Legal Terms Beginning with H
Habeas corpus
Latin: a court petition which orders that a person being detained be produced before a judge for a hearing to decide whether the detention is lawful. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Habitual offender
A person who is convicted and sentenced for crimes over a period of time and even after serving sentences of incarceration, such as demonstrates a propensity towards criminal conduct. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Habitual residence
Ordinary residence. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Halliday Order
A special Court order in regards to document disclosure where, in special cases, a lawyer for a litigant, as an officer of the Court, first review documents from specified sources, or at large, and identifies and proposes to set aside and distinguish documents weighed relevancy, for reasons of privilege, privacy, confidentiality, or the potential personal embarrassment of the party given the personal nature of the information in a document. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Hand, Learned
A judge's judge, American judge who stood up for unpopular but right causes. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Harassment
Unsolicited words or conduct which tend to annoy, alarm or abuse another person. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Hatch Act
An American statute which controls political activity of government employees. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Hearsay
Any evidence that is offered by a witness of which they do not have direct knowledge but, rather, their testimony is based on what others have said to them. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Heir
A beneficiary of wlll. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Hodge's Case
A rule in regards to the use of circumstantial evidence in the conviction of a criminal offence. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Holograph will
A will written entirely in the testator’s handwriting and not witnessed. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Home Invasion
A break and enter of occupied residential premises with forced confinement, assault or battery of occupants. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Homicide
The word includes all occasions where one human being, by act or omission, takes away the life of another. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Homosexuality
Homosexuality - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Hostile witness
During an examination-in-chief, a lawyer is not allowed to ask leading questions of their own witness. But, if that witness openly shows hostility against the interests (or the person) that the lawyer represents, the lawyer may ask the court to declare the witness 'hostile', after which, as an exception of the examination-in-chief rules, the lawyer may ask their own witness leading questions. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Hotchpot
The mixing of property for the purposing of effecting an proportionate division. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Hue and Cry
A community fugitive containment strategy of medieval England where a yell went up denouncing the offender and all within earshot took up the chase. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Hung jury
A jury is required to make a unanimous or near unanimous verdict. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
Husband-wife privilege
A special right that married persons have to keep communications between them secret and even inaccessible to a court of law. - (see expanded definition at duhaime.org)
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