Why &quot;it is unlawful for X to do Y&quot; rather than &quot;it is illegal for X to do Y&quot;? It is said that unlawful means "not permitted by law" and illegal means "forbidden by law". However, I cannot recall ever seeing the phrase "it is illegal to ..." when reading legal text. Instead, the phrasing used is "it is unlawful to...". Why does legal text never (or at least very rarely) seem to say that something is illegal rather than merely unlawful? Is there a legal/technical reason, or does it just sound fancier?
I found an example of "is illegal" in RCW 78.52.467: "If the department believes that any oil, gas, or product is illegal...". There are some examples of "shall be illegal", e.g. RCW 39.84.050 "It shall be illegal for a director, officer, agent", where "illegal" is used predicatively. I tenatively conclude than the latter kind of use is less frequent that the adjectival use. Black's Law Dictionary 2nd Pocket ed does not include "illegal" except in some "illegal"+noun constructions, but it does list "unlawful" alone. "Unlawful" has been used since 1387 (J. Trevisa translation of Ranulf Higden Polychronicon), whereas "illegal" only goes back to 1626. Legal language tends to be very conservative, so the fact that "unlawful" got there first (aided no doubt by the fact that it is an Anglo-Saxon construction, not a medieval Latin borrowing) gives the term priority in legal usage. It sounds more legal to say "(un)lawful" that "(il)legal".
&quot;May&quot; means &quot;is possible&quot; and not &quot;is necessary&quot;. The specific law does not say anything about a person doing A, B or C and it does not say that if you do one of A, B or C then something mandatorily follows. It asserts that certain types of documentation &quot;can&quot; be used as evidence supporting the proposition that the applicant did not disrupt continuous residence, but it also asserts (without giving any further hints) that other things may be used. This law does not state necessary or sufficient conditions for establishing undisrupted continuous residence. It is not hard to construct a scenario where a person moves back to their home country and ran for public office there, but failed to quit the US job. In light of compelling evidence that they actually moved back home, failure to quite your US job is not proof that you remained in the US. Proof resides in the totality of evidence, not just the admissibility of a single fact. Doing one or more of (A-D) is no guarantee of anything.
Denver lawyer David Lane has said, “The First Amendment lives in a rough neighborhood and if you can’t stand the neighborhood move to China … or somewhere the First Amendment does not exist.” "One man's vulgarity is another's lyric." Cohen v. Cali. 403 U.S. 15, 25 (1971) At this point, we need to define illegal as used in your question. For instance, do you mean "you can face any form of punishment"? If so, this question is extremely broad and governed by multiple sets of laws. Additionally, one should note that this is a Federal Question. The First Amendment, through the Due Process clause applies to states as well. Therefore, there will be extremely little discrepancy (if any - first impression issues being the main differences probably) between the States,. The FCC can limit profanity on air. Additionally, Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1464, (Whoever utters any obscene, indecent, or profane language by means of radio communication shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. ) prohibits the utterance of any obscene, indecent or profane language by means of radio communication. The USPTO can limit Trademarks with "vulgar" meaning. (See EDIT below for update.) In School: High school student's First Amendment rights were not violated in suspension for uttering obscenity, regardless of whether she was merely repeating and returning words originally directed at her, particularly where words were clearly disruptive as they were heard by 90 students in cafeteria and, in opinion of assistant principal, were “fighting words.” Heller v. Hodgin, S.D.Ind.1996, 928 F.Supp. 789. Fighting Words: These seem to be words that would invoke, or are likely to invoke a fight. Fighting words claim upheld: Arrestee's speech when crowd gathered near fallen tree that had blocked traffic constituted unprotected fighting words, so that his arrest under city disorderly conduct ordinance did not violate his First Amendment free speech rights; arrestee's repeated use of the word “bitch,” his accusation of matricide directed toward his sister, his use of the phrase “fucking queer,” his pushing of third party and his raised voice all tended to show that his conduct, under the circumstances, had tendency to provoke physical altercation. Fighting words claim not upheld: Detainee's profane words to police officer as officer conducted Terry stop, “son of a bitch,” while unpleasant and insulting, were not “fighting words,” given officer's confirmation of fact that words did not cause anyone to fight or become angry; thus, words could not constitute violation of disorderly conduct statute and in turn could not supply probable cause for disorderly conduct arrest. In addition to fighting words, true threats and incitement to imminent lawless action are not protected under the First Amendment. Additionally, the government can regulate free speech in public schools (hence Free Speech Zones) and while in their employ (no yelling at your boss if you want to keep your job). It is not part of the main question, but free speech inside the court room. Well, the Judge is pretty much king in a courtroom. What he says goes. (more or less, like nothing toooooo crazy). In a courtroom, if you do something a Judge doesn't like, he can hold you in contempt of court. (You get no jury for contempt cases.) EDIT: Since I wrote this answer, new law came out from the Supreme Court in Matel v. Tam, 582 U.S. ___ (2017). The Supreme Court affirmed the finding of the Federal Circuit that the disparagement clause [is] facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause. Simon Tam, lead singer of the rock group “The Slants,” chose this moniker in order to “reclaim” the term and drain its denigrating force as a derogatory term for Asian persons. Tam sought federal registration of the mark “THE SLANTS.” The Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) denied the application under a Lanham Act provision prohibiting the registration of trademarks that may “disparage . . . or bring . . . into contemp[t] or disrepute” any “persons, living or dead.” 15 U. S. C. §1052(a). Tam contested the denial of registration through the administrative appeals process, to no avail. He then took the case to federal court, where the en banc Federal Circuit ultimately found the disparagement clause facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause. The decision aptly concludes with: "If affixing the commercial label permits the suppression of any speech that may lead to political or social “volatility,” free speech would be endangered."
The general rule is, anything is allowed unless it is forbidden (and not that you can only do things that are expressly permitted). The logical structure of law may be a bit more challenging than procedural programming logic, since it may require a global knowledge and evaluation of the entire code (typically but not absolutely, the scope of the search for "unless otherwise" conditions is restricted to "in this chapter"). In other words, the law is a set of propositions which must all be true, and unlike actual execution of instructions in a sequence, law is to be interpreted simultaneously but hierarchically (that is: the order in which clauses are written is not significant). The appearance that the law is self-contradictory is largely illusory, though the resolution of the conflict may require a careful reading of the law and knowledge of jurisdictional hierarchy (federal law is superior to state law, which entails a particular resolution of the apparent conflict). Sometimes there are real conflicts, which usually result from using words in conflicting ways (note the practice of re-defining words "in this chapter/section/title"). The reason why law is not a science is that law is normative, not descriptive: it dictates what is allowed (a determination made through the political process), and does not attempt to discover what independently is. The reason why the legal process cannot be implemented in software is that software does not yet correctly interpret natural language, and law is written in natural language following interpretations based on judgments of what choices a reasonable would make. Perhaps if you propose a piece of law that you think is contradictory, it would be possible to show how the contradiction is illusory.
That's the entire point of a summary proceeding. You're allegedly found committing an offence, that isn't worth the court's time to hear but nevertheless requires some penalty. The only way to "unambiguously deny liability" is by requesting a hearing and denying liability in the notice of this. The court doesn't care what you say to everybody else, it cares what you say on its record. The reasoning is, if you're so sure you're not guilty of an offence, why haven't you sought to argue this in court? And if you weren't committing the offence, why did the informant serve the infringement notice in the first place? The act is not silent at all on this. If you don't request the hearing and serve such notice by the date required, you are liable to enforcement action - whether you deny liability out of court is irrelevant.
Is asking police to justify their orders illegal? NO but the manner in which the &quot;asking&quot; is done may be.
Strictly speaking, that principle isn't even true everywhere in the US. The maxim "nulla poena sine lege" (i.e. "no punishment without a prior penal statute") was historically applicable to civil law systems, such as are found in continental Europe. In common-law systems, there was never a tradition in which a crime wasn't a crime unless it violated a penal law, because crimes themselves were traditionally defined by court precedent instead of by statute. In US federal court, the only allowable common-law offense is contempt of court. This is due to a court decision (United States v. Hudson), in which the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts do not have the constitutional authority to hear a case in which someone is accused of committing a common-law crime. Even so, and even though there is a federal contempt statute, the Supreme Court has ruled that contempt is an inherent power of any court, and statutes around it only regulate the power (but the power would be there even without a statute). At the state level, some states have explicitly passed laws saying something is not a crime if it doesn't violate the penal code (although this doesn't necessarily apply to contempt); see section 6 of the California Penal Code for an example. In other states, like Florida, common-law crimes still exist; Florida has a statute saying that any common-law offense is still a crime unless a statute has explicitly covered that same subject matter (section 775.01), and specifies a generic penalty for anything which is an offense at common law and not addressed by any Florida penal statute (section 775.02). While this is sort of statutory (as it's a statute giving the penal provision), it's also basically not (as no statute has to say "X is illegal," because it's enough that English common law makes X illegal).
The section you quote as clearly saying a thing is not clearly saying the thing. However: you cannot pass on or resell any license keys seems to say a thing clearly. However, one could argue that it's the sharer of the account who is in the wrong, and not the person receiving and passing on the account. I'd say that that piece of the agreement, combined with this: must not... let other people get access to anything we've made in a way that is unfair or unreasonable says that, yes, they are out of bounds.