Fact and Law

views updated

FACT AND LAW

A term used to denote issues or events that have taken place and the legal jurisdiction that governs how they are viewed. Fact in legal terms, is the event, while law refers to the actual rules that determine how facts are viewed by the courts. Lawyers and courts may separate fact and law to differentiate them; thus, aquestion of factconcerns the actual events of a case as they might be examined by a jury, while aquestion of lawfocuses on the legal rules and principles as determined by a judge, and applied to the facts by a jury.