Bar (law)

Bar in a legal context has three possible meanings: the physical division of a courtroom between its working and public areas; the process of qualifying to practice law; and the legal profession.

Courtroom division

The origin of the term bar is from the barring furniture dividing a medieval European courtroom, similar to the origin of the term bank for the bench-like location of financial transactions in medieval Europe. In the USA, Europe and many other countries referring to the law traditions of Europe, the area in front of the barrage is restricted to participants in the trial: the judge or judges, other court officials, the jury (if any), the lawyers for each party, the parties to the case, and witnesses giving testimony. The area behind the bar is open to the public. This restriction is enforced in nearly all courts. In most courts, the bar is represented by a physical partition: a railing or barrier that serves as a bar.

License and certification

The bar may also refer to the qualifying procedure by which a lawyer is licensed to practice law in a given jurisdiction.

Bar

A bar (also known as a saloon or a tavern or sometimes a pub or club, referring to the actual establishment, as in pub bar or club bar etc.) is a retail business establishment that serves alcoholic beverages, such as beer, wine, liquor, cocktails, and other beverages like mineral water and soft drinks and often sell snack foods, like crisps or peanuts, for consumption on premises. Some types of bars, such as pubs, may also serve food from a restaurant menu.

Bars provide stools or chairs that are placed at tables or counters for their patrons. Some bars have entertainment such as a live band, Bars that offer entertainment or live music are often referred to as music bars, live venues, or nightclubs. Types of bars range from inexpensive dive bars to elegant places of entertainment often accompanying restaurants for dining.

Many bars have a discount period, designated a "happy hour" to encourage off-peak-time patronage. Bars that fill to capacity sometimes implement a cover charge or a minimum drink purchase requirement during their peak hours. Bars may have bouncers to ensure patrons are of legal age, to eject drunk or fighting patrons, and to collect cover charges. Such bars often feature entertainment, which may be a live band, vocalist, comedian, or disc jockey playing recorded music.

Form factor (mobile phones)

The form factor of a mobile phone is its size, shape, and style, as well as the layout and position of its major components. There are three major form factors – bar phones, flip phones, and sliders – as well as sub-categories of these forms and some atypical forms.

Bar

A bar (also known as a slab, block, candybar) phone takes the shape of a cuboid, usually with rounded corners and/or edges. The name is derived from the rough resemblance to a chocolate bar in size and shape. This form factor is widely used by a variety of manufacturers, such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson. Bar type mobile phones commonly have the screen and keypad on a single face. The Samsung SPH-M620 has a unique bar style, offering different devices on either side of the bar: a phone on one side, and a digital audio player on the other. Sony Ericsson also had a well-known 'MarsBar' phone model CM-H333.

Since mid 2010s, almost all the mobile phones come in bar form factor.

Brick

"Brick" is a slang term almost always used to refer to large, outdated bar-type phones, typically early mobile phones with large batteries and electronics. However, "brick" has more recently been applied to older phone models in general, including non-bar form factors (flip, slider, swivel, etc.), and even early touchscreen phones as well, due to their size and relative lack of functionality to newer models. Such early mobile phones, such as the Motorola DynaTAC, have been displaced by newer smaller models which offer greater portability thanks to smaller antennas and slimmer battery packs.

Bar association

A bar association is a professional body of lawyers. Some bar associations are responsible for the regulation of the legal profession in their jurisdiction; others are professional organizations dedicated to serving their members; in many cases, they are both. In many Commonwealth jurisdictions, the bar association comprises lawyers who are qualified as barristers or advocates in particular, versus solicitors (see bar council). Membership in bar associations may be mandatory or optional for practicing attorneys, depending on jurisdiction.

Etymology

The use of the term bar to mean "the whole body of lawyers, the legal profession" comes ultimately from English custom. In the early 16th century, a railing divided the hall in the Inns of Court, with students occupying the body of the hall and readers or benchers on the other side. Students who officially became lawyers crossed the symbolic physical barrier and were "admitted to the bar". Later, this was popularly assumed to mean the wooden railing marking off the area around the judge's seat in a courtroom, where prisoners stood for arraignment and where a barrister stood to plead. In modern courtrooms, a railing may still be in place to enclose the space which is occupied by legal counsel as well as the criminal defendants and civil litigants who have business pending before the court.

Legal education

Legal education is the education of individuals who intend to become legal professionals or those who simply intend to use their law degree to some end, either related to law (such as politics or academic) or business. It includes:

Overview

In addition to the qualifications required to become a practicing lawyer, legal education also encompasses higher degrees, such as doctorates, for more advanced academic study.

In many countries other than the United States, law is an undergraduate degree. Graduates of such a program are eligible to become lawyers by passing the country's equivalent of a bar exam. In such countries, graduate programs in law enable students to embark on academic careers or become specialized in a particular area of law.

Massachusetts 1913 law

Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 207, Section 11, more commonly known as the 1913 law, is a Massachusetts law enacted in 1913 and repealed in 2008 that invalidated the marriage of non-residents if the marriage was invalid in the state where they lived. It originated during a period of heightened antipathy to interracial marriage and went largely unenforced until used between 2004 and 2008 to deny marriage licenses to out-of-state same-sex couples.

Enactment

State Senator Harry Ney Stearns introduced Senate Bill 234 on March 7, 1913. The bill was signed into law three weeks later by Governor Eugene N. Foss. The statute provided that in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

No record of the state Senate debate has been found. Historians and legal scholars have said that the original purpose of the legislation was an anti-miscegenation measure. The law did not ban interracial marriage, which had been legal in Massachusetts since 1843, but blocked interracial couples from states that banned interracial marriages from marrying in Massachusetts. The law was enacted at the height of a public scandal over black heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson's interracial marriages. A 1912 conference on uniform state laws recommended the language adopted by Massachusetts because, among other things, it would enforce state prohibitions against the marriage of "a white person and a colored person." At a conference of governors in 1912 during the height of the publicity surrounding Johnson's marriages, Governor Foss of Massachusetts was one of several northern governors who endorsed the enactment of an anti-miscegenation statute. Vermont passed a similar statute about the same time as Massachusetts.

Law360

Law360 is a subscription based, legal news service operated by the Portfolio Media company, a subsidiary of LexisNexis.

Marius Meland founded Portfolio Media in October 2003 and in 2004 began publishing a daily online newsletter on intellectual property law which he later named Law360. On March 20, 2012, the company was acquired by LexisNexis with Meland and Hoglund serving as co-CEOs. The publication has 11 news bureaus across the U.S.

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