9,901 articles
Dungeon
Dungeon: originally the donjon or keep of a medieval castle, later reinterpreted as an underground prison cell. Purpose-built castle dungeons were rare; many shown to tourists were storerooms or latrines, and the popular image owes much to Ivanhoe and Victorian tourism.
Dunsmuir v New Brunswick
Dunsmuir v New Brunswick, 2008 SCC 9, is a Supreme Court of Canada administrative law case that reduced judicial review to two standards, correctness and reasonableness, defined reasonableness by justification, transparency and intelligibility, and dismissed dismissed civil servant David Dunsmuir's appeal.
Dupont de Ligonnès murders and disappearance
Unsolved 2011 Nantes case: Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, 50, suspected of shooting his wife Agnès and four children plus two labradors and burying them under the family terrace; he disappeared at Roquebrune-sur-Argens on 15 April 2011 and remains France's most famous fugitive.
Durand Line
Durand Line: 2,611 km Afghanistan-Pakistan boundary agreed 12 November 1893 between Mortimer Durand and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan; internationally recognized as Pakistan's border but never accepted by Afghanistan.
Duress in English law
Duress in English law is a common law excuse excusing crimes committed under threats of death or serious injury. Also called duress by threats and duress of circumstances; unavailable for murder, attempted murder and treason; refined by R v Hasan [2005].
Dustin Higgs
Dustin John Higgs, American federal death row inmate convicted of the 1996 kidnapping and murders of Tanji Jackson, Tamika Black, and Mishann Chinn in Maryland; received nine death sentences and was executed January 16, 2021, the last Trump-era federal execution.
Dusty Spencer
Dusty Ray Spencer, Florida death row inmate convicted of the 1992 murder of his wife Karen Spencer in Orange County; executed June 25, 2026 at age 74, the oldest person executed in modern Florida history.
Dutch Schultz
Dutch Schultz (Arthur Flegenheimer, 1902-1935) was a Bronx bootlegger and Harlem numbers-racket boss pursued for tax evasion by Thomas Dewey; he was shot dead at Newark's Palace Chop House on Luciano's orders.
Duty of care
Duty of care: the legal obligation to act with reasonable caution to avoid foreseeable harm, the threshold element of negligence. Known for Donoghue v Stevenson, the Caparo test, and the omissions doctrine.
Duty of support between spouses
The duty of support between spouses is the reciprocal legal obligation, arising from marriage itself, that each spouse provide for the other's necessities and refrain from harm.
Duty to rescue
The duty to rescue is a legal obligation to aid a person in danger; Anglo-American common law imposes it only for special relationships, created perils, or undertaken rescues.
DWI courts
A DWI court is a specialized problem-solving court for repeat and high-BAC impaired drivers, using treatment and intensive supervision instead of jail and adapted from the drug court model.
Dwight Eaglin
Dwight T. Eaglin, "Tommy" Eaglin, former professional boxer from Clearwater, Florida, twice sentenced to death for the 2003 murders of officer Darla Lathrem and inmate Charles Fuston during an escape attempt at Charlotte Correctional Institution.
E-2 visa
E-2 visa, the US treaty investor visa under INA 101(a)(15)(E)(ii) of 1952, distinct from E-1 treaty trader: requires treaty-country nationality, 50% enterprise ownership, substantial at-risk capital, and a non-marginal business; renewable indefinitely, no green card path.
E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump
E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump, also called Carroll I and Carroll II, comprises two federal defamation and sexual-abuse suits; juries awarded $5 million (2023) and $83.3 million (2024), both affirmed by the Second Circuit, with Supreme Court review of the larger judgment pending as No. 26-141.
E. R. Webber
E. Richard Webber, born in 1942, is an American jurist who served as a federal district judge in Missouri from 1995 until his retirement in 2022.
E. Randol Schoenberg
E. Randol Schoenberg (born 1966) is a Los Angeles litigator, co-founder of Burris, Schoenberg & Walden, who won Republic of Austria v. Altmann and recovered five Nazi-looted Klimt paintings worth over $325 million.
Earl Warren
Earl Warren (1891–1974), 14th Chief Justice of the United States (1953–1969) and three-term Republican Governor of California, led the Warren Court's rights revolution: Brown, Miranda, Baker v. Carr, Loving.
Earle Nelson
Earle Leonard Nelson (Virgil Wilson), the "Gorilla Strangler" (1897/1898–1928), an American serial killer who murdered at least 22 women across North America in 1925–1927 and was hanged in Winnipeg after Canada's largest manhunt.
Earll family murders
The Earll family murders were the 1902 killings of six family members on a farm in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. Farmhand Albert Edwin Batson was convicted and hanged in 1903.
Early federal district judiciary of the United States
The early federal district judiciary was the system of single-judge US district courts created by the Judiciary Act of 1789, with thirteen districts handling admiralty and minor matters.
Early Irish law
Early Irish law (Brehon law) is the vernacular legal system of early medieval Ireland, preserved in over seventy Old Irish tracts mostly from the seventh and eighth centuries, alongside the Latin Collectio canonum Hibernensis, which shaped European canon law.
Early life and career of Abraham Lincoln
Early life and career of Abraham Lincoln: Kentucky birth 1809, Indiana boyhood 1816-1830, New Salem years, self-taught law, and four Whig terms in the Illinois legislature from 1834.
Early life and career of Barack Obama
Early life and career of Barack Obama: born 1961 in Honolulu, raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, Columbia 1983, Chicago community organizer 1985-1988, Harvard Law Review president 1990, Illinois State Senator 1996, US Senator 2004.
Early modern treaty-making
Early modern treaty-making is the practice, from the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth century, by which European states concluded written agreements regulating war, peace, trade, and territory.
Early v. Commissioner
Early v. Commissioner, 445 F.2d 166 (5th Cir. 1971), a United States income tax case: a life interest received in settlement of a disputed gift claim was treated as acquired by gift, barring amortization under IRC 273.
Easement
Easement: a nonpossessory property interest allowing use of another's land; also called servitude right. Appurtenant easements run with land via dominant and servient estates; created by grant, implication, necessity, or prescription.
East Jersey State Prison
East Jersey State Prison (EJSP), formerly Rahway State Prison until its 1988 renaming, is a maximum-security New Jersey men's prison in Avenel, Woodbridge Township, opened in 1901, with an Auburn-style rotunda design and a proposed FY2026 closure.
Eastbound Strangler
Eastbound Strangler: unidentified American serial killer who murdered four Atlantic City sex workers, found November 20, 2006 in a drainage ditch behind the Golden Key Motel, Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey; heads facing east, barefoot; case unsolved, Heuermann ruled out.
Easter Sunday heist
Easter Sunday heist: the March 31, 2024 GardaWorld Sylmar burglary in Los Angeles, also called the Garda robbery, in which thieves stole up to $30 million in cash, the largest cash heist in the city's history.