mental illness, legal: see insanity.

costs, legal: see damages.

Legal Tender cases, lawsuits brought to the U.S. Supreme Court involving the constitutionality of the Legal Tender Act of 1862, which was passed to meet currency needs during the Civil War. The act had authorized the issue of $150 million in "United States notes" (see greenback) without any reserve or specie basis. Intended originally as only a temporary measure during wartime, about $450 million had been issued in greenbacks by the end of the war. The paper money depreciated in terms of gold and became the subject of controversy, particularly because debts contracted earlier could be paid in this cheaper currency. Many cases concerning the greenbacks were entered in the courts, but it was not until 1870 that the Supreme Court attacked the constitutionality of paper money. In Hepburn v. Griswold (1870), the Majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Samuel P. Chase, declared the act unconstitutional as a violation of Fifth Amendment protections against the taking of property without due process. President Ulysses Grant, angered by the decision, promptly nominated two Republican justices to the Court who reversed the decision in Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis (1871), ruling that the act was valid on the basis of the implied powers of Congress. The constitutionality of the act was more widely sustained in Juillard v. Greenman (1884).

Law that prescribes the procedures and methods for enforcing rights and duties and for obtaining redress (e.g., in a suit). It is distinguished from substantive law (i.e., law that creates, defines, or regulates rights and duties). Procedural law is a set of established forms for conducting a trial and regulating the events that precede and follow it. It prescribes rules relative to jurisdiction, pleading and practice, jury selection, evidence, appeal, execution of judgments, representation of counsel, costs, registration (e.g., of a stock offer), prosecution of crime, and conveyancing (transference of deeds, leases, etc.), among other matters.

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Systematic compilation of law or legal principles. The oldest extant fragments of a law code are tablets from the ancient city of Ebla dating to circa 2400 BC. The best-known ancient code is that of Hammurabi. Roman legal records began in the 5th century BC, though the first formal codification, ordered by Justinian I, was not undertaken until the 6th century AD. In the Middle Ages and into the modern era, only local or provincial compilations were attempted. The first major national code was the Napoleonic Code, followed by the German, Swiss, and Japanese codes. In common-law countries such as England and the U.S., law codes have traditionally been less important than the record of judicial decisions, though major codifications were completed in the U.S. in the 20th century (e.g., the U.S. Code, the Uniform Commercial Code). Seealso civil law; German Civil Code.

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