Legal Glossary Expanded

A Short Glossary of Legal Terms, Concepts, Laws, and Organizations

To better foster the interdisciplinary nature of the workshop, we have prepared a short glossary of legal terms, concepts, laws, and organizations. You can also find our glossary of terms and concepts in Human-Robot Interaction and Robotics here. If we’ve missed a key term on this list, please do let us know at hri15@openroboethics.org.

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Administrative Law: “The procedures created by administrative agencies (governmental bodies), including rules, regulations, opinions, and orders. These procedures are often unique to each agency and are usually not found in statutes.”

Administrative Procedure Act: “A federal statute establishing the rules and regulations for applications, claims, hearings, and appeals involving governmental agencies. There are similar acts in many states which spell out the rules for dealing with state government agencies.”

Attorney Client Privilege: “A rule that keeps communications between an attorney and client confidential and protects everything said between attorney and client from being discovered by the opposing party during pretrial investigation, or used as evidence in a trial. The same type of privilege exists between physician and patient, clergy and parishioner, and spouses.”

Anonymization: The process by which data holders scrub or remove all personally identifiable information from their records with the intent that such removal makes the data untraceable to the individual about whom the record concerns.

Boilerplate: “Slang for standard provisions in a contract, form, or legal pleading that are routine and often preprinted. Boilerplate provisions are meant to be used in many contracts, but some may not apply to every situation.”

Class Action: “A lawsuit in which a large number of people with similar legal claims join together in a group (the class) to sue someone, usually a company or organization. Common class actions involve cases in which a product has injured many people, or a group of people has suffered discrimination at the hands of an organization.”

Common Law: “The body of law that developed over many years in England based on court decisions and custom, as compared to written statutes (codifications of the law). Coloniists imported England’s common law to what became the United States, and it survives today, greatly expanded and changed by the published decisions of American courts. Many common law principles, however, have been codified in state statutes. Only Louisiana does not take as its basic law the English common law; instead, that state’s law is based on France’s Napoleonic Code.”

Damages: “1) In a lawsuit, the harm caused to a party who is injured. 2) In a lawsuit, the money awarded to one party based on injury or loss caused by the other. For either definition, there are many different types or categories of damages.”

Defamation: “A false statement that harms a person’s reputation. If the statement is published, it is libel; if spoken, it is slander. Most states have retraction statutes under which a defamed person who fails to seek a retraction from the publisher, or who seeks and obtains a retraction, is limited to compensation equal to the actual (or special) damages. Public figures, including officeholders and candidates, can only prevail in defamation lawsuits if they can show that the defamation was made with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth.”

Defendant: “The person against whom a lawsuit is filed. In some types of cases (such as divorce) a defendant may be called a respondent.”

Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs): “The widely accepted framework of defining principles to be used in the evaluation and consideration of systems, process, or programs that affect individual privacy.” Some of the FIPPs include: transparency, individual participation, purpose specification, data minimization, use limitation, data quality and integrity, security, and accountability and auditing.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC):  “A federal government agency established to regulate business practices and enforce antitrust laws. The FTC often shows up in the news when big businesses attempt to merge, but it also plays a role in protecting consumers from unfair business practices, including actions by collection agencies and credit bureaus. While the FTC generally does not have authority to intervene in specific consumer disputes, it can take action against a company about which it has received numerous consumer complaints.”

Freedom of Information Act: “provides that any person has a right, enforceable in court, to obtain access to federal agency records, except to the extent that such records (or portions of them) are protected from public disclosure by one of nine exemptions or by one of three special law enforcement record exclusions. A FOIA request can be made for any agency record.”

Informed Consent: “An agreement to do something or to allow something to happen, made with complete knowledge of all relevant facts, such as the risks involved or any available alternatives. For example, a patient may give informed consent to medical treatment only after the health care professional has disclosed all possible risks involved in accepting or rejecting the treatment. A health care provider or facility may be held responsible for an injury caused by an undisclosed risk.”

Intrusion Upon Seclusion:  “One who intentionally intrudes, physically or otherwise, upon the solitude or seclusion of another or his private affairs or concerns, is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy, if the intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.”

Joint Liability: “When two or more persons are both responsible for a debt, claim, or judgment. It can be important to the person making the claim, as well as to a person who is sued, who can demand that anyone with joint liability for the alleged debt or claim for damages be joined in (brought into) the lawsuit with them.”

Jurisprudence: “The study and philosophy of law and the legal system.”

Negligence: “Failure to exercise the care toward others that a reasonable or prudent person would use in the same circumstances, or taking action that such a reasonable person would not, resulting in unintentional harm to another. Negligence forms a common basis for civil litigation, with plaintiffs suing for damages based on a variety of injuries, from physical or property damage to business errors and miscalculations.”

Product Liability: “The responsibility of manufacturers, distributors, and sellers of products to the public, to deliver products free of defects that harm someone and to make good on that responsibility if the products are defective. Defective products might include faulty auto brakes, contaminated baby food, exploding bottles of beer, flammable children’s pajamas, or products that lack proper label warnings. A key feature of product liability law is that a person who suffers harm need not prove negligence, because the negligence is presumed and the result is strict liability (absolute responsibility) on the seller, distributor, and manufacturer.”

Personally Identifiable Information (PII): “. . . information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity, either alone or when combined with other personal or identifying information that is linked or linkable to a specific individual.”

Pleading: “Any legal document filed in a lawsuit, including the complaint, petition, answer, demurrer, motion, declaration, and memorandum of points and authorities (written argument citing precedents and statutes).”

Plaintiff: “The person, corporation, or other legal entity that initiates a lawsuit seeking damages, enforcement of a contract, or a court determination of rights. In certain states and for some types of lawsuits, the term petitioner is used instead of plaintiff.”

Public Disclosure of Private Facts: “. . . the disclosure of very personal information, a disclosure unjustified by the newsworthiness, or lack thereof, of the information is an invasion of privacy. Note that the embarrassing information revealed must be private, meaning it is not in the public domain or otherwise generally known. Unlike defamation, truth is not a defense in private-facts cases.”

Several Liability: “When a party is responsible for his or her own obligation (separately from another’s liability), so that the plaintiff may bring a separate action against that party without suing other responsible parties.”

Re-Identification: “. . . the process by which anonymized personal data is matched with its true owner. . . computer scientists have revealed that this “anonymized” data can easily be re-identified, such that the sensitive information may be linked back to an individual. The re-identification process implicates privacy rights, because organizations will say that privacy obligations do not apply to information that is anonymized, but if the data is in fact personally identifiable, then privacy obligations should apply.”

Section Five of the FTC Act:  Prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce. . . .” This section of the FTC Act is the lynch-pin of most FTC actions against companies who perform daily practices that are misleading to the public.

Substantive Law: “Statutory or written law that governs the rights and obligations of everyone within its jurisdiction. It defines crimes and punishments, as well as civil rights and responsibilities.”