Buying of a noble title I recently came across some sites that let you purchase a noble title like: Lord, Lady, Duke, Duchess, Marquis, Count,... How can they sell such titles (they used to be given by the King/Queen of England)? Are these titles legitimate? And how do they work? Elite-titles and Scottishlands are examples of sites selling titles.
Very simply, they aren't selling genuine titles. There are two limited exceptions: Note that there is considerable difference between Scottish and English law in this area. You cannot purchase a genuine British title, with one exception, the feudal title of a Scottish baron; and certainly cannot buy a peerage title. Scottish Feudal Baronies fetch a mighty price; the Barony of MacDonald was up for sale at over £1 million. Richard, 7th Earl of Bradford, at http://www.faketitles.com/ For Scottish feudal baronies, For centuries baronies conferred important commercial benefits and legal privileges, but they are now personal titles with no powers or responsibilities. Holders are able to sell, gift or bequeath them, as ‘incorporeal’ property separate from the ownership of land, and there is a small but active market for them. https://www.lindsays.co.uk/services/for-you-and-your-family/scottish-barony-titles We generally estimate legal fees between £2,000 -£3,000 for the acquisition of a barony and £3,000 -£4,000 for an earldom. The barony itself will cost in the region of £75,000 or more in the case ofalordship, earldomor marquisate. https://www.lindsays.co.uk/assets/downloads/Buying-a-Scottish-Barony-Title.pdf In England, it is possible you can purchase a Lordship of the Manor, which does not give you a title, but enables you to put after your name, Lord of the Manor of Lower Piddling-in-the-Trough or some such place. Richard, 7th Earl of Bradford, at http://www.faketitles.com/ When I acquire a barony title what will my name be? Let us assume that your name is John Smith and that you have acquired the Barony of Strathglen. You can then style yourself John Smith, Baron of Strathglen. But note, neither Baron Strathglen nor Baron Smith of Strathglen because both of these would indicate a peerage title and barony titles are feudal titles. https://baronytitles.com/frequently-asked-questions/
Words themselves are not protected by copyright. Curated lists of words, however, are (what's protected is the artful collection of words chosen for a purpose). Hence Hasbro owns the copyright in the list of playable words, though it is a matter for future possible litigation to see if the courts agree. If you have permission from the copyright holder, that permission (license) should state how you can use the list (it does not matter if there is a title). However, you may need to obtain the list from the copyright holder. The website operator presumably already has a license, the terms of which may allow them to prevent you from copying from the website. E.g. the author may have granted the website operator the right to use the list as long as they don't restrict redistribution; but that license may also require restricting redistribution. So you also have to study the website terms of use – or get a copy directly from the copyright holder (assuming that that is the original author).
There is currently no means for the Earl to disclaim his title, if it has been longer than the permitted period since he inherited it. He also could not do so if he was the first holder, since the 1963 Act only applies to inheritance, and he cannot disclaim a life peerage. The reasoning from 1963 is that the Act was made for people who wanted to sit in the House of Commons, but could not do so due to an accident of birth - something they had no say in. For a life peerage, or peerage of the first creation, they should have refused the honour at the time it was offered. The situation is now a bit different thanks to the removal of all but 92 hereditary peers from the House of Lords in 1999, and the resignation provisions in the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. If the Earl were one of the 92, then he could not disclaim the peerage until he resigned, or was disqualified under other provisions of the 2014 Act. On resignation, he would become able to vote in general elections, stand as a candidate, and sit in the Commons if elected. (By the way, Church of England bishops who are members of the Lords can also resign, but do so in a different way.) So any hereditary or life peer who feels that they are disenfranchised by virtue of sitting in the Lords also has the means to leave that chamber. That makes it difficult to make a human rights claim on the basis of Article 3 of the First Protocol. The European Court of Human Rights has upheld other kinds of voting restrictions in parallel circumstances, such as Ahmed and others v United Kingdom [1998]. In that case, several local government officials were barred from certain political activities, including standing for election, and brought a claim against the UK concerning violation of Articles 10 (free expression), 11 (free association) and 3 of Protocol 1 (free elections). The Court found that the restrictions were justified, and in particular that the applicants could avoid them by resigning. An opposite case was X v United Kingdom [1978] in which the applicant claimed a violation of Article 6 (right to a fair trial) because he claimed to have the right to sit in the Lords but his petition to the Queen was denied. The Commission found that participating in the legislature is part of public law as opposed to a &quot;civil right&quot; within the scope of Article 6. Also, granting or withholding an honour has traditionally been held to be immune from judicial review - cited for example in Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service [1985] AC 374 - although this conclusion may no longer be completely solid since the well-known 2019 Miller case. That would apply for aspects of a peerage which are purely ceremonial in nature. The Earl might want to argue that his free expression is impaired by having a hereditary title at all. But there is nothing stopping him from calling himself by an ordinary name. British law doesn't require him to be called the Earl in any context, and there are plenty of peers who use their normal names while working at normal jobs. He has a defined place in the order of precedence, but I am not convinced that the situation would arise where he insisted on going to a fancy dinner and had a contretemps with the host over the seating arrangement that amounted to a human rights violation. Equally, he has the right to wear an Earl's coronet at a royal coronation, but our newly republican Earl would probably just not go. In the case of the Earl Marshal - a hereditary office which goes along with being the Duke of Norfolk - there are non-trivial duties involved, and an Earl Marshal might justifiably want to stop doing them. The past procedure has been for the Crown to appoint a Deputy Earl Marshal instead, as was done in 2000 when the Duke at the time was unwell. It would seem that a similar manoeuvre would work for any other hereditary offices that were more than nominal. If the Crown refused to do this, then perhaps a claim could arise under Article 14 (discrimination on the grounds of birth), but it would require a particularly intransigent Crown. Hereditary peers may hold property in a variety of entertaining feudally-derived ways, in addition to more familiar modes. The most relevant scenario to imagine is that our Earl owns Exampleshire Castle in &quot;fee tail&quot;, meaning that he can't dispose of it even though it is horribly expensive for him to keep paying for repairs to its leaky roof - it must pass to his eldest son, and so forth. Even if the Earl is able to disclaim his peerage, he may still be on the hook for the property, depending on how everything is structured. However, there are generally legal workarounds these days, beyond the scope of this question, unlike when entails were so important to the plots of historical stories featuring the aristocracy. There is a current campaign by daughters of some peers to change the inheritance laws away from male-preference primogeniture, including on human rights grounds. It remains to be seen how that will work out, but a key difference here is that they are losing out by not being able to inherit, while the Earl is able to divest himself of all the disadvantages of the title, by simply not using it.
No If the price advertised is not honoured by the business and you are asked to pay a higher price, you do not have an automatic right to buy the item at the special offer or sale price. As long as the shop or business tells you before you pay that the higher price applies, you have the option to either buy it at the higher price or decide not to. However, the shop or business may be in breach of consumer law in relation to misleading advertising. The prosecution (or not) of the misleading advertising is the government’s task, not yours. This is a common formulation across Common Law jurisdictions as it a codification of the historic common law position. An advertised price is not an offer capable of acceptance, it is an invitation to treat. That is, it is an invitation for you to make them an offer and the price that is likely to be accepted. It is overlaid with later developments in consumer protection surrounding false advertising and misleading and deceptive conduct.
I find that Petri Mäntysaari: The Law of Corporate Finance: General Principles and EU Law: Volume II, p. 115-140 can pretty much explain the reasoning for this. It is in chapter 5.3 on Terms non-binding as intended. The contract might not contain all legal requirements for some reason, or a clause might become invalid due to law changes. Sometimes the contract becomes unenforceable for some reason or another in part or full. The salvatorian clause is there to fix the defective clause to become the closest estimate to the written form that is legal and not deficient instead of being just dropped from the contract. This can save a contract from becoming unenforceable or making it void in whole. Especially look at Page 140: If a contract term is invalid because of a mandatory provision of law, it will be replaced by legal background rules(§306(2) BGB). One of the standard ways to address the situation is to use a so-called salvatorian clause. [...] This [reinterpretation/fixing of deficiencies] would not happen without a specific contract term. (See §139 BGB. On the other hand see also §140 BGB. Compare DCFR II.-7:302 and II.-7:303) A caveat though: if the alteration to the clause needed is too big and substantial, the contract as a whole can become void and null, no matter what the salvatorian clause said. It cannot overcome some burdens and there are regularly courts (I know this for Germany) voiding contracts due to such serious deficiencies. Notes BGB is the German "Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch", an english translation exists §139 says "If a part of a legal transaction is void, then the entire legal transaction is void, unless it is to be assumed that it would have been undertaken even without the void part." Example: a sale lacking any payment is not a sale (which starts a legally required warranty) $140 says "If a void legal transaction fulfils the requirements of another legal transaction, then the latter is deemed to have been entered into, if it may be assumed that its validity would be intended if there were knowledge of the invalidity." Example: a sale lacking any payment can be interpreted as a gift if the intent was to do so (and does not grant warranty) DCFR is the EU Draft Common Frame of Reference, so the above rules are to be found in the document as follows II.–7:302: Contracts infringing mandatory rules - p. 565. Paraphrased: "if a clause in a contract violates a law, substitute the law for it, courts shall decide if that alters or voids the contract. They may fix contracts to cure them." II.–7:303: Effects of nullity or avoidance - p. 574. Paraphrased: "void contract (parts) can constitute unjustified enrichment, transfer of items might not have happened, courts may fix contracts to cure." From the DCFR document one can read what happens in absence of a Salvatorian clause, especially for UK law. II.–7:302: I. Contracts contrary to law 1 All European systems deal with contracts which contravene some rule of law, as opposed to contracts which are contrary to fundamental principles of morality or public policy. 5 In ENGLISH, IRISH and SCOTTISH law the standard texts all include chapter headings such as “Illegality”, or “Statutory Invalidity”. See further Enonchong, McBryde, Law of Contract in Scotland1 , paras. 19.28-19.36, and, for the confused development of Scottish law, Macgregor in Reid &amp; Zimmermann vol. II, chap. 5. II. Effects of infringement 8 The general starting point in most European legal systems is that contracts violating legal rules are void. There is often, however, considerable flexibility in the law. 14 In ENGLISH and SCOTTISH law, while an illegal contract may be void, it is more often presented as “unenforceable”, in that neither specific performance nor damages are available to the parties. Thus a party may withdraw from an illegal contract with impunity. Courts will take notice of illegality of their own motion and dismiss actions accordingly (Chitty on Contracts I27, no. 16-199; MacQueen and Thomson, Contract Law in Scotland, § 7.15; McBryde, Law of Contract in Scotland1 , paras. 13.31-13.34, 19.17-19.27).). Again, however, there is flexibility in the law on contracts infringing statutory provisions. There are several cases in which the courts have considered whether giving effect to the statute requires the nullity of the contract as a supporting sanction (see e.g. St John Shipping Corp. v. Joseph Rank Ltd. [1957] 1 QB 267; Archbolds (Freightage) Ltd. v. S Spangletts Ltd. [1961] 2 QB 374, CA). English law is currently under review by the Law Commission: see its Consultation Paper on Illegal Transactions. The Commission’s provisional proposals were to the effect that courts should have the discretion to decide whether or not illegality should act as a defence to a claim for contractual enforcement. But the discretion should be structured by requiring the court to take account of specific factors: (1) the seriousness of the illegality involved; (2) the knowledge and intention of the party seeking enforcement; (3) whether denying relief will act as a deterrent; (4) whether denial of relief will further the purpose of the rule rendering the contract illegal; and (5) whether denying relief is proportionate to the illegality involved. II.–7:303: Notes 5 In ENGLISH law the general rule is against restitution but it is possible in exceptional cases where the claimant is not in pari delicto with the recipient, or the transaction has not been completely executed, or if the claim can be formulated without reference to the prohibited contract (Treitel, The Law of Contract9 , 490-504). IRISH law is similar (Clark 314-19), and so is SCOTTISH law (Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia vol. 15, paras. 764-765), although in one Scottish case where, by statute, contracts using old Scottish measures were void, restitutionary recovery was allowed in respect of a sale of potatoes by the Scottish acre, on the ground that there was no moral turpitude in such a transaction (Cuthbertson v. Lowes (1870) 8 M 1073; see further Macgregor, (2000) 4 ELR 19-45; McBryde, Law of Contract in Scotland1 , paras. 13.31-13.34, 19.22-19.26). The English Law Commission in its Consultation Paper on Illegal Transactions suggested that a court should have discretion to decide whether or not illegality should be recognised as a defence to a claim for restitution, various factors being taken into account. In addition the court should have a discretion to allow a party to withdraw from an illegal contract and to have restitution where this will reduce the likelihood of the completion of an illegal act or purpose, although it must be satisfied that the contract could not be enforced against the claimant, that there is genuine repentance of the illegality, and that it is not too serious.
I've had a good look at the Vagrancy Act, and I have to say that i can't find the text that you're looking for. It's possibly been repealed, in which case it's not, in fact, the law - even if it were, it is unlikely that this provision would have applied to most games, as it appears to be Games or pretended Games of Chance that it targets.
Is this legal? Generally yes, unless it unlawfully exceeds the scope of the license. Also, if it is, how can I check if it's permitted by the original store's EULA? Read the whole EULA, focusing on terms related to resale, assignment, and transferability.
It is legal, though not if the grounds are illegal discrimination (race, religion, etc), which by their (empirically supported – they raised the price) representation is not the case. As a marketing strategy (pick a low number, hope for a bidding frenzy that drives the price up) it is legal, though carries a non-trivial risk. It does not constitute &quot;bait and switch&quot; under any definition of the term, and it is not illegal to engage in a business practice that causes someone to frown, or otherwise disapprove.