Legal Definition of &quot;Great Britain&quot; Great Britain is the geographical name of the largest island in the British Isles (sometimes inclusive of the smaller islands on its insular shelf) but the name has, at least in the past, also been used as the name for a political entity or entities. The 1707 Act of Union created a new kingdom by combining the previous Kingdom of England with the previous Kingdom of Scotland and naming that new political entity the Kingdom of Great Britain. However in 1801 a further Act of Union created a new kingdom by combining the previous Kingdom of Great Britain with the previous Kingdom of Ireland, so that the territory of the new kingdom was no longer co-terminous with the island of Great Britain as it previously had been (if you include the smaller islands on the insular shelf). The phrase Great Britain (without being prefixed with the word Kingdom) is of course used today to refer to the British Islands as a whole - as in Team GB - but there is some discussion about how correct it is to use Great Britain in this way. What is correct usage in the English language is not primarily or only a legal question but if a word has a specific defined legal meaning that can be part of the argument as to what general usage is correct/desirable. So that is the context but my question is the narrow legal question: Does the phrase Great Britain have a precise legal meaning over and above its purely geographical meaning - for example is it defined in any statute in any of the six legal jurisdictions of the British Islands? Note: Official publications often use loose language. For example the Ordnance Survey blog states: Great Britain is the official collective name of of England, Scotland and Wales and their associated islands. which is ambiguous but at first sight looks as if might be talking about a definition of Great Britain as a political term but elsewhere the OS are quoted as saying that: Great Britain is the official collective name for the landmass encompassing England, Scotland and Wales and their associated islands. making clear that it is the geographical Great Britain which is being referred to. And dictionary definitions vary but my question is specifically about any statutory legal definition.
It does not need to be expressly defined in statute in order to be legally effective. Courts have no trouble interpreting ordinary words used in their conventional way. And there is no other definition that could work instead, considering the full body of law that (1) intends to apply to the whole of the United Kingdom, (2) often distinguishes between &quot;Great Britain&quot; and &quot;Northern Ireland&quot;, (3) often distinguishes between &quot;England&quot;, &quot;Wales&quot;, &quot;Scotland&quot; and &quot;Northern Ireland&quot;, (4) treats &quot;Great Britain&quot; as synonymous with England, Wales and Scotland, and (5) often uses &quot;Great Britain&quot; without further ceremony, as if it's a term that doesn't need to be explained. It is helpful that legislation (at least in the modern era) is consistent about the view that &quot;Great Britain&quot; refers precisely to England, Wales and Scotland all together. By virtue of the Interpretation Act 1978, &quot;United Kingdom&quot; means Great Britain and Northern Ireland. from which we may deduce immediately that Great Britain means the United Kingdom except for Northern Ireland. There is no sibling '&quot;Great Britain&quot; means...' clause, but construing it any other way than the normal meaning would not work. From the combined definitions of &quot;England&quot;, &quot;Wales&quot;, &quot;British Islands&quot;, etc. - which by reference, also deal with such historically doubtful areas as Berwick and Monmouthshire - there is no other way to interpret the term &quot;Great Britain&quot; without distorting the required meaning of &quot;United Kingdom&quot;. Including too much or too little in &quot;Great Britain&quot; would give the wrong result, in particular for statutory extent clauses that refer to the whole United Kingdom and ought not to accidentally leave out Cornwall or include Hanover. We do not need to go as far as the Acts of Union, which is lucky since that would entangle us in concerns about whether &quot;England&quot; includes &quot;Wales&quot;, or other historical anomalies that are not relevant in current law. I would treat the Acts of Union as giving added force to the conventional meaning, rather than being the source of that meaning, since there are uses of the term which seem to be more about Great Britain considered as a place than the political entity. For example, the Food Safety Act 1990 s.18(3) talks about &quot;any food which has not previously been used for human consumption in Great Britain&quot;, which seems to talk more about the food culture of the place, even predating the Acts of Union, than about the Kingdom of Great Britain or its successors. The term &quot;Great Britain&quot; is frequently used in statutes in the customary way. For example, The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 s.28 creates a &quot;Great Britain register&quot; and a &quot;Northern Ireland register&quot; of political parties, and s.38(1)(3)(b) provides for the &quot;Great Britain register&quot; to cover precisely England, Scotland and Wales. The Northern Ireland Act 1998 s.87 is about provisions of UK social security law that operate differently in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Electricity Act 1989 (as amended) provides for the issue of &quot;GB certificates&quot; as opposed to &quot;NI certificates&quot;, and also defines &quot;the relevant part of Great Britain&quot; as meaning either &quot;England and Wales&quot; or &quot;Scotland&quot; (s.32M(1)). The Agriculture Act 2020 s.35 provides for a &quot;red meat levy&quot; to be paid between &quot;one country in Great Britain&quot; and &quot;another such country&quot;, and goes on in 35(8) to list the levy bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. So all of this points to the same common meaning as in everyday life. In court, for example, Lord Hoffman in Serco v Lawson [2006] UKHL 3 had to consider the Employment Rights Act 1996 s.196, since repealed, which governed &quot;work wholly or mainly outside Great Britain&quot;. (And by the way, in 196(1)(b) is a listing of &quot;England and Wales&quot; and &quot;Scotland&quot; as the two possible bodies of law relating to Great Britain.) In his judgement, he says: It is true that section 244(1) says that the Act &quot;extends&quot; to England and Wales and Scotland (&quot;Great Britain&quot;). But that means only that it forms part of the law of Great Britain and does not form part of the law of any other territory (like Northern Ireland or the Channel Islands) for which Parliament could have legislated. That is, he does not find it difficult to gloss the extent provision in 244(1), which doesn't include the exact words &quot;Great Britain&quot;, as actually referring to Great Britain. Other legislation refers to &quot;Great Britain&quot; as a locale, like the Wild Animals in Circuses Act 2019 which talks about &quot;an animal of a kind which is not commonly domesticated in Great Britain&quot;. This is a straightforward reference to the kind of activities typically going on in that location, treating it as the island(s) and not the political entity. The expression does not include the territorial sea, by default; some statutes include it, like the Gas Act 1986 s.5(9) which says: For the purposes of this section a place is within the jurisdiction of Great Britain if it is in Great Britain, in the territorial sea adjacent to Great Britain or in an area designated under section 1(7) of the Continental Shelf Act 1964. There are several other instances of particular statutes defining &quot;Great Britain&quot; to include adjacent waters, but they do not define the core concept of Great Britain otherwise. They do not need to.
Jurisdiction: england-and-walesnorthern-ireland The relevant legislation here is the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 together with subordinate legislation passed under that Act. Financial Services and Markets Act 2000: Section 19: (1) No person may carry on a regulated activity in the United Kingdom, or purport to do so, unless he is - (a) an authorised person; or (b) an exempt person. Section 22: (1) An activity is a regulated activity for the purposes of this Act if it is an activity of a specified kind which is carried on by way of business and - (a) relates to an investment of a specified kind; or (b) in the case of an activity of a kind which is also specified for the purposes of this paragraph, is carried on in relation to property of any kind. (5) “Specified” means specified in an order made by the Treasury. Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) Order 2001: Article 4: The following provisions of this Part specify kinds of activity for the purposes of section 22(1) of the Act (and accordingly any activity of one of those kinds, which is carried on by way of business, and relates to an investment of a kind specified by any provision of Part III and applicable to that activity, is a regulated activity for the purposes of the Act. Article 61: (1) Entering into a regulated mortgage contract as lender is a specified kind of activity. (3) In this Chapter — (a) subject to paragraph (5), a contract is a “regulated mortgage contract” if, at the time it is entered into, the following conditions are met — (i) the contract is one under which a person (“the lender”) provides credit to an individual or to trustees (“the borrower”); (ii) the contract provides for the obligation of the borrower to repay to be secured by a mortgage on land; (iii) at least 40% of that land is used, or is intended to be used — (aa) in the case of credit provided to an individual, as or in connection with a dwelling; or (bb) in the case of credit provided to a trustee which is not an individual, as or in connection with a dwelling by an individual who is a beneficiary of the trust, or by a related person; but such a contract is not a regulated mortgage contract if it falls within article 61A(1) or (2). Article 73: The following kinds of investment are specified for the purposes of section 22 of the Act. Article 88: Rights under a regulated mortgage contract. So, if you are providing the mortgage to someone who will live at the property and are doing so by way of business (likely unless this is an arrangement with a friend or relative) then you will need to be FCA authorised unless there is an applicable exemption. See Chapter XV of Part II of the Regulated Activities Order and Section 38 FSMA and the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Exemption) Order 2001 for examples of exemptions. A full analysis of financial services regulation would be too dense to fit into a Stack Exchange post and you should seek specialised legal advice before considering entering into any kind of mortgage as a lender. &quot;is it even possible to do this once without a company that does this as a general product?&quot; It doesn't matter whether you are a company or whether you do it once or regularly. However, due to the costs and practicalities of obtaining FCA authorisation (where applicable) and ensuring that contracts and land registry charges are correctly drawn up (given the high stakes), you are unlikely to see many one-off or &quot;amateur&quot; mortgages in the real world.
In the example given, both elements must be established. This is the most common meaning of the word &quot;and&quot; in a statute or rule or contract or other writing, but there are times when &quot;and&quot; does not have that meaning. One must always determine the meaning from context on a case by case basis. Words do not have a single universal meaning in all contexts for legal purposes. This variation by context in the meaning of words for legal purposes is especially frequent in countries with common law legal systems based upon the English legal system such as the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and India to have situations where a word often means one thing in one legal context and another thing in different legal contexts. This is because the governing statutes and case law are written on a piecemeal basis by many different people with no one in charge of maintaining stylistic uniformity, over a very long period of time (often centuries). In countries like those of Continental Europe, Latin America and much of Asia and Africa, which have what are called &quot;civil law&quot; systems, that are based on European civil codes, there are comprehensive codifications of the basic laws of the land that are drafted by experts all at the same time, and amended only with great deliberation and care, and these codes tend to use a word more consistently in most contexts than common law legislatures and judges do, although even then, this principle is not absolute.
The Declaration of Independence is often cited (along with the Federalist Papers) when the court is attempting to justify a particular interpretation of The Constitution by looking at the intent of the drafters. For example, in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission 576 U.S. ____ (2015), in establishing that the people have ultimate sovereignty quoted the Declaration of Independence: Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed... Following that (after also quoting some text from the Constitution), Justice Ginsberg concludes: In this light, it would be perverse to interpret the term “Legislature” in the Elections Clause so as to exclude lawmaking by the people, particularly where such lawmaking is intended to check legislators’ ability to choose the district lines they run in... As a second example, Justice Scalia, in his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges 576 U.S. ___ (2015), refers to the Declaration of Independence: This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.
Yes More exactly, nations will not regard places outside of their physical limits as outside of their jurisdictions. Overview Traditionally, a nation has regarded any ship flying its flag as under its jurisdiction, and a place where it may enforce its laws. More recently, many nations will undertake to enforce laws in cases where their citizens are the victims, or in some cases the perpetrators of crimes even within other nations, and more freely on the high seas outside the physical limits or territorial waters of any country. Historically, all nations undertook to enforce laws against piracy wherever they might be committed. Several countries, including the UK and the US, now treat the UN Law of the Sea convention as part of their national law, which defines as piracy: &quot;illegal acts of violence or detention ... against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft&quot; This would include the situation described in the question. Therefore such actions could and quite likely would be prosecuted by any of several countries, depending on the registry of the vessel and the nationalities of those involved. Sources 18 U.S. Code § 7 provides that: The term “special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States”, as used in this title, includes: (1) The high seas, any other waters within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States and out of the jurisdiction of any particular State, and any vessel belonging in whole or in part to the United States or any citizen thereof, or to any corporation created by or under the laws of the United States, or of any State, Territory, District, or possession thereof, when such vessel is within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States and out of the jurisdiction of any particular State. ... (7) Any place outside the jurisdiction of any nation with respect to an offense by or against a national of the United States. (8) To the extent permitted by international law, any foreign vessel during a voyage having a scheduled departure from or arrival in the United States with respect to an offense committed by or against a national of the United States. This US DOJ page says: Among the offenses within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States are the crimes of murder, manslaughter, maiming, kidnapping, rape, assault, and robbery. Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 7(1) there is also jurisdiction over such offenses when they are committed on the high seas or any other waters within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States that is out of the jurisdiction of any particular state. See JM 9-20.000 et seq. The page &quot;Maritime Offenses&quot; from the law offices of Trombley and Hanes says: The Federal government also exercises jurisdiction over certain maritime offenses. There is Federal jurisdiction for offenses committed on American vessels in the territorial waters, harbors and inland waterways of foreign nations. See United States v. Flores, 289 U.S. 137 (1933). ... A number of Title 18 sections specifically declare certain conduct to be a Federal crime if committed “within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States.” See, e.g., murder, 18 U.S.C. § 1111. In some instances, the Assimilative Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. § 13, is also applicable. See also, 15 U.S.C. § 1175; 15 U.S.C. § 1243; 16 U.S.C. § 3372. 18 U.S. Code § 1111 (b) provides that: (b) Within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, Whoever is guilty of murder in the first degree shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for life; Whoever is guilty of murder in the second degree, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life. The Britannica Article on &quot;Piracy&quot; says: Because piracy has been regarded as an offense against the law of nations, the public vessels of any state have been permitted to seize a pirate ship, to bring it into port, to try the crew (regardless of their nationality or domicile), and, if they are found guilty, to punish them and to confiscate the ship. The UN page on Piracy says: The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provides the framework for the repression of piracy under international law, in particular in its articles 100 to 107 and 110. The Security Council has repeatedly reaffirmed “that international law, as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 (‘The Convention’), sets out the legal framework applicable to combating piracy and armed robbery at sea, as well as other ocean activities” (Security Council resolution 1897 (2009), adopted on 30 November 2009). Article 100 of UNCLOS provides that “[a]ll States shall cooperate to the fullest possible extent in the repression of piracy on the high seas or in any other place outside the jurisdiction of any State.” The General Assembly has also repeatedly encouraged States to cooperate to address piracy and armed robbery at sea in its resolutions on oceans and the law of the sea. For example, in its resolution 64/71 of 4 December 2009, the General Assembly recognized “the crucial role of international cooperation at the global, regional, subregional and bilateral levels in combating, in accordance with international law, threats to maritime security, including piracy”. The UK Piracy Act of 1837 defined as a crime: Whosoever, with intent to commit or at the time of or immediately before or immediately after committing the crime of piracy in respect of any ship or vessel, shall assault, with intent to murder, any person being on board of or belonging to such ship or vessel, or shall stab, cut, or wound any such person, or unlawfully do any act by which the life of such person may be endangered, shall be guilty of felony... The more modern UK law, the Merchant Shipping and Maritime Security Act of 1997 embodies the UN law of the Sea convention, including its article 101, which says: Piracy consists of any of the following acts: (a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed— (a) (i) on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft; (a) (ii) against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State;
Parliament derives its power from Britain's unwritten constitution, not from delegated royal prerogative. This certainly dates to at latest the Glorious Revolution. The Bill of Rights 1688 explicitly confirmed that the King has no power to dispense with laws, and the Case of Proclamations in 1610 established that the King could not legislate without the consent of Parliament. The ultimate authority in the UK is not the Queen, it's the Queen in Parliament (in other words, Parliamentary action with royal assent).
england-and-wales Yes, double jeopardy applies The common law pleas of autrefois acquit and autrefois convict apply equally to foreign offences; this is black letter law in Halsbury's Laws of England. Scotland is &quot;foreign&quot; for these purposes. There is no analogue to the odd US dual sovereignty doctrine. The general exception to double jeopardy regarding the re-trial of serious offences under Part 10 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 does not apply here, because of an odd anomaly created by the statute due to criminal justice being devolved to the Scottish Parliament. As a result, according to the Crown Prosecution Service: There are no provisions dealing with qualifying offences [for retrial after acquittal] in Scotland as criminal justice is a matter for the Scottish Parliament. At present, the law in Scotland has not been changed so that these provisions do not apply to acquittals that take place in Scotland.
This is sense A. 1b of ‘special’ in the Oxford English Dictionary: Designating a thing: specific, individual or particular to the specified person, thing or set. Now rare (in later use tending to merge with or be understood as sense A. 4a). Special damages are those that can be specified by reference to particular expenses. They are not exceptional or unusual. As noted in the OED, ‘special’ is rarely used in this sense today; modern English users would be more likely to say ‘specific.’ However, the special/general distinction is still used in terms like ‘special/general counsel’ and ‘special/general relativity.’