Glossary of Legal Terms Beginning with E

E: Legal definitions for terms and concepts beginning with E

Earth Movement: Phenomena related to forces operating within the earth itself, and not to the merely superficial effects of external forces, such as erosion by run-off rainwater.
Easement: A legal right to the access over or use of another's land or waterway.
Eavesdroppers: Those convicted of the obsolete offence of intentional, covert and direct listening-in to another's conversations, and the subsequent use of the contents thereof to disturb the peace.
Ecclesiastical Law: Church law.
E-Commerce: The buying and sellling of goods and services on the internet.
Economic Activity: The production, distribution, and consumption of commodities.
Education: Imparting of knowledge; academic instruction and professional training.
Eggshell Skull Doctrine: A tort-feasor or a wrongdoer takes his victim as he finds him.
Eighth Amendment: US constitutional amendment that prohibits "excessive bail (or) fines (and) cruel and unusual punishment...."
Ejusdem or Eiusdem Generis: Of the same kind or nature.
Electronic Monitoring: Electronic or telecommunications systems used to track and supervise the locations of individuals.
Emancipation: The act of freeing a person who was under the legal authority of another (such as a child before the age of majority) from that control (such as child reaching the age of majority).
Embargo: This is an act of international military aggression where an order is made prohibiting ships or goods from leaving a certain port, city or territory and may be enforced by military threat of destroying any vehicle that attempts to break it or by trade penalties.
Embezzle: The illegal transfer of money or property that, although possessed legally by the embezzler, is covertly and fraudulently converted to the embezzler's own property.
Embracery: Improper influence on a juror.
Eminent Domain: USA: The legal power to expropriate private land for the sake of public necessity.
Emolument: Wages, benefits or other benefit received as compensation for holding some office or employment.
Empanel: Also, "impanel"; the official call to duty of a jury, usually as called by the clerk of the Court in which the jury is to act, and just before the jurors are sworn in.
Emphyteusis: Civil law: a long-term lease of land or buildings; 99 years or such similar long term, or even in perpetuity.
Employee: A person who has agreed by contract to perform specified services for another, the employer, in exchange for money.
Employee Choice Doctrine: The forfeiture of a departing employee's right to judicial review of a restrictive covenant if that employee agreed voluntarily to receive post-employment benefits as consideration for the covenant.
Employer: A person who is contractually bound to a worker - the employee - to give that worker money as a salary or wages, in exchange for ongoing work and for which the employer directs the work and exercises fundamental control over the work.
Employment: A contract in which one person, the employee, agrees to perform work for another, the employer.
Employment at Will: An employment contract during which the employer may terminate the employment at any time subject only to the reason not being contrary to public policy.
Employment Standards: Entirely a creation of statute; minimum employee rights extended for work within the jurisdiction served by the relevant statute.
Emptio or Emtio: Latin for 'purchase' or referring to the contract in which something is bought.
Enactment: A statute or regulation pursuant thereto.
En banc: (French) As a full bench.
Endorsement: Something written on the back of a document. An alternate spelling, in some English jurisdictions, is 'indorsement'.
Endowment: The devotion of property to a specific and particular trust.
Enduring or Continuing Power of Attorney: A power of attorney that continues even if and after a donor becomes incapacitated.
Englishry: The proving to the authorities that a killed person was English.
Engrossing: The buying of products in bulk and the individual re-sale at profit.
Enoch Arden Law: A statute that confers validity on a second marriage of a missing person's spouse after a specified absence.
Enticement: An old common law action against any person who caused a husband to lose the love, services or society of his wife.
Entrapment: The inducement, by law enforcement officers or their agents, of another person to commit a crime for the purposes of bringing charges for the commission of that artificially-provoked crime.
Entrust: To give over the care of something to another.
En Ventre Sa Mere: French: A fetus recognized as a child then alive for the purposes of wills and estates.
Equitable Estoppel: A bar to a party from asserting a legal claim or defense that is contrary or inconsistent with his or her prior action of conduct.
Equitable Fraud: Conduct which, having regard to some special relationship between the two parties concerned, is an unconscionable thing for the one to do towards the other.
Equity: A branch of English law which developed hundreds of years ago when litigants would go to the King and complain of harsh or inflexible rules of common law which prevented "justice" from prevailing.
Equity Delights to do Justice, and not by Halves: A maxim of equity that once invoked successfully, equity will, fully and with finality, resolve the dispute between the parties.
Erga Omnes: Latin: towards everyone.
Error In Objecto: A mistake by a perpetrator as to the identity of the victim; an error as to the object of his act.
Escheat: Where property is surrendered to the government upon the death of the owner, because there is nobody to inherit the property.
Escrow: When the performance of something is outstanding and a third party holds onto money or a written document (such as shares or a deed) until a certain condition is met between the two contracting parties.
Espionage: The practice of playing the spy, or of employing spies.
Esquire: A mostly informal title associated with those who practice law.
Essoin: A valid excuse for not appearing in Court when summoned.
Estate: A person's property; often used to refer to the net worth of a deceased individual.

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