Can bills (the documents of laws/legislation) have pictures? Or text only? Can images become part of the legal code? Asking out of plain curiosity. I tried googling, but just couldn't find a combination of keywords that didn't bring up irrelevant results. Laws become law when the congress approves of a &quot;bill&quot; - a document that dictates and explains the terms of the law. I've only heard of laws being represented as text only. But that seems limiting in the modern era and all the things we have to make laws about now. I'm curious if any of these documents used pictures or images in their explanation of the law, and thus if there are any images now part of the legal code. I'm not interested in seals or letterhead or other decoration. Only an image that is part of the content of the law. Such that when a judge interprets the law they'd need to consider the image. For example if they passed legislation protecting an endangered species and the bill contained a picture of the animal that would count. I'm hoping someone can answer this about the US because that's where I'm from. But I'd also be happy to hear of examples from around the world if they exist. I know it might seem like a silly question, but it's interesting to me. Thanks in advance if you can answer.
Regulations - Yes, Acts of Parliament - very rarely In in the united-kingdom diagrams are found in regulations, for example legislation dealing with roadside symbols. There are two kinds of legislation in the UK: Acts of Parliament and Statutory Instruments (normally called Regulations). The procedure by which an Act of Parliament is passed is that it has to be approved by both Houses of the legislature and then receive Royal Assent (Royal Assent is a formality). The procedure in each House is that the main debates occur at the Committee Stage when amendments are proposed and voted on. At the next stage (Third Reading) the House votes again on whether to approve the Bill in its amended form. Statutory Instruments (Regulations) are issued by the government (executive) and are known as delegated legislation because the government only has power to issue a regulation if an Act (called the parent Act) gives it power to do so. As you would expect there are safeguards. First of all the courts can declare invalid (ultra vires) any regulation whose terms go outside the limits of the power delegated by the Parent Act. Sometime the parent Act will provide that Regulations issued by the government under delegated powers become law without further involvement of Parliament but sometimes an Act will provide for some limited further Parliamentary scrutiny. This can be either by the Positive Resolution (the regulation will not become law until Parliament approve it) or by the Negative Resolution procedure (the regulation will become law unless Parliament passes a resolution annulling it). A key point, in the context of the question, is that neither the Positive nor the Negative Resolution procedure allows Parliament to amend the regulation - Parliament only has a binary choice to approve or disapprove. Of course if they disapprove then the government can issue a new amended regulation which then goes through the same process but the Positive/Negative resolution procedure does not allow Parliament itself to amend any regulation. I think this explains why diagrams which are sometimes found in regulations are rarely found in Acts. Constitutional proprieties require any Bill to be amendable and any member of the legislature can propose a amendment. If the Bill included diagrams then there would be huge practical problems because any member who wanted to amend a diagram would have to produce his own amended diagram which he might not be able to do/might not have time to do before parliamentary deadlines. So constitutional proprieties would normally mean that in practice Bills must be solely words. Regulations however cannot be amended by Parliament (see above) so such considerations do not prevent regulations from containing diagrams. Having said that normally Bills will only contain words, there is this example of an Act which includes a diagram of a symbol. That symbol, however, is defined in an international convention so in practice no parliamentarian would want to amend it. I know of no examples in the UK where a Bill (as distinct from regulations) contains an image which a member of the legislature might want to propose an amendment to.
This was attributed to Dumblaws.com, which is now mercifully nonexistent. It is false, as is the supposed law against fishing for whales on Sunday (seriously? Whales in Ohio?). If someone makes such a claim and gives a specific citation like &quot;ORC 1533.02&quot;, you can look that law up. Otherwise, you can go to the state's repository of laws, which is searchable (not all states are as enlightened). No laws mention &quot;whale&quot; or &quot;housefly&quot;, and only 23 address &quot;fly&quot;, only referring to insects in a couple of cases where e.g. bakery showcases must keep out dust and flies. You might take on this collection, hosted by a law firm. I haven't bothered to check if &quot;It is illegal to drive a camel on the highway&quot; in Nevada – that a least verifiably refers to a law that did exist.
Each directives page on eur-lex has a "national transposition" page. For example, directive 2009/65/EC, concerning UCITS, is available at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=celex:32009L0065. There is a navigation box at the top left with several relevant pages: Text Document information Procedure National transposition Summary of legislation (Before the recent site redesign, these were shown as tabs across the top of the page, so for the lack of a better term, I will call these "tabs.") The Document information tab shows, among other metadata, relationships with other EU acts. One useful section on this page is the All consolidated versions section, which is a set of links to consolidated versions of the document, indicated by date. The answer to your question is the National transposition tab, which shows "National transposition measures communicated by the Member States." It is worth noting the disclaimer: The member states bear sole responsibility for all information on this site provided by them on the transposition of EU law into national law. This does not, however, prejudice the results of the verification by the Commission of the completeness and correctness of the transposition of EU law into national law as formally notified to it by the member states. The collection National transposition measures is updated weekly. The list of national acts is in the form of links, which lead to pages that seem designed to present the text of the national legislation, but in the examples I have checked say nothing more than "Text is not available." Perhaps there are some instances, or will be in the future, where these contain links to national legal information sites. As it is, there is enough information to enable one to search the national sites to find the relevant legislation.
Here is a list of language-regulating bodies. There is none for English, but they exist for Spanish (Real Academia Española), French (Académie française) and Swahil (Baraza la Kiswahili la Taifa for Tanzania, Chama cha Kiswahili cha Taifa for Kenya). No language regulator addresses the issues which arise in the interaction between natural language and the needs of legal interpretation. Instead, these bodies generally strive to maintain the historical "purity" of the language. Rather than "define" a word like "sandwich", they decide whether to outlaw (or disparage) the word because it comes from English. The vast majority of language-related problems in law which arise in common-law countries pertains to characteristics of common law and the practice of establishing precedent. There are philosophical conflicts, for example between those to adhere to the text versus those who try to discern original intent. If we had an official agency that precisely defined what a "weapon" is, we would still have the struggle over interpretive philosophies which renders moot any rulings from the national language regulator. In the US, part of the problem of word-definition is the widespread practice of localized redefinition in statutes – the laws that say "In this subsection, 'weapon' has the meaning defined in 18 U.S. Code §920" (fictitious: §921 defines "firearm" undefined "weapon"). Tracking the scope of definition and range of variation of a word within a body of codified law is very difficult. The rule in common law is that words that are not statutorily defined are given their "ordinary" meaning. There is no authoritative resource for "ordinary meaning" in English (there is no such thing as "the" dictionary). In the US, it would require a constitutional amendment to immutably impose a particular dictionary standard for deriving word meaning (e.g. Webster's Fourth New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, forthcoming) and there would be ensuing political protests. A legally precise definition of "repair" would be very difficult to understand, and would require hiring a lawyer in order to engage in the activity of "repairing broken windows", from a legally-safe perspective. And that is just word meaning. Ambiguity in sentence-meaning cannot be resolved by listing the sentences.
Congress cannot be sued for enacting a law. Period. The courts do not have the power to punish Congress for passing a law, they cannot forbid Congress from passing a law, they have no say over what the wording of a law can be. Only Congress has the power to determine what laws they pass. The courts do, of course, have the power to interpret and even strike down a law that they deem to be unconstitutional. This is the essence of constitutional separation of powers.
Posting such a pic and statement may give grounds for a lawsuit, but probably not Overview That is going to depend very much on the the jurisdiction, and on the specific facts. If the statement that the pictured person owes a debt is false, this may be a case of defamation, but that was explored thoroughly in Can you post a picture in your business to embarrass or defame a customer? and its answers. See FindLaw's page &quot;What Is Invasion of Privacy?&quot; for an overview of the classic privacy torts. See also this page quoting the Restatement (2nd) of Torts, § 652 See further the Wikipedia article &quot;Privacy laws of the United States&quot; which gives a history of the four torts. Note that not all US states recognize all, or indeed any, of the privacy torts. Nor do all non-US jurisdictions. In some places these torts have been recognized, or blocked, by legislation, in others by court decision. And in the US they are limited by the federal First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. Right of Publicity,aka Appropriation There is, in general, no right to privacy in one's physical appearance under any of the standard privacy torts, except that if one's likeness is being used to advertise something, or imply sponsorship or approval of a commercial product, many jurisdictions protect a right of publicity (sometimes called the tort of Appropriation of Name or Likeness). But here it does not appear that the image is being used to advertise or promote or sponsor anything, so that would not apply. Intrusion upon Solitude and Seclusion The tort of Intrusion upon Solitude and Seclusion would only apply if the picture were taken on someone's private premises or somewhere else there the person had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Otherwise it would not apply, there is no general right to privacy for a picture taken in public. Private Facts The tort of Public Disclosure of Private Facts could possibly apply if the fact of the unpaid debt had been carefully kept secret, and if its disclosure would be highly offensie to a reasonable person. But nothing that is a matter of public record can be the subject of such a suit anywhere in the US, because under Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469 (1975) publication of facts derived from public records is protected under the first and fourteenth amendments, even against a specific state law granting protection. This will obviously not apply outside the US. False Light If the statement of the debt were true, but in some significant way misleading, the tort of False Light might apply. This is described by the Restatement of Torts (2nd) § 652E as: One who gives publicity to a matter concerning another before the public in a false light is subject to liability to the other for invasion of privacy, if (a) the false light in which the other was placed would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and (b) the actor had knowledge of or acted in a reckless disregard as to the falsity of the publicized matter and the false light in which the other would be placed. Note that the standard of (b) above is the same as the &quot;Actual Malice&quot; standard for defamation cases where the plaintiff is a public figure. False light cases are in many ways similer to defamation cases, and some jurisdictions have treated themn as identical tro defamation, while otrhrs do not recognize them at all. Nothing in the facts stated in the question would imply a false light claim, but more context might possibly support such a claim,. Conclusion Nothing in the question clearly indicates that any privacy-based tort would apply, but the facts are stated it a very brief way in the question. Further context and detail might clarify the answer one way or the other. This answer is largely based onunited-states law, althoguh some of it will apply elsewhere.
Yes, maybe australia In Australia, child abuse material is classified as the sexualised depiction of persons under 16 (or in some cases 18). This applies under both State and Commonwealth laws. Common charges in NSW will be possessing, disseminating or producing child abuse material under s 91(H) of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW). Further Commonwealth offences can be found in circumstances where a communications carrier has been used for the purposes of delivering child abuse material. Within this field, there are subtle variations in circumstances. The court would need to decide if the pictures were a “sexualised depiction”. Context matters. I don’t know of any cases on point but convictions have been secured for sexualised cartoons of children and pictures of fully-clothed children in sexual poses.
If the photos are exact or "slavish" reproductions of flat (2D) art, then under Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) the photos are not original, and have no copyrights of their own. If the art was not under copyright (for example published before 1924) then neither are the photos. If the art is still under copyright, the photos are "copies" and the permission of the copyright holder (of the original art) is required unless they fall under the fair use exception, which photos taken for and used in classroom instruction, and for no other purpose, might well fall under. However, if the photos are so taken that angle, lighting, filters, and other aspects under the control of the photographer make a difference to the photo, then they will generally constitute new works, and if the art is under copyright protection, will be derivative works of the originals, and both the copyright holder on the original art, and the photographer will hold rights. One rule of thumb is if the photo shows the frame of the painting, it probably has original elements of lighting and viewing angle. The more the photo approximates a scan of a flat work of art, the less original it is. Photos of sculpture, architecture, and other non-flat (3D) art works (and objects) inherently involve artistic decisions about viewing angle, lighting, etc, and will pretty much automatically be original enough for copyright protection. If the original art is out of copyright but the photo is an original work the photographer will hold rights, but no one else will (unless the photographer sells or transfers the rights). In that case it does not make much sense to call the photos "derivative works" as that term is intended to indicate that the works are subject to another's copyright, which these are not, because there is no copyright on the original. Or one could call them derivatives of a public domain work -- the effect is the same. Under the case of Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991), a work must have a certian minimum degree of originality to be protected by copyright under US law. Both Bridgeman and Feist are US cases, but many other countries have followed their logic and apply similar rules to copyright issues. It is not uncommon for those who have taken photos of art to assert copyright protection which a court would not uphold, but this will not be judged unless someone copies these photos, and the photographer (or someone claiming through the photographer) sues, and then defense challenges the validity of the asserted copyright. The statements in the text quoted by the OP may be based (in part) on such untested assertions of copyright.