document_title: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (season 8)

question_text: when does olivia benson return in season 8

text: Production[edit]

text: The eighth season began filming when Mariska Hargitay was in the final stages of her pregnancy. As a result, two episodes "Informed" and "Scheherazade" made use of desks, folders, and headshots to disguise Benson's abdomen. "Informed" became the season premiere but "Scheherazade" was not incorporated into the plot until 2007.[1] The episode "Burned" was directed by Eriq LaSalle who worked with Neal Baer and Mariska Hargitay on ER. He described the episode as "a compelling story with edgy performances."[2]

text: When writing the episode "Responsible", Neal Baer stated that he referred to "an article about... how there's been leaps in terms of research about the effects of alcohol on teenage brains."[1] Judith McCreary stated that information she used to write "Confrontation" came from a Google search; "I ran across a story about women who were raped more than once by the same guy and that made me wonder if his biological clock was ticking."[3] Diane Neal joked about the writers' penchant for disturbing web searches saying "I'm sure a couple of the writers are on the feds' most wanted Internet predators list too, because they're doing all this research on pedophilia."[4]

text: Judith McCreary also wrote the season finale "Screwed" during which illegal activities involving the detectives are brought up in the courtroom. She said "I wanted to explore chickens coming home to roost. A lot of shit these cops have been doing they haven't paid for. Benson committed a felony; she should've been kicked off the force and gone to prison."[5]

text: Cast changes and returning characters[edit]

text: During a six episode absence by Mariska Hargitay, Connie Nielsen was cast to play Stabler's temporary partner, Detective Dani Beck. Dick Wolf said that he was "thrilled that we have someone of Connie's obvious talent, beauty and stature to come in for these episodes. It doesn't get any better than this."[6]

text: Chris "Ludacris" Bridges made his second appearance on SVU in "Screwed" which concludes the seventh season episode "Venom". Neal Baer explained that he saw this episode as an opportunity to have Adam Beach's character, Detective Chester Lake, become a longer term addition to the show; "Chris causes Ice-T's character Fin major, major, major problems that go back many years. While everything is in disarray, SVU needs some extra hands and Adam's character is brought in to help out."[7]

text: Three episodes in the second half of the season starred Michael Weston as Simon Marsden, Olivia's half brother. Hargitay described this storyline as "probably the biggest thing that's ever happened to Olivia."[8] The episode in which Marsden is introduced features an appearance by Mary Stuart Masterson in her recurring role of Dr. Rebecca Hendrix.

text: Cast[edit]

text: Main cast[edit]

text:
Christopher Meloni as Det. Elliot Stabler
Mariska Hargitay as Det. Olivia Benson
Richard Belzer as Det. John Munch
Ice-T as Det. Fin Tutuola
Diane Neal as ADA Casey Novak
B. D. Wong as Dr. George Huang
Tamara Tunie as ME Dr. Melinda Warner
Dann Florek as Capt. Don Cragen

text: Recurring cast[edit]

text:
Mike Doyle as CSU Forensics Technician Ryan O'Halloran
Allison Siko as Kathleen Stabler
Isabel Gillies as Kathy Stabler
Joel de la Fuente as TARU Technician Ruben Morales
Judith Light as Judge Elizabeth Donnelly
Caren Browning as CSU Captain Judith Siper
Peter McRobbie as Judge Walter Bradley
Jill Marie Lawrence as Defense Attorney Cleo Conrad
Michael Weston as Simon Marsden
Vincent Spano as FBI Agent Dean Porter
Jeffrey Scaperrotta as Dickie Stabler
Patricia Cook as Elizabeth Stabler
Linda Powell as Lauren White
David Lipman as Judge Arthur Cohen
Karl Kenzler as Father Denis
Peter Gerety as Judge Peter Harrison
Anne James as Dr. Jane Larom
David Dollase as Agent Lockwood
Lisa Strum as Tonya Majeski
Ali Reza as Dr. Rohit Mehta
Kim Delaney as Capt. Julia Millfield
Joanna Merlin as Judge Lena Petrovsky
Ernest Waddell as Ken Randall
Erin Broderick as Maureen Stabler
Patricia Kalember as Judge Karen Taten
Connie Nielsen as Detective Dani Beck

text: Guest stars[edit]

text: The season premiere "Informed" saw Marcia Gay Harden reprise her role as Special Agent Dana Lewis, for which she received an Emmy nomination.[9] Acting opposite was Kristen Bush, who shaved her head for the role. After agreeing to do this, Bush said "It was a kind of tenuous connection as to why she was shaved. I probably should have investigated it more, but whatever."[10] The Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series was won by Leslie Caron for her performance in the third episode "Recall".[9] Caron played Lorraine Delmas, a rape victim whose statute of limitations is long over. However, her testimony gets newer evidence admitted after her rapist strikes again. Caron's scene, which was spoken predominantly in French, was described as "a rare appearance in front of American cameras."[11]

text: Jerry Lewis guest starred in the fourth episode "Uncle". He played Andrew Munch, the uncle of Detective John Munch. Neal Baer promoted the episode by saying "He brings both depth and heart to this role and gives insight into how often older people with depression are misdiagnosed."[12] In the fifth episode "Confrontation", Elanor Hutchins played Elizabeth Hassenback, a woman who was raped and later murdered. Elizabeth Hasselbeck, co-host of The View, objected to the use of a name that was similar to her own and called for a boycott of SVU based on this.[13] With the sixth episode "Infiltrated", Vincent Spano began playing FBI Agent Dean Porter, the case agent for Detective Benson's undercover work. The character would go on to cross paths with SVU detectives again in later episodes. In the seventh episode "Underbelly", Diane Neal had a scene with her husband Marcus Fitzgerald who played an ADA.

text: In the eighth episode "Cage", Margo Martindale played Rita Gabler, a foster parent whose methods have a devastating effect on a young girl. Neal Baer continued to praise her performance and in 2011 said "I know how good she is because when I did SVU, she put Elle Fanning in a cage and told her to set Connie Nielsen on fire."[14] The ninth episode "Choreographed" marked the return of Mariska Hargitay's character to the Special Victims Unit. The episode starred Bob Saget as a suspicious husband. Hargitay expressed her excitement about working with Saget and called him "America's biggest secret."[15] The eleventh episode "Burned" starred Michael Michele as an alleged rape victim who gains the sympathy of Detective Benson but not Detective Stabler. This reunited her with Eriq LaSalle, Neal Baer and Mariska Hargitay from her time on ER. LaSalle, who directed the episode, joked that "It also gave [him] an excuse to boss Michael Michele around."[2]

text: The twelfth episode "Outsider" starred Kal Penn as a rapist following an unusual pattern. "Outsider" also introduced Adam Beach to the show; his character forms a temporary partnership with Detective Tutuola. Neal Baer described the guest stars as bringing "some funny moments to SVU" and also applauded the tension shown between Adam Beach and Ice-T. Kelli Giddish, who played one of the victims would later join the show as Det. Amanda Rollins beginning at Season 13.[16] Bill Goldberg appeared at the beginning of the thirteenth episode "Loophole". Wrestler Bill Goldberg is Neal Baer's cousin and was given a physically intimidating role.[17] The fourteenth episode "Dependent" featured guest star Cary Elwes as mafia lawyer Sidney Truex, who survives an attack in his home where his wife is murdered. It is later revealed that the boyfriend of Truex's 16-year-old daughter is the murderer. The sixteenth episode "Philadelphia" showed Detective Benson clashing with a New Jersey cop played by Kim Delaney. Delaney mentioned being an SVU fan especially because of the subject matter addressed in the show and said "It's what we read about in the paper, unfortunately too many times."[18]

text: The third last episode "Annihilated" was predicted to be an Emmy contender for Christopher Meloni in the Envelope section of The LA Times.[19] Dylan Walsh guest starred as Malcolm Royce, a family man involved in a murder suicide. Meloni described Walsh's character as "outwardly a family man like Elliot, who has everything going for him, but this guy's living a double life."[20] In the second last episode "Pretend", Misti Traya guest starred as a woman who had been posing as a teenager for years. Noting the similarities, Neal Baer said the writers were "stunned" to hear about the sex offender Neil Havens Rodreick who was caught disguising himself as a twelve-year-old shortly after the episode was written.[1] In the season finale "Screwed", Chris "Ludacris" Bridges concluded the storyline of his character Darius Parker by defending himself in court. Baer described his performance saying "He defends himself which is cool. So now he takes on the role of a lawyer with Steven Weber playing his lawyer as well."[7]

text: Episodes[edit]

text:
No.overallNo. inseasonTitleDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateProd.codeUS viewers(millions)1621"Informed"Peter LetoDawn DeNoonSeptember 19, 2006 (2006-09-19)080114.55[21]
A young woman (Kristen Bush) shows up at a hospital emergency room beaten and with her head shaved. Despite signs of sexual assault, she demands only a morning-after pill and refuses a rape kit. Accosted on the street by Benson, she returns to her apartment and locks herself in the bathroom but leaves her underwear behind for Benson to steal as evidence. Benson and Stabler try to find out who assaulted the woman by talking to a friend of hers (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) at the cooperative where she works. When she goes missing, FBI Agent Dana Lewis (Marcia Gay Harden) reveals her vital role in a sting operation against an eco-terrorism group. Posing as a radical (Joanna Adler), Benson goes undercover to help prevent a terrorist bombing.1632"Clock"Jim HaymanAllison IntrieriSeptember 26, 2006 (2006-09-26)080314.41[22]
Stabler and Tutuola team up to investigate when a teenage boy (Daniel Farcher) and girl (Betsy Hogg) go missing on a school field trip. The case takes a different turn however, when they realize that the girl has Turner's syndrome making her look twelve when she is seventeen. The girl is found with her lover (Jason Butler Harner), an older man who has found a legal way to have sex with a girl who looks twelve. The girl's parents (Gregory Harrison and Deborah Raffin) and grandfather (Robert Vaughn) take the case to family court but there is nothing they can do since both parties are past the age of consent. When the court is adjourned, Stabler meets his new partner; Detective Dani Beck.1643"Recall"Juan J. CampanellaJonathan GreeneOctober 3, 2006 (2006-10-03)080514.30[23]
Stabler and Cragen have concerns about Beck's reputation as an overzealous investigator. She works with Stabler to help a woman (Lily Rabe) who was raped by a prominent lawyer (Charles Shaughnessy). The squad's credibility is damaged when another woman (Robin Weigert) comes forward, mistakenly claiming that she was raped by the same man. The people are unable to make the charges stick until a surprise witness (Leslie Caron) comes forward.1654"Uncle"David PlattDawn DeNoonOctober 10, 2006 (2006-10-10)080413.89[24]
When a mother and daughter are found raped and murdered, Stabler and Beck take in a homeless man who turns out to be Munch's uncle (Jerry Lewis). Although they question his dementia at first, Stabler and Beck find their way to a much more calculating suspect (Timothy Adams).1665"Confrontation"David PlattJudith McCrearyOctober 17, 2006 (2006-10-17)080612.98[25]
Stabler and Beck handle a case in which the attacker (Michael Kelly) seems to be coming back to rape his victims again and again. They disagree on how to help a woman (Marin Ireland) who is living in fear. The detectives soon discover that his plan is to impregnate selected women. In order to put him away, they compel a pregnant woman (Kerry O'Malley) to undergo chorionic villus sampling even though her husband (Matthew Arkin) wishes to remain ignorant to the fact that he is not the father.1676"Infiltrated"David PlattDawn DeNoonOctober 31, 2006 (2006-10-31)080913.36[26]
Casey Novak is forced to get Olivia Benson, still undercover with the FBI, to come back to New York to testify on behalf of a woman who was raped in a bank. While undercover with an Oregon environmental group, she and her group members (Maria Thayer and Chris Bowers) are injured by an overzealous deputy sheriff (Steven Rishard) and charged with assault. She is eventually released but is questioned about her group's involvement with a murder. She then sets out to clear her group's name and investigates the murdered man. Despite the efforts of his widow (Debra Jo Rupp) trying to shield her daughter from the truth, Benson learns that he was a pedophile with a room under his garage that he used for kidnapping. The local sheriff (Charles Martin Smith) finds two sets of prints at the scene, the murdered man's and those of a ten-year-old girl (Molly Camp) who went missing seven years ago. Benson's case agent (Vincent Spano) tells her that she is indeed spending time with harmless activists and that her undercover work is no longer needed. As she is still unaware of the urgency of Novak's case, she decides to stay and help the FBI find the missing girl. In the end, Benson finds the girl, who had developed Stockholm syndrome and makes it back to New York just in time to testify.1687"Underbelly"Jonathan KaplanAmanda GreenNovember 14, 2006 (2006-11-14)080714.76[27]
Three teenaged homicide victims with matching tattoos lead Detectives Stabler and Beck to an underage prostitution ring. With the victims' pimp (Michael K. Williams) as the prime suspect, detectives must rely on one of his young girls (Charlie Ray), to testify against him. Benson shows up at Cragen's office but decides not to go back to detective work just yet after seeing how Stabler and Beck are getting along.1698"Cage"David PlattPatrick HarbinsonNovember 21, 2006 (2006-11-21)080814.20[28]
Detectives Stabler and Beck investigate a car accident involving two foster children (Elle Fanning and Khaleel Carter) in which the driver (Marlyne Afflack) was fired from being a foster parent. The accident leads the detectives to foster parents (Margo Martindale and Leo Burmester), a doctor (Ken Howard) who advised them over the phone and some questionable medical practices involving controversial "rebirthing" therapy. As the detectives dig deeper into the case, they discover other gruesome secrets; one of the foster children sets a fire in Beck's living room attempting to commit suicide. This is too much for Dani to handle and she says goodbye to Stabler and the Special Victims Unit.1709"Choreographed"Peter LetoPaul GrellongNovember 28, 2006 (2006-11-28)081014.64[29]
The body of a woman (Kristine Szabo) with a mysterious cause of death is discovered in Central Park. Detective Stabler begins the investigation by talking to the victim's husband (Chris Sarandon) as his friends (Bob Saget and Catherine Bell) pay a condolence visit. Stabler's investigation unravels a case of drugs, infidelity and an elaborate plot that impacts everyone involved in the troupe. Stabler also discovers that Detective Benson is back in town and she is assigned to be his partner once again.17110"Scheherazade"David PlattAmanda GreenJanuary 2, 2007 (2007-01-02)080215.17[30]
Stabler agrees to hear the dying confession of a cancer patient (Brian Dennehy) but first, he and Benson do some digging into what possible crime he could have committed. This leads them to an unsolved case that goes back 47 years. The man is found to be responsible for 21 armed bank robberies, murder, and kidnapping. His daughter (Paget Brewster) refuses to see him in his last days, but as he lies dying she goes to his bedside.17211"Burned"Eriq La SalleJudith McCrearyJanuary 9, 2007 (2007-01-09)081114.41[31]
A former drug addict (Blair Underwood) who only gets to see his daughter (Tiffany Evans) during short supervised visits is accused of rape by his wife (Michael Michele). Stabler and Benson are at odds over whom to believe in the ensuing "he said, she said" case because the parties are in the middle of a bitter divorce and child-custody dispute.17312"Outsider"Arthur W. ForneyPaul GrellongJanuary 16, 2007 (2007-01-16)081614.17[32]
Fin looks into a string of similar assaults in which the victims (Tiffany Pao and Kelli Giddish) were raped, choked and beaten. Fin is joined in his investigation by a Brooklyn SVU detective (Adam Beach) working a similar case. This leads them to a successful family (Navid Negahban, Pooja Kumar and Sakina Jaffrey) who disowned their son (Kal Penn) for being an underachiever.17413"Loophole"David PlattJonathan GreeneFebruary 6, 2007 (2007-02-06)081213.45[35]
Stabler is injured by a drug-crazed suspect (Bill Goldberg) and Benson follows up on an anonymous letter which leads to an apparent child-pornography case and the testing of pesticides on unwitting apartment tenants. After arresting the landlord (Wayne Duvall), Olivia is exposed to the pesticide and develops medical symptoms similar to those exhibited by the victim (Marquis Rodriguez) and his mother (Karen Olivo). Despite the health risks, an official (Casey Siemaszko) informs the squad that this was done legally. Casey Novak eventually pursues the CEO (Ray Wise) of a pharmaceutical company and his lawyer (James Naughton) in order to challenge a controversial United States Environmental Protection Agency rule that allows intentional dosing of human beings in pesticide experiments.[33][34]17514"Dependent"Peter LetoKen StorerFebruary 13, 2007 (2007-02-13)081512.94[36]
After an intruder attacks a mob lawyer (Cary Elwes), murders his wife, and spares his son (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick), Benson and Stabler question their daughter (Emily VanCamp). However her wild night of drunken partying leaves her unable to recall her actions, even though her father insists she was at the scene of the crime. Stabler is charged with excessive force when the daughter's boyfriend (Justin Klosky) dies in his custody.17615"Haystack"Peter LetoAmanda GreenFebruary 20, 2007 (2007-02-20)081311.94[37]
An overzealous reporter (Kali Rocha) accuses a new mother (Ashley Williams) on television of kidnapping and trying to kill her baby. This turns out to be the last straw for the despondent woman, who promptly commits suicide. Although everyone is under suspicion, including the mother and her ex-husband (Pablo Schreiber), the case takes an unusual emotional toll on Detective Stabler who is drawn into the line of fire by the kidnapper (Dana Ashbrook) and his mother (Marian Seldes).17716"Philadelphia"Peter LetoPatrick HarbinsonFebruary 27, 2007 (2007-02-27)081711.73[38]
Benson finally unravels a part of her past when she finds her brother Simon Marsden (Michael Weston) who is suspected of being a rapist by a New Jersey captain (Kim Delaney). This distraction compromises a chase during which the squad tries to apprehend two male rapists (Michael Carbonaro and Roberto Purvis) who rape other men. Benson must meet with Dr. Rebecca Hendrix (Mary Stuart Masterson) to discuss her recent actions.17817"Sin"George PattisonPatrick HarbinsonMarch 27, 2007 (2007-03-27)082112.86[40]
A successful preacher (Tim Daly) is the prime suspect in the murder of a clandestine sexual partner (Kyle Bares),[39] until his wife (Kathy Baker) provides detectives with a taped conversation.17918"Responsible"Yelena Lanskaya & David PlattAllison IntrieriApril 3, 2007 (2007-04-03)081411.16[41]
Stabler and Benson are forced to dive into the world of underage drinking when a death leads to high school binge parties and a mother (Laura Leighton) who not only supplies booze to her daughter (Sarah Drew)'s friends but sleeps with one of those friends (Hunter Parrish) as well.18019"Florida"David PlattJonathan GreeneMay 1, 2007 (2007-05-01)081811.41[42]
When Detective Benson gets into the middle of an investigation of her brother Simon Marsden (Michael Weston), she takes out the stress on a suspect (Josh Casaubon) and gets suspended. Benson talks to Simon's mother (Maggie Burke), his father's coworker (Graham Winton) and a rape victim (Kathryn Hays) and begins to question whether or not she was the product of a rape in the first place. She digs deeper to discover that Simon was the victim of a frame-job by a police officer (Kim Delaney) who is in denial about sexual abuse in her own family.18120"Annihilated"Peter LetoAmanda GreenMay 8, 2007 (2007-05-08)081910.94[43]
A woman's murder appears to be the result of a professional hit, when her fiancé (Dylan Walsh) receives death threats, apparently resulting from his CIA career. Elliot, investigating this, finds that the man may not be all that he seems; the case takes a shocking turn when the man's wife (Kelly Deadmon) and children (Lucas Delvasto, John D'Leo and Shelby Adamowsky) are all found dead. Meanwhile, Elliot continues to rebuild his relationship with his family.18221"Pretend"David PlattDawn DeNoonMay 15, 2007 (2007-05-15)082012.75[44]
The team investigates the death of a partially clothed teenage boy (Dan Leonard) wearing a leather mask. The detectives discover that the victim's best friend (Michael Welch) is the killer and has a video, showing that the boy's death was the result of a backyard wrestling match gone wrong. The trial ends with the boy's conviction on a lesser charge but then the victim's girlfriend (Misti Traya) fails to show up at the sentencing hearing. When the girlfriend is injured in an attack instigated by the defendant, the case takes a bizarre turn when information surfaces that the girl is far older than she appears and has been defrauding the foster care system for over a decade.18322"Screwed"Arthur W. ForneyJudith McCrearyMay 22, 2007 (2007-05-22)082210.28[45]
Darius Parker (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges), goes on trial for the rape and murder of a woman with any mention of her fourteen-month-old child deemed inadmissible. The case brings Fin under fire from the media and even has Munch and Stabler at odds. Novak prosecutes the trial that brings Stabler and Tutuola, among others, to the stand. Many previous stories are brought into the trial, such as Stabler's daughter Kathleen's DUI, and Benson's illegal money-wiring to her half-brother, Simon Marsden (Michael Weston). It is also revealed that Kathy Stabler, Elliot's wife, is pregnant again.


document_title: Quarry

question_text: where does the water come from in a quarry

root

text: Quarry

text: Types of rock[edit]

text: Types of rock extracted from quarries include:

tag: p

text:
Chalk
China clay
Cinder
Clay
Coal
Construction aggregate (sand and gravel)
Coquina
Diabase
Gabbro
Granite
Gritstone
Gypsum
Limestone
Marble
Ores
Phosphate rock
Sandstone
Slate

tag: ul

text: Slabs[edit]

text: Many quarry stones such as marble, granite, limestone, and sandstone are cut into larger slabs and removed from the quarry. The surfaces are polished and finished with varying degrees of sheen or luster. Polished slabs are often cut into tiles or countertops and installed in many kinds of residential and commercial properties. Natural stone quarried from the earth is often considered a luxury and tends to be a highly durable surface, thus highly desirable.

text: Problems[edit]

text: Quarries in level areas with shallow groundwater or which are located close to surface water often have engineering problems with drainage. Generally the water is removed by pumping while the quarry is operational, but for high inflows more complex approaches may be required.  For example, the Coquina quarry is excavated to more than 60 feet (18 m) below sea level. To reduce surface leakage, a moat lined with clay was constructed around the entire quarry. Ground water entering the pit is pumped up into the moat.  As a quarry becomes deeper, water inflows generally increase and it also becomes more expensive to lift the water higher during removal; this can become the limiting factor in quarry depth.  Some water-filled quarries are worked from beneath the water, by dredging.

text: Many people and municipalities consider quarries to be eyesores and require various abatement methods to address problems with noise, dust, and appearance.  One of the more effective and famous examples of successful quarry restoration is Butchart Gardens in Victoria, BC, Canada.

text: A further problem is pollution of roads from trucks leaving the quarries. To control and restrain the pollution of public roads, wheel washing systems are becoming more common.

text: Quarry lakes[edit]

text: Many quarries naturally fill with water after abandonment and become lakes.  Others are made into landfills.

text: Water-filled quarries can be very deep with water, often 50 feet or more, that is often surprisingly cold. Unexpectedly cold water can cause a swimmer's muscles to suddenly weaken; it can also cause shock and even hypothermia.[1] Though quarry water is often very clear, submerged quarry stones and abandoned equipment make diving into these quarries extremely dangerous. Several people drown in quarries each year.[2][3] However, many inactive quarries are converted into safe swimming sites.

text: Such lakes, even lakes within active quarries, can provide important habitat for animals.[4]


document_title: History of Western typography

question_text: who is credited with designing and cutting the first roman typefaces

text: History of Western typography

text: Medieval design roots[edit]

text: Typography, type-founding and typeface design began as closely related crafts in mid-15th-century Europe with the introduction of movable type printing at the junction of the medieval era and the Renaissance. Handwritten letterforms of the mid-15th century embodied 3000 years of evolved letter design, and were the natural models for letterforms in systematized typography. The scribal letter known as textur or textualis, produced by the strong gothic spirit of blackletter from the hands of German area scribes, served as the model for the first text types.

text: Johannes Gutenberg employed the scribe Peter Schöffer to help design and cut the letterpunches for the first typeface—the D-K type of 202 characters used to print the first printed books in Europe. A second typeface of about 300 characters designed for the 42-line Bible c. 1455 was probably cut by the goldsmith Hans Dunne with the help of two others—Götz von Shlettstadt and Hans von Speyer.

text: Cultural tradition ensured that German typography and type design remained true to the gothic/blackletter spirit; but the parallel influence of the humanist and neo-classical typography in Italy (the second country where movable type printing was done) catalyzed textur into four additional sub-styles that were distinct, structurally rich and highly disciplined: Bastarda, fraktur, rotunda, and Schwabacher.

text: The rapid spread of movable type printing across Europe produced additional Gothic, half-Gothic and Gothic-to-Roman transitional types. Johann Bämler's Schwabacher, Augsburg appeared in 1474. The half-Gothic Rotunda type of Erhard Ratdolt c. 1486 was cut to suit Venetian taste. In 1476 William Caxton having learned his craft on the Continent printed the first books in England with a so-called Bâtarde type (an early Schwabacher design), but soon abandoned it.

text: The early printers of Spain were Germans who began by printing in up-to-date roman types but soon gave these up and adopted Gothic typefaces based on the letterforms of Spanish manuscripts. Valencia in the Kingdom of Aragon was the location of the first press, established in 1473. From there printers moved to other cities to set up presses. Roman types were used by the printers of Salamanca for their editions of classical authors. Printing in Portuguese began at Lisbon in 1495 (the first book printed in Portugal was a Hebrew book printed in 1489),[1]

text: Classical revival[edit]

text: In Italy the heavy gothic styles were soon displaced by Venetian or "old style" Latin types, also called antiqua. The inscriptional capitals on Roman buildings and monuments were structured on a euclidean geometric scheme and the discrete component-based model of classical architecture. Their structurally perfect design, near-perfect execution in stone, balanced angled stressing, contrasting thick and thin strokes, and incised serifs became the typographic ideal for western civilization. The best-known example of Roman inscriptional capitals exists on the base of Trajan's Column, inscribed c. 113.

text: In their enthusiastic revival of classical culture, Italian scribes and humanist scholars of the early 15th century searched for ancient lower case letters to match the Roman inscriptional capitals. Practically all of the available manuscripts of classical writers had been rewritten during the Carolingian Renaissance, and with a lapse of three hundred years since the widespread use of this style, the humanist scribes mistook Carolingian minuscule as the authentic writing style of the ancients. Dubbing it lettera antica, they began by copying the minuscule hand almost exactly, combining it with Roman capitals in the same manner as the manuscripts they were copying.[2]

text: Upon noticing the stylistic mismatch between these two very different letters, the scribes redesigned the small Carolingian letter, lengthening ascenders and descenders, and adding incised serifs and finishing strokes to integrate them with the Roman capitals. By the time moveable type reached Italy several decades later, the humanistic writing had evolved into a consistent model known as humanistic minuscule, which served as the basis for type style we know today as Venetian.[2]

text: Transition from humanistic minuscule to roman type[edit]

text: The classically endowed city of Rome attracted the first printers known to have set up shop outside Germany, Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweynheim, closely followed by the brothers Johann and Wendelin of Speyer (de Spira), and the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson. The sequence of appearance and production dates for types used by these printers have yet to be established with certainty; all four are known to have printed with types ranging from textur Gothic to fully developed romans inspired by the earlier humanistic writing, and within a few years the center of printing in Italy shifted from Rome to Venice.

text: Some time before 1472 in Venice, Johann and Wendelin issued material printed with a half-Gothic-half-roman type known as "Gotico-antiqua". This design paired simplified Gothic capitals with a rationalized humanistic minuscule letter set, itself combining Gothic minuscule forms with elements of Carolingian, in a one step forward, half step back blending of styles.

text: Around the same time (1468) in Rome, Pannartz and Sweynheim were using another typeface that closely mimicked humanistic minuscule, known as "Lactantius". Unlike the rigid fractured forms of Speyer's half-Gothic, the Lactantius is characterized by smoothly rendered letters with a restrained organic finish. The Lactantius a departed from both the Carolingian and Gothic models; a vertical backstem and right-angled top replaced the diagonal Carolingian structure, and a continuous curved stroke replaced the fractured Gothic bowl element.

text: For details on the evolution of lower case letterforms from Latin capitals, see Latin alphabet.

text: Development of roman type[edit]

text: Nicolas Jenson began printing in Venice with his original roman font from 1470. Jenson's design and the very similar roman types cut by Francesco Griffo c. 1499 and Erhard Ratdolt c. 1486 are acknowledged as the definitive and archetypal roman faces that set the pattern for the majority of western text faces that followed.

text: The Jenson roman was an explicitly typographic letter designed on its own terms that declined to imitate the appearance of hand-lettering. Its effect is one of a unified cohesive whole, a seamless fusion of style with structure, and the successful convergence of the long progression of preceding letter styles. Jenson adapted the structural unity and component-based modular integration of Roman capitals to humanistic minuscule forms by masterful abstract stylization. The carefully modelled serifs follow an artful logic of asymmetry. The ratio of extender lengths to letter bodies and the distance between lines results in balanced, harmonious body of type. Jenson also mirrors the ideal expressed in renaissance painting of carving up space (typographic "white space") with figures (letters) to articulate the relationship between the two and make the white space dynamic.

text: The name "roman" is customarily applied uncapitalized to distinguish early Jenson and Aldine-derived types from classical Roman letters of antiquity. Some parts of Europe call roman "antiqua" from its connection with the humanistic "lettera antica"; "medieval" and "old-style" are also employed to indicate roman types dating from the late 15th century, especially those used by Aldus Manutius (Italian: Manuzio). Roman faces based on those of Speyer and Jenson are also called Venetian.

text: Italic type[edit]

text: The humanist spirit driving the Renaissance produced its own unique style of formal writing, known as "cursiva humanistica". This slanted and rapidly written letter evolved from humanistic minuscule and the remaining Gothic current cursive hands in Italy, served as the model for cursive or italic typefaces. As books printed with early roman types forced humanistic minuscule out of use, cursiva humanistica gained favor as a manuscript hand for the purpose of writing. The popularity of cursive writing itself may have created some demand for a type of this style. The more decisive catalyst was probably the printing of pocket editions of Latin classics by Aldus Manutius.

text: The "Aldino" italic type, commissioned by Manutius and cut by Franceso Griffo in 1499, was a closely spaced condensed type. Griffo's punches are a delicate translation of the Italian cursive hand, featuring letters of irregular slant angle and uneven height and vertical position, with some connected pairs (ligatures), and unslanted small roman capitals the height of the lower case t. The fame of Aldus Manutius and his editions made the Griffo italic widely copied and influential, although it was not the finest of the pioneer italics. The "Aldino" style quickly became known as "italic" from its Italian origin.

text: Around 1527 the Vatican chancellery scribe Ludovico Arrighi designed a superior italic type and had the punches cut by Lauticio di Bartolomeo dei Rotelli. The more modular structure of Arrighi's italic and its few ligatures made it less a copy of the cursive hand than Griffo's. Its slightly taller roman capitals, a gentler slant angle, taller ascenders and wider separation of lines gave the elegant effect of refined handwriting.

text: Surviving examples of 16th-century Italian books indicate the bulk of them were printed with italic types. By mid-century the popularity of italic types for sustained text setting began to decline until they were used only for in-line citations, block quotes, preliminary text, emphasis, and abbreviations. Italic types from the 20th century up to the present are much indebted to Arrighi and his influence on French designers.

text: Swiss art historian Jakob Burckhardt described the classically inspired Renaissance modello of dual case roman and cursive italic types as "The model and ideal for the whole western world". Venetian pre-eminence in type design was brought to an end by the political and economic turmoil that concluded the Renaissance in Italy with the sack of Rome in 1527.

text: Renaissance Germany and Switzerland[edit]

text: Soon after 1500, roman typefaces began to gain popularity north of the Alps for printing of Latin literature. Johann Froben of Basel, Switzerland set up his press in 1491, and by about 1519 (when he printed Erasmus's famous edition of the Greek New Testament) he had established a set of standards for humanistic printing which were widely copied throughout the German-speaking world and also in Spain and, to a lesser extent in England. His principal type is wholly roman in the shape of the characters but retains an echo of gothic influence in the angled serifs and the way the thick and thin strokes are organized; it was coupled with mated sets of woodcut initials (often designed by distinguished artists) and with two larger sizes of uppercase letters for use in title pages and headings—Froben was the first to use such 'display faces' consistently, breaking away from the Italian tradition in which title pages and headings tended to be set in the same size as the main text. By using these large faces, Froben developed the title page as a fully organized artistic whole. Froben's italic face is based on that of Aldus but more even and uniform in effect. These Swiss books are the first to have been designed in every detail as printed artifacts rather than as adaptations of manuscript technique.

text: After about 1550 this Swiss/German tradition was gradually overwhelmed by French influence. Towards the end of the 16th century, the Wechel family of Frankfurt, previously based in Paris, was producing fine books which used French typefaces in conjunction with heavy but resplendent woodcut ornaments to achieve a splendid page effect; but soon after 1600 there was a general, marked decline in the quality of both skill and materials, from which German printing did not recover until the 20th century.

text: 16th century France[edit]

text: Typography was introduced to France by the German printers Martin Crantz, Michael Freyburger and Ulrich Gering, who set up a press in Paris in 1470, where they printed with an inferior copy of the Lactantius type. Gothic types dominated in France until the end of the 15th century, when they were gradually supplanted by roman designs. Jodocus Badius Ascensius (Josse Bade) in partnership with Henri Estienne established a press in Paris in 1503. Printing with undeveloped Roman and half-Gothic types, the French pair were too occupied meeting the demand for Humanistic and classical texts to design any original types of their own. French books nonetheless began to follow the format established by Italian printers, and Lyon and Paris became the new centers of activity. Eventually, the French government fixed a standard height for all type, to ensure that different batches could be used together.[3]

text: De Colines, Estienne, and Augereau[edit]

text: After their 1494 invasion of Italy the French were greatly influenced by Renaissance culture, and later set about converting French culture from Gothic to neo-classical. The required phonetic and orthographic changes to French language hindered the evolution of type design in France until the late 1520s. At the end of this period roman types introduced by Robert Estienne, Simon de Colines and Antoine Augereau began a phase of type design with a distinctly French character. Robert Estienne carried on the establishment of his father Henri Estienne, who had died in 1520. Simon de Colines had been the elder Estienne's assistant, married his widow, and set up his own press.

text: The de Colines roman of 1531 resembled Griffo's 1499 roman but did not copy it closely. Narrower forms and tighter letter fit; a with low angled bowl; elevated triangular stem serifs on i, j, m, n and r; flattened baseline serifs, delicately modeled ascender serifs and graceful, fluid lines characterize the French style. Robert Estienne's roman of 1532 was similar to the de Colines face, which Estienne complemented with a fine italic type based on that of Arrighi. The craftsmen who cut the punches for the romans used by Estienne and de Colines remain unidentified. In 1532 Antoine Augereau cut the punches for a roman type very close to Estienne's. The lower cases of the Estienne and Augereau types became the basis for post-Renaissance old style typography, and were copied by French typographers for the next 150 years.

text: Garamond[edit]

text: The svelte French style reached its fullest refinement in the roman types attributed to the best-known figure of French typography—Claude Garamond (also Garamont). In 1541 Robert Estienne, printer to the king, helped Garamond obtain commissions to cut the sequence of Greek fonts for King Francis I of France, known as the "grecs du roi". A number of roman faces used in Garamond's publishing activities can be positively attributed to him as punch-cutter. From the dates of their appearance, and their similarity to romans used by Estienne, Christoffel Plantijn and the printer André Wechel, the types known as "Canon de Garamond" and "Petit Canon de Garamond" shown on a specimen sheet issued by the Egenolff-Berner foundry in 1592 are generally accepted as Claude Garamond's final roman types.

text: Robert Granjon[edit]

text: Robert Granjon worked in the second half of the 16th century, mainly at Lyon, but was also recorded at Paris, Rome and Antwerp. He is still famous because of his Civilité types, imitating French gothic cursive calligraphy. His main contribution was an italic type known as "Parangon de Granjon". Italic type design had apparently become corrupted since the Arrighi and Aldine models. Granjon's italic had a greater slant angle, slanted roman capitals, and reduced weight and rigor. These qualities and its contrasting thick and thin strokes gave it a dazzling appearance that made it difficult to read. It was nevertheless the main influence for italic type design until the Arrighi model was revived in 1920.

text: In the 16th century, Western printers also developed Oriental types, such as François Savary de Brèves or Robert Granjon, usually with the objective of proselytizing the Catholic faith.[4]

text: Transition to modern type: 17th and 18th century[edit]

text: Baroque and rococo aesthetic trends, use of the pointed-pen for writing, and steel engraving techniques effected a gradual shift in typographic style. Contrast between thick and thin strokes increased. Tilted stressing transformed into vertical stressing; full rounds were compressed. Blunt bracketed serifs grew sharp and delicate until they were fine straight lines. Detail became clean and precise.

text: Transitional roman types combined the classical features of lettera antiqua with the vertical stressing and higher contrast between thick and thin strokes characteristic of the true modern romans to come.

text: The roman types used c. 1618 by the Dutch printing firm of Elzevir in Leyden reiterated the 16th-century French style with higher contrast, less rigor and a lighter page effect. After 1647 most Elzevir faces were cut by the highly regarded Christoffel van Dyck, whose precise renditions were regarded by some experts at the time as finer than Garamond's.

text: Fell types[edit]

text: From mid-16th century until the end of the 17th, interference with printing by the British Crown thwarted the development of type founding in England—most type used by 17th-century English printers was of Dutch origin. The lack of material inspired Bishop of Oxford Doctor John Fell to purchase punches & matrices from Holland c. 1670–1672 for use by the Oxford University Press. The so-named Fell types, presumed to be the work of Dutch punchcutter Dirck Voskens, mark a noticeable jump from previous designs, with considerably shorter extenders, higher stroke contrast, narrowing of round letters, and flattened serifs on the baseline and descenders. The design retained a retrogressive old-style irregularity, smooth modeling from vertical to horizontal, and angled stressing of rounds (except a vertically stressed o). Fell capitals were condensed, even-width, with wide flattened serifs; all characteristics of the definitive modern romans of the late 18th century. Fell italic types were distinguished by high contrast matching the Fell romans; wider ovals; a split-branching stroke from the stems of m n r and u; and long, flat serifs—prefiguring modern. They repeated the non-uniform slant of French models, and the capitals included swash J and Q forms.

text: An open-source digitisation of the Fell Types has been released by designer and engineer Igino Marini.[5]

text: Caslon[edit]

text: The first major figure in English typography is reckoned by type historians to have ended the monopoly of Dutch type founding almost single-handedly. The gun engraver-turned-punchcutter William Caslon spent 14 years creating the stable of typefaces on the specimen sheet issued in 1734. The complete canon included roman, italic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic etc. Caslon's Great Primer roman and English roman were retrogressive designs that very closely followed the Fell types and the roman of Miklós (Nicholas) Kis c. 1685 falsely attributed to Anton Janson. Like the Fells, Caslon's slightly bracketed serifs and old-style irregularity gave it a homely charm—its precise cut and perpendicularity place it firmly in the 18th century however. Caslon's italic structures follow the Fell italics, but at a condensed width and with conventional branching from stems.

text: William Caslon's prodigious output was influential worldwide. Caslon type and its imitations were used throughout the expanding British empire. It was the dominant type in the American colonies for the second half of the 18th century. Caslon marks the rise of England as the center of typographic activity.

text: Fleischmann[edit]

text: Joan Michaël Fleischman (1701–1768) was born in Nürnberg where he trained as a punchcutter. He found employment with Dutch type founders in Holland and settled there c. 1728. At the Enschedé foundry in Haarlem he cut punches for a large amount of material. Some time after 1743 he produced a distinguished roman design—related to the preceding transitional types but departing from them. It prefigured modern romans with sparse transaxial modeling joining the vertical stressing to hairline thins, and ball-ends. Fleischmann borrowed from the general mode of Phillipe Grandjean’s and Louis Simonneau’s "Romain du Roi," commissioned by Louis XIV in 1692[6] for the Imprimerie Royale, but did not imitate that face. Fleischmann's capitals were a new variety; an even-width scheme, compressed rounds, all-vertical stressing, and triangular beak ends of E F L T and Z, all characteristics prefiguring the "classical" moderns of Bodoni and Didot. Fleischmann's italic bore some resemblance to Granjean's but had longer ascenders and followed the established Dutch structures for h v and w.

text: Fleischmann was held in great esteem by his contemporaries, his designs exerting a decisive influence in the last quarter of the 18th century. Renowned French punchcutter Pierre Simon Fournier (1712–1768), confessed to having copied Fleischmann's design, and was first to dub "contrast" types like the Fells, Caslon and Fleischmann "modern". Fournier's rococo-influenced designs—Fournier and Narcissus—and his Modèles des Caractères (1742) continued the romaine du roi style and adapted it for his own modern age. Like Baskerville, his italics were inspired by handwriting and the engraved lettering known as copperplate hand. Fournier also published a two volume Manuel Typographique, in which he recorded much European typographic history, and introduced the first standardized system of type size measurement—the "point".

text: Baskerville[edit]

text: The roman and italic types of John Baskerville c. 1772 appeared later than Fleischman's but are considered transitional and partly retrogressive with a return to lower contrast, smooth transaxial modeling, finely modeled bracketed serifs, and long stems. The exquisite design and finish of Baskerville's roman however, combining elegance and strength, was modern. His roman design, and especially his italic, were rococo-influenced. His designs did not visibly quote any previous types. They were informed by his prior experience as a writing master and the influences of his time. The types of Joseph Fry, Alexander Wilson, and John Bell closely followed Baskerville, and through his correspondence with European type founders Baskerville's influence penetrated most of western Europe. Baskerville was a meticulous artist who controlled all aspects of his creation, devising more accurate presses, blacker inks and paper sealed with hot rollers to ensure crisp impressions. Of particular note, the lower storey of his lowercase g does not fully close. Derivatives of Baskerville are often identified thus. A modern revival of Baskerville, a font called Mrs Eaves, is named after Baskerville's wife who was the widow of Richard Eaves.[7]

text: Modern romans[edit]

text: True modern romans arrived with the types of the Italian Giambattista Bodoni and the French Didots. Completing trends begun by the Fell types, Fleischman, Fournier and Baskerville, the so-called "classical" modern romans eschewed chirographic and organic influences, their synthetic symmetric geometry answering to a rationalized and reformed classical model driven by the strict cartesian grid philosophy of René Descartes and the predictable clockwork universe of Isaac Newton.

text: The "classical" appellation of modern romans stems from their return to long ascenders and descenders set on widely spaced lines, and a corresponding light page effect reminiscent of old-style—occurring at a time of classical revival.

text: Bodoni was foremost in progressing from rococo to the new classical style. He produced an italic very close to Baskerville's, and a French cursive script type falling in between italic type and joined scripts. The roman types of Francois Ambroise Didot and son Firmin Didot closely resemble the work of Bodoni, and opinion is divided over whether the Didots or Bodoni originated the first modern romans. At any rate the Didots' mathematical precision and vanishing of rococo design reflected the "enlightenment" of post-revolution France under Napoleon. Francois Ambroise also designed "maigre" and "gras" types corresponding to later condensed and expanded font formats.

text: The Spanish designer Joaquín Ibarra's roman was influenced by Baskerville, Didot and Bodoni, but hewn nearer to old-style and used in the same classical manner, including spaced capitals. In England modern romans resembling Bodoni's were cut for the printer William Bulmer c. 1786 by the punchcutter William Martin, who had been apprenticed to Baskerville and influenced by him. Martin's italic mirrored the open-tail g and overall finesse of Baskerville's.

text: In Britain and the United States, modern romans (emerging around 1800 and totally dominant by the 1820s) took a somewhat more rounded, less geometrical form than the designs of Didot and Bodoni; an obvious difference is that in Anglo-American faces the upper-case C has only one serif (at the top) whereas in European designs it has two.

text: 19th and 20th century typography[edit]

text: Industrialization[edit]

text: The 19th century brought fewer stylistic innovations. The most notable invention was the rise of typefaces with strengthened serifs. Forerunners were the so-called Egyptienne fonts, which were used already at the beginning of the 19th century. Their name likely comes from the enthusiasm of the Napoleonic era for the orient, which in turn was started by Napoleon's invasion in Egypt. In fact slab-serif fonts (e. g. Clarendon from 1845) were newspaper fonts, whose serifs were strengthened in order to prevent damage during the printing process. Stylistically the serif fonts of the mid-19th century appeared very robust and otherwise had more or less neo-classical design features, which changed during the course of time: By the application of the slab serif design feature and by appending serifs to more and more typefaces, an independent intermediate group of heterogeneous fonts emerged during the 20th century. Meanwhile, the slab serifs are listed as an independent group in most typeface classifications–besides both main groups serif and sans serif.

text: Slab-serif and sanserif types were rarely used for continuous bodies of text; their realm was that of advertisements, title-pages and other attention-catching pieces of print. By about 1820, most western countries were using modern romans and italics for continuous texts. This remained true until the 1860s, when so-called 'old style' faces – a largely English-speaking phenomenon – came into use. These went to the opposite extreme from the modern faces; 'thick' strokes were attenuated, and serifs at the end of thin strokes (as in C, E, L and T) were narrow and angled whereas in modern faces they were broad and vertical or nearly so. All the upper-case characters were somewhat 'condensed' (narrowed). Old style faces remained popular until about 1910.

text: Above all the 19th century was innovative regarding technical aspects. Automatic manufacturing processes changed the print as well as the graphical illustrations. The illustration of printed matters could be considerably standardised due to the lithography technique invented by Alois Senefelder. Finally, another invention was photography, whose establishment at the end of the 19th century led to the first halftoning and reproduction procedures. The step-by-step development of a modern mass society provided a growing demand of printed matters. Besides the traditional letterpress beginnings of a newspaper landscape as well as a broad market for publications, advertisements, and posters of all kinds appeared. The challenges had changed: since printing and typography had been a straightforward craft for centuries, it now had to face the challenges of an industry-ruled mass society.

text: Hot type and phototypesetting in the 20th century[edit]

text: The 90 years between 1890 and 1980 coined typography until now. The craft of printing became an industry, and the typography became a part of it as well. Both stylistically and technologically this epoch was really tumultuous. The significant developments were the following:

text:
The fabrication and application of typefaces more and more were affected by industrial manufacturing processes. Significant incidents were the invention of the hot type machine by Ottmar Mergenthaler (Linotype machine, 1886) and Tolbert Lanston (Monotype machine, 1887) and a few decades later the emergence of phototypesetting. The result: Compilation and typographical design of the text could be more and more controlled by keyboards in contrast to manual typesetting.
A result of the industrialisation process was the unimagined number and distribution of new typefaces. Whether digital variants of Garamond and Bodoni or new contemporary type designs like Futura, Times, and Helvetica: nearly all currently used typefaces have their origin either in the following and ongoing digital typesetting era or are based on designs of this epoch. The basis was the appearance of large type foundries and type manufacturers. The result: Successful typefaces could quickly gain the status of a trademark–and therefore were able to assign a unique "branding" to products or publications.
Besides the traditional typography of books graphic design became a more or less independent branch. The tensions between those two branches significantly determined the stylistic development of 20th century's typography.

text: Art nouveau and New Book Art[edit]

text: Since impressionism the modern art styles were reflected in graphic design and typography too. Since 1890 the Art nouveau became popular. Its floral ornaments, the curved forms, as well as the emphasis on graphical realisation inspired the type designers of the start of the 20th century. A popular art nouveau font was the Eckmann designed by graphic artist Otto Eckmann. Furthermore, the influence of art nouveau was expressed in a lot of book illustrations and exlibris designs.

text: Altogether the return to the roots of book art become stronger around the start of the 20th century. It was initiated by British typographer, socialist, and private press publisher William Morris as well as by the Arts and Crafts Movement, which refers to him. Essentially this movement initiated three things: a return to the antiqua-models of the Renaissance, clarity and simplicity of book illustrations, and straightforward technical processes during the production of printed matters. An immediate consequence of the Arts and Crafts Movement was the establishment of the private press movement, which more or less was committed to Morris' ideals, and whose remains partially are still present today. An established meeting point of this scene in Germany for example is the Mainzer Minipressen-Messe, which actually is held every two years.

text: Especially the New Book Art movement, which formed in the decade before World War I, was influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement. The young type designers of the pre-war era, among them Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke and Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens, rejected both the late typographical classicism and the ornaments of the popular Art nouveau. The new ideal became a tidy and straightforward book typography, which dedicated itself to the ideas of the Renaissance. Walter Tiemann in Leipzig, Friedrich Hermann Ernst Schneidler in Stuttgart, and Rudolf Koch in Offenbach as instructors were the mentors of this kind of typography. They stayed influential in the field of book typesetting until a long time after the end of World War II.


document_title: Law of the United States

question_text: who enacts laws for the entire united states

text: Law of the United States

text: General overview[edit]

text: Sources of law[edit]

text: In the United States, the law is derived from five sources: constitutional law, statutory law, treaties, administrative regulations, and the common law (which includes case law).[17]

text: Constitutionality[edit]

text: Where Congress enacts a statute that conflicts with the Constitution, the Supreme Court may find that law unconstitutional and declare it invalid.[18]

text: Notably, a statute does not disappear automatically merely because it has been found unconstitutional; it must be deleted by a subsequent statute. Many federal and state statutes have remained on the books for decades after they were ruled to be unconstitutional. However, under the principle of stare decisis, no sensible lower court will enforce an unconstitutional statute, and any court that does so will be reversed by the Supreme Court.[19] Conversely, any court that refuses to enforce a constitutional statute (where such constitutionality has been expressly established in prior cases) will risk reversal by the Supreme Court.[20][21]

text: American common law[edit]

text: The United States and most Commonwealth countries are heirs to the common law legal tradition of English law.[22] Certain practices traditionally allowed under English common law were expressly outlawed by the Constitution, such as bills of attainder[23] and general search warrants.[24]

text: As common law courts, U.S. courts have inherited the principle of stare decisis.[25] American judges, like common law judges elsewhere, not only apply the law, they also make the law, to the extent that their decisions in the cases before them become precedent for decisions in future cases.[26]

text: The actual substance of English law was formally "received" into the United States in several ways. First, all U.S. states except Louisiana have enacted "reception statutes" which generally state that the common law of England (particularly judge-made law) is the law of the state to the extent that it is not repugnant to domestic law or indigenous conditions.[27] Some reception statutes impose a specific cutoff date for reception, such as the date of a colony's founding, while others are deliberately vague.[28] Thus, contemporary U.S. courts often cite pre-Revolution cases when discussing the evolution of an ancient judge-made common law principle into its modern form,[28] such as the heightened duty of care traditionally imposed upon common carriers.[29]

text: Second, a small number of important British statutes in effect at the time of the Revolution have been independently reenacted by U.S. states. Two examples that many lawyers will recognize are the Statute of Frauds (still widely known in the U.S. by that name) and the Statute of 13 Elizabeth (the ancestor of the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act). Such English statutes are still regularly cited in contemporary American cases interpreting their modern American descendants.[30]

text: However, it is important to understand that despite the presence of reception statutes, much of contemporary American common law has diverged significantly from English common law.[31] The reason is that although the courts of the various Commonwealth nations are often influenced by each other's rulings, American courts rarely follow post-Revolution Commonwealth rulings unless there is no American ruling on point, the facts and law at issue are nearly identical, and the reasoning is strongly persuasive.

text: Early on, American courts, even after the Revolution, often did cite contemporary English cases. This was because appellate decisions from many American courts were not regularly reported until the mid-19th century; lawyers and judges, as creatures of habit, used English legal materials to fill the gap.[32] But citations to English decisions gradually disappeared during the 19th century as American courts developed their own principles to resolve the legal problems of the American people.[33] The number of published volumes of American reports soared from eighteen in 1810 to over 8,000 by 1910.[34] By 1879 one of the delegates to the California constitutional convention was already complaining: "Now, when we require them to state the reasons for a decision, we do not mean they shall write a hundred pages of detail. We [do] not mean that they shall include the small cases, and impose on the country all this fine judicial literature, for the Lord knows we have got enough of that already."[35]

text: Today, in the words of Stanford law professor Lawrence Friedman: "American cases rarely cite foreign materials. Courts occasionally cite a British classic or two, a famous old case, or a nod to Blackstone; but current British law almost never gets any mention."[36] Foreign law has never been cited as binding precedent, but as a reflection of the shared values of Anglo-American civilization or even Western civilization in general.[37]

text: Levels of law[edit]

text: Federal law[edit]

text: Federal law originates with the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to enact statutes for certain limited purposes like regulating interstate commerce. The United States Code is the official compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal statutes. Many statutes give executive branch agencies the power to create regulations, which are published in the Federal Register and codified into the Code of Federal Regulations. Regulations generally also carry the force of law under the Chevron doctrine. Many lawsuits turn on the meaning of a federal statute or regulation, and judicial interpretations of such meaning carry legal force under the principle of stare decisis.

text: During the 18th and 19th centuries, federal law traditionally focused on areas where there was an express grant of power to the federal government in the federal Constitution, like the military, money, foreign relations (especially international treaties), tariffs, intellectual property (specifically patents and copyrights), and mail. Since the start of the 20th century, broad interpretations of the Commerce and Spending Clauses of the Constitution have enabled federal law to expand into areas like aviation, telecommunications, railroads, pharmaceuticals, antitrust, and trademarks. In some areas, like aviation and railroads, the federal government has developed a comprehensive scheme that preempts virtually all state law, while in others, like family law, a relatively small number of federal statutes (generally covering interstate and international situations) interacts with a much larger body of state law. In areas like antitrust, trademark, and employment law, there are powerful laws at both the federal and state levels that coexist with each other. In a handful of areas like insurance, Congress has enacted laws expressly refusing to regulate them as long as the states have laws regulating them (see, e.g., the McCarran-Ferguson Act).

text: Statutes[edit]

text: After the President signs a bill into law (or Congress enacts it over his veto), it is delivered to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) where it is assigned a law number, and prepared for publication as a slip law.[38] Public laws, but not private laws, are also given legal statutory citation by the OFR. At the end of each session of Congress, the slip laws are compiled into bound volumes called the United States Statutes at Large, and they are known as session laws. The Statutes at Large present a chronological arrangement of the laws in the exact order that they have been enacted.

text: Public laws are incorporated into the United States Code, which is a codification of all general and permanent laws of the United States. The main edition is published every six years by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, and cumulative supplements are published annually.[39] The U.S. Code is arranged by subject matter, and it shows the present status of laws (with amendments already incorporated in the text) that have been amended on one or more occasions.

text: Regulations[edit]

text: Congress often enacts statutes that grant broad rulemaking authority to federal agencies. Often, Congress is simply too gridlocked to draft detailed statutes that explain how the agency should react to every possible situation, or Congress believes the agency's technical specialists are best equipped to deal with particular fact situations as they arise. Therefore, federal agencies are authorized to promulgate regulations. Under the principle of Chevron deference, regulations normally carry the force of law as long as they are based on a reasonable interpretation of the relevant statutes.[40]

text: Regulations are adopted pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Regulations are first proposed and published in the Federal Register (FR or Fed. Reg.) and subject to a public comment period. Eventually, after a period for public comment and revisions based on comments received, a final version is published in the Federal Register. The regulations are codified and incorporated into the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) which is published once a year on a rolling schedule.

text: Besides regulations formally promulgated under the APA, federal agencies also frequently promulgate an enormous amount of forms, manuals, policy statements, letters, and rulings. These documents may be considered by a court as persuasive authority as to how a particular statute or regulation may be interpreted (known as Skidmore deference), but are not entitled to Chevron deference.

text: Common law, case law, and precedent[edit]

text: Unlike the situation with the states, there is no plenary reception statute at the federal level that continued the common law and thereby granted federal courts the power to formulate legal precedent like their English predecessors. Federal courts are solely creatures of the federal Constitution and the federal Judiciary Acts.[41] However, it is universally accepted that the Founding Fathers of the United States, by vesting "judicial power" into the Supreme Court and the inferior federal courts in Article Three of the United States Constitution, thereby vested in them the implied judicial power of common law courts to formulate persuasive precedent; this power was widely accepted, understood, and recognized by the Founding Fathers at the time the Constitution was ratified.[42] Several legal scholars have argued that the federal judicial power to decide "cases or controversies" necessarily includes the power to decide the precedential effect of those cases and controversies.[43]

text: The difficult question is whether federal judicial power extends to formulating binding precedent through strict adherence to the rule of stare decisis. This is where the act of deciding a case becomes a limited form of lawmaking in itself, in that an appellate court's rulings will thereby bind itself and lower courts in future cases (and therefore also impliedly binds all persons within the court's jurisdiction). Prior to a major change to federal court rules in 2007, about one-fifth of federal appellate cases were published and thereby became binding precedents, while the rest were unpublished and bound only the parties to each case.[42]

text: As federal judge Alex Kozinski has pointed out, binding precedent as we know it today simply did not exist at the time the Constitution was framed.[42] Judicial decisions were not consistently, accurately, and faithfully reported on both sides of the Atlantic (reporters often simply rewrote or failed to publish decisions which they disliked), and the United Kingdom lacked a coherent court hierarchy prior to the end of the 19th century.[42] Furthermore, English judges in the eighteenth century subscribed to now-obsolete natural law theories of law, by which law was believed to have an existence independent of what individual judges said. Judges saw themselves as merely declaring the law which had always theoretically existed, and not as making the law.[42] Therefore, a judge could reject another judge's opinion as simply an incorrect statement of the law, in the way that scientists regularly reject each other's conclusions as incorrect statements of the laws of science.[42]

text: In turn, according to Kozinski's analysis, the contemporary rule of binding precedent became possible in the U.S. in the nineteenth century only after the creation of a clear court hierarchy (under the Judiciary Acts), and the beginning of regular verbatim publication of U.S. appellate decisions by West Publishing.[42] The rule gradually developed, case-by-case, as an extension of the judiciary's public policy of effective judicial administration (that is, in order to efficiently exercise the judicial power).[42] The rule of precedent is generally justified today as a matter of public policy, first, as a matter of fundamental fairness, and second, because in the absence of case law, it would be completely unworkable for every minor issue in every legal case to be briefed, argued, and decided from first principles (such as relevant statutes, constitutional provisions, and underlying public policies), which in turn would create hopeless inefficiency, instability, and unpredictability, and thereby undermine the rule of law.[44][45]

text: Here is a typical exposition of that public policy in a 2008 majority opinion signed by Associate Justice Stephen Breyer:

text: Justice Brandeis once observed that "in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right." Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co. [...] To overturn a decision settling one such matter simply because we might believe that decision is no longer "right" would inevitably reflect a willingness to reconsider others. And that willingness could itself threaten to substitute disruption, confusion, and uncertainty for necessary legal stability. We have not found here any factors that might overcome these considerations.[46]

text: It is now sometimes possible, over time, for a line of precedents to drift from the express language of any underlying statutory or constitutional texts until the courts' decisions establish doctrines that were not considered by the texts' drafters. This trend has been strongly evident in federal substantive due process[47] and Commerce Clause decisions.[48] Originalists and political conservatives, such as Associate Justice Antonin Scalia have criticized this trend as anti-democratic.[49][50][51][52]

text: Under the doctrine of Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins (1938), there is no general federal common law. Although federal courts can create federal common law in the form of case law, such law must be linked one way or another to the interpretation of a particular federal constitutional provision, statute, or regulation (which in turn was enacted as part of the Constitution or after). Federal courts lack the plenary power possessed by state courts to simply make up law, which the latter are able to do in the absence of constitutional or statutory provisions replacing the common law. Only in a few narrow limited areas, like maritime law,[53] has the Constitution expressly authorized the continuation of English common law at the federal level (meaning that in those areas federal courts can continue to make law as they see fit, subject to the limitations of stare decisis).

text: The other major implication of the Erie doctrine is that federal courts cannot dictate the content of state law when there is no federal issue (and thus no federal supremacy issue) in a case.[54] When hearing claims under state law pursuant to diversity jurisdiction, federal trial courts must apply the statutory and decisional law of the state in which they sit, as if they were a court of that state,[55] even if they believe that the relevant state law is irrational or just bad public policy.[56] And under Erie, deference is one-way only: state courts are not bound by federal interpretations of state law.[57]

text: Although judicial interpretations of federal law from the federal district and intermediate appellate courts hold great persuasive weight, state courts are not bound to follow those interpretations.[58] There is only one federal court that binds all state courts as to the interpretation of federal law and the federal Constitution: the U.S. Supreme Court itself.[59]

text: State law[edit]

text: The fifty American states are separate sovereigns,[60] with their own state constitutions, state governments, and state courts. All states have a legislative branch which enacts state statutes, an executive branch that promulgates state regulations pursuant to statutory authorization, and a judicial branch that applies, interprets, and occasionally overturns both state statutes and regulations, as well as local ordinances. They retain plenary power to make laws covering anything not preempted by the federal Constitution, federal statutes, or international treaties ratified by the federal Senate. Normally, state supreme courts are the final interpreters of state constitutions and state law, unless their interpretation itself presents a federal issue, in which case a decision may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by way of a petition for writ of certiorari.[61] State laws have dramatically diverged in the centuries since independence, to the extent that the United States cannot be regarded as one legal system as to the majority of types of law traditionally under state control, but must be regarded as 50 separate systems of tort law, family law, property law, contract law, criminal law, and so on.[62]

text: Most cases are litigated in state courts and involve claims and defenses under state laws.[63][64] In a 2012 report, the National Center for State Courts' Court Statistics Project found that state trial courts received 103.5 million newly filed cases in 2010, which consisted of 56.3 million traffic cases, 20.4 million criminal cases, 19.0 million civil cases, 5.9 million domestic relations cases, and 1.9 million juvenile cases.[65] In 2010, state appellate courts received 272,795 new cases.[66] By way of comparison, all federal district courts in 2016 together received only about 274,552 new civil cases, 79,787 new criminal cases, and 833,515 bankruptcy cases, while federal appellate courts received 53,649 new cases.[67]

text: State legal systems[edit]

text:
Law of Alabama
Law of Alaska
Law of Arizona
Law of Arkansas
Law of California
Law of Colorado
Law of Connecticut
Law of Delaware
Law of Florida
Law of Georgia (U.S. state)
Law of Hawaii
Law of Idaho
Law of Illinois
Law of Indiana
Law of Iowa
Law of Kansas
Law of Kentucky
Law of Louisiana
Law of Maine
Law of Maryland
Law of Massachusetts
Law of Michigan
Law of Minnesota
Law of Mississippi
Law of Missouri
Law of Montana
Law of Nebraska
Law of Nevada
Law of New Hampshire
Law of New Jersey
Law of New Mexico
Law of New York
Law of North Carolina
Law of North Dakota
Law of Ohio
Law of Oklahoma
Law of Oregon
Law of Pennsylvania
Law of Rhode Island
Law of South Carolina
Law of South Dakota
Law of Tennessee
Law of Texas
Law of Utah
Law of Vermont
Law of Virginia
Law of Washington
Law of West Virginia
Law of Wisconsin
Law of Wyoming

text: Local law[edit]

text: States have delegated lawmaking powers to thousands of agencies, townships, counties, cities, and special districts. And all the state constitutions, statutes and regulations (as well as all the ordinances and regulations promulgated by local entities) are subject to judicial interpretation like their federal counterparts.[68]

text: It is common for residents of major U.S. metropolitan areas to live under six or more layers of special districts as well as a town or city, and a county or township (in addition to the federal and state governments).[69] Thus, at any given time, the average American citizen is subject to the rules and regulations of several dozen different agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, depending upon one's current location and behavior.

text: Legal subjects[edit]

text: American lawyers draw a fundamental distinction between procedural law (which controls the procedure followed by courts and parties to legal cases) and substantive law (the actual substance, or principles of law, which is what most people think of as law).[70]

text: Criminal law and procedure[edit]

text: Criminal law involves the prosecution by the state of wrongful acts which are considered to be so serious that they are a breach of the sovereign's peace (and cannot be deterred or remedied by mere lawsuits between private parties). Generally, crimes can result in incarceration, but torts (see below) cannot. The majority of the crimes committed in the United States are prosecuted and punished at the state level. Federal criminal law focuses on areas specifically relevant to the federal government like evading payment of federal income tax, mail theft, or physical attacks on federal officials, as well as interstate crimes like drug trafficking and wire fraud.

text: All states have somewhat similar laws in regard to "higher crimes" (or felonies), such as murder and rape, although penalties for these crimes may vary from state to state. Capital punishment is permitted in some states but not others. Three strikes laws in certain states impose harsh penalties on repeat offenders.

text: Some states distinguish between two levels: felonies and misdemeanors (minor crimes). Generally, most felony convictions result in lengthy prison sentences as well as subsequent probation, large fines, and orders to pay restitution directly to victims; while misdemeanors may lead to a year or less in jail and a substantial fine. To simplify the prosecution of traffic violations and other relatively minor crimes, some states have added a third level, infractions. These may result in fines and sometimes the loss of one's driver's license, but no jail time.

text: For public welfare offenses where the state is punishing merely risky (as opposed to injurious) behavior, there is significant diversity across the various states. For example, punishments for drunk driving varied greatly prior to 1990. State laws dealing with drug crimes still vary widely, with some states treating possession of small amounts of drugs as a misdemeanor offense or as a medical issue and others categorizing the same offense as a serious felony.

text: The law of criminal procedure in the United States consists of a massive overlay of federal constitutional case law interwoven with the federal and state statutes that actually provide the foundation for the creation and operation of law enforcement agencies and prison systems as well as the proceedings in criminal trials. Due to the perennial inability of legislatures in the U.S. to enact statutes that would actually force law enforcement officers to respect the constitutional rights of criminal suspects and convicts, the federal judiciary gradually developed the exclusionary rule as a method to enforce such rights.[71] In turn, the exclusionary rule spawned a family of judge-made remedies for the abuse of law enforcement powers, of which the most famous is the Miranda warning. The writ of habeas corpus is often used by suspects and convicts to challenge their detention, while the Civil Rights Act of 1871 and Bivens actions are used by suspects to recover tort damages for police brutality.

text: Civil procedure[edit]

text: The law of civil procedure governs process in all judicial proceedings involving lawsuits between private parties. Traditional common law pleading was replaced by code pleading in 24 states after New York enacted the Field Code in 1850 and code pleading in turn was subsequently replaced again in most states by modern notice pleading during the 20th century. The old English division between common law and equity courts was abolished in the federal courts by the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938; it has also been independently abolished by legislative acts in nearly all states. The Delaware Court of Chancery is the most prominent of the small number of remaining equity courts.

text: Thirty-five states have adopted rules of civil procedure modeled after the FRCP (including rule numbers). However, in doing so, they had to make some modifications to account for the fact that state courts have broad general jurisdiction while federal courts have relatively limited jurisdiction.

text: New York, Illinois, and California are the most significant states that have not adopted the FRCP. Furthermore, all three states continue to maintain most of their civil procedure laws in the form of codified statutes enacted by the state legislature, as opposed to court rules promulgated by the state supreme court, on the ground that the latter are undemocratic. But certain key portions of their civil procedure laws have been modified by their legislatures to bring them closer to federal civil procedure.[72]

text: Generally, American civil procedure has several notable features, including extensive pretrial discovery, heavy reliance on live testimony obtained at deposition or elicited in front of a jury, and aggressive pretrial "law and motion" practice designed to result in a pretrial disposition (that is, summary judgment) or a settlement. U.S. courts pioneered the concept of the opt-out class action, by which the burden falls on class members to notify the court that they do not wish to be bound by the judgment, as opposed to opt-in class actions, where class members must join into the class. Another unique feature is the so-called American Rule under which parties generally bear their own attorneys' fees (as opposed to the English Rule of "loser pays"), though American legislators and courts have carved out numerous exceptions.

text: Contract law[edit]

text: Contract law covers obligations established by agreement (express or implied) between private parties. Generally, contract law in transactions involving the sale of goods has become highly standardized nationwide as a result of the widespread adoption of the Uniform Commercial Code. However, there is still significant diversity in the interpretation of other kinds of contracts, depending upon the extent to which a given state has codified its common law of contracts or adopted portions of the Restatement (Second) of Contracts.

text: Parties are permitted to agree to arbitrate disputes arising from their contracts. Under the Federal Arbitration Act (which has been interpreted to cover all contracts arising under federal or state law), arbitration clauses are generally enforceable unless the party resisting arbitration can show unconscionability or fraud or something else which undermines the entire contract.

text: Tort law[edit]

text: Tort law generally covers any civil action between private parties arising from wrongful acts which amount to a breach of general obligations imposed by law and not by contract.

text: Tort law covers the entire imaginable spectrum of wrongs which humans can inflict upon each other, and of course, partially overlaps with wrongs also punishable by criminal law. Although the American Law Institute has attempted to standardize tort law through the development of several versions of the Restatement of Torts, many states have chosen to adopt only certain sections of the Restatements and to reject others. Thus, because of its immense size and diversity, American tort law cannot be easily summarized.

text: For example, a few jurisdictions allow actions for negligent infliction of emotional distress even in the absence of physical injury to the plaintiff, but most do not. For any particular tort, states differ on the causes of action, types and scope of remedies, statutes of limitations, and the amount of specificity with which one must plead the cause. With practically any aspect of tort law, there is a "majority rule" adhered to by most states, and one or more "minority rules."

text: Notably, the most broadly influential innovation of 20th-century American tort law was the rule of strict liability for defective products, which originated with judicial glosses on the law of warranty. In 1963, Roger J. Traynor of the Supreme Court of California threw away legal fictions based on warranties and imposed strict liability for defective products as a matter of public policy in the landmark case of Greenman v. Yuba Power Products.[73] The American Law Institute subsequently adopted a slightly different version of the Greenman rule in Section 402A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, which was published in 1964 and was very influential throughout the United States.[74] Outside the U.S., the rule was adopted by the European Economic Community in the Product Liability Directive of July 1985[75] by Australia in July 1992[76] and by Japan in June 1994.[77]

text: By the 1990s, the avalanche of American cases resulting from Greenman and Section 402A had become so complicated that another restatement was needed, which occurred with the 1997 publication of the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability.[78]