECHR found torture; held at Guantanamo without charges.
Abuja Treaty
The Abuja Treaty, formally the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community, was signed in Abuja, Nigeria, in 1991 and entered into force in 1994, setting a roadmap toward full African economic union.
Abuse of power
Abuse of power, or misuse of entrusted authority (détournement de pouvoir), covers official misconduct, corruption, and executive overreach; policed by judicial review, impeachment, and accountability institutions.
Academic and legal responses to the Gaza genocide
Academic and legal responses to the Gaza genocide: ICJ South Africa v. Israel proceedings, UN Commission of Inquiry and IAGS findings, clinic reports, scholasticide debates, and opposing scholarship on genocidal intent.