History & Law

An argument that the art, science, or thinking of an earlier time is inherently inferior to that of the present, simply by virtue of its timing priority or the belief that since civilization has advanced in certain areas, people of earlier time periods were less intelligent.

From the French for a sanitary cordon, traditionally refers to forming a quarantine area, but also in politics implies off-limit topics, zones, and parties.

The belief that a society or institution is tending towards decline.

A double metaphor for an event that is both extremely large in size or impact (a "king") and born of unique origins (a "dragon") relative to its peers (other events from the same system). Dragon King events are generated by or correspond to mechanisms such as positive feedback, tipping points, bifurcations, and phase transitions, that tend to occur in nonlinear and complex systems, and serve to amplify Dragon King events to extreme levels.

Looking backwards after an event has occurred and arguing for its obvious predictability, when in fact at the time it was not or was much harder to predict.

The assumption that decision makers of the past viewed events from the same perspective and had the same information as those subsequently analyzing the decision.

A set of considerations is thought to hold good only because a completed process is read into the content of the process which conditions this completed result.

A legal term indicating that a criminal has been caught in the act of committing an offense.

Latin for "he said it himself" — an assertion without proof; or a dogmatic expression of opinion.

The mental element of a person's intention to commit a crime; or knowledge that one's action or lack of action would cause a crime to be committed.

Someone's habits of working, particularly in the context of business or criminal investigations.

Acknowledging that a comparison being made requires certain alterations that don't need to be stated but they will be made.

A Latin phrase used in English to mean an exchange of goods or services, in which one transfer is contingent upon the other.

In the common law of torts, res ipsa loquitur (Latin for "the thing speaks for itself") is a doctrine that infers negligence from the very nature of an accident or injury in the absence of direct evidence on how any defendant behaved.

A doctrine that a party is responsible for acts of their agents.

The argument that because an event has occurred under some circumstance, the circumstance must have made its occurrence inevitable.

A key to deciphering an unknown text or idea.

An indispensable and essential action, condition, or ingredient.

Often in law, describes an act of authority taken without formal prompting from another party.

Often used a prefix that denotes the first or earliest of something, and in modern uses has come to imply the purest or most archetypal form of something.

A public debate within a country on a problematic period of its recent history. Most often associated with World War II and the Holocaust.