Legal Definition and Related Resources of Fiction

An assumption or supposition of law that something which may be false is true and will not allow the same to be disproved. common law abounds in fiction, particularly in the manner in which English courts assumed jurisdiction over matters upon which, but for some legal fiction , the courts would not have had jurisdiction. An example would be the manner in which the King’s bench acquired jurisdiction in actions for debt. This was done under the legal fiction that the defendant had been arrested for trespass , although neither the arrest nor the trespass was true, and then allowing the plaintiff to proceed against the defendant for debt. See Imputed negligence .

noun

• canard
• commentum
• concoction
• fable
• fabrication
• fabula
• false statement
• falsehood
• falsification
• fancy
• fantasy
• feigned story
• figment
• invention
• legend
• lie
• myth
• perjury
• prevarication
• product of imagination
• res Jicta
• untruth
• untruthful report foreign phrases: Fictio legis inique operatur alieni damnum vel injuriam
• Fiction of law is wrongful if it works loss or harm to anyone
• Fictio juris non estubi veritas
• A fiction of law will not exist where the fact appears
• Les fictions naissent de la loi
• et non la loi desfictions
• Fictions arise from the law
• and not law from fictions
• Fictio cedit veritati
• fictio juris non est ubi veritas
• Fiction yields to truth
• where truth is
• fiction of law does not exist

Browse or run a search for Fiction in the American Encyclopedia of Law, the Asian Encyclopedia of Law, the European Encyclopedia of Law, the UK Encyclopedia of Law or the Latin American and Spanish Encyclopedia of Law.

Fiction in Historical Law

You might be interested in the historical meaning of this term. Browse or search for Fiction in Historical Law in the Encyclopedia of Law.

Search for legal acronyms and/or abbreviations containing Fiction in the Legal Abbreviations and Acronyms Dictionary.

You might be also interested in these legal terms:

Mentioned in these terms

Constructive, Doe, John, Ejectment, Fictio, Indenture, Legal Fiction, Doctrine Of Relation, Trust For Sale.

Fiction in Law Enforcement

Main Entry: Law Enforcement in the Legal Dictionary. This section provides, in the context of Law Enforcement, a partial definition of fiction.

Grammar

This term is a noun.

Etimology of Fiction

(You may find fiction at the world legal encyclopedia and the etimology of more terms).

early 15c., ficcioun, “that which is invented or imagined in the mind,” from Old French ficcion “dissimulation, ruse; invention, fabrication” (13c.) and directly from Latin fictionem (nominative fictio) “a fashioning or feigning,” noun of action from past participle stem of fingere “to shape, form, devise, feign,” originally “to knead, form out of clay,” from PIE *dheigh- “to build, form, knead” (source also of Old English dag “dough;” see dough). Meaning “prose works (not dramatic) of the imagination” is from 1590s, at first often including plays and poems. Narrower sense of “the part of literature comprising novels and short stories based on imagined scenes or characters” is by early 19c. The legal sense (fiction of law) is from 1580s. A writer of fiction could be a fictionist (1827). The related Latin words included the literal notion “worked by hand,” as well as the figurative senses of “invented in the mind; artificial, not natural”: Latin fictilis “made of clay, earthen;” fictor “molder, sculptor” (also borrowed 17c. in English), but also of Ulysses as “master of deceit;” fictum “a deception, falsehood; fiction.”

Resources

See Also

• Law Enforcement Officer
• Police Work
• Law Enforcement Agency

Further Reading

• fiction in A Dictionary of Law Enforcement (Oxford University Press)
• fiction in the Encyclopedia of Law Enforcement
• A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis

English Legal System: Fiction

In the context of the English law, A Dictionary of Law provides the following legal concept of Fiction :

An assumption that something is true irrespective of whether it is really true or not. In English legal history fictions were used by the courts during the development of forms of court actio They enabled the courts to avoid cumbersome procedures, to make remedies available when they would not be otherwise, and to extend their jurisdictio For example, the action of *trover was originally based on the defendant’s finding the claimant’s goods and taking them for himself. In time, it became unnecessary to prove the “finding”: a remedy was granted on the basis only of proving that the goods were the claimant’s and that the defendant had taken them.