Glossary

Inheritance

Assets such as money or property that a person often leaves their family members.

Injunction

a judicial order that restrains a person from beginning or continuing an action threatening or invading the legal right of another.

Invalid

A person made weak by illness.

Jim Crow laws

refer to the legalized segregation of the Black population of the United States in schools, restaurants, public transportation, and other institutions or facilities, and the denial of the right to vote, after the Civil War up until the 1960s.

judge advocate

officers serving in the United States Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, and Navy who act as military lawyers and legal advisors to senior military officials.

Judicial restraint

the idea that judges should be reluctant to declare legislative enactments unconstitutional unless the conflict between the law and the Constitution is obvious.

Judicial Review

The authority of the Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of the acts of the legislative and executive branches.

Judiciary Act of 1789

A law that established the structure and jurisdiction of the federal court system.

Judiciary Act of 1801

Also called the “Midnight Judges Act,” it was an act passed in the final days of the Adams administration which reorganized the federal judiciary and was repealed by the Jefferson administration.

Jurisdiction

The authority/power given by law to a court to try cases and rule on legal matters within a particular geographic area and/or over certain types of legal cases.