Black's Law Dictionary in the context of "Confession (law)"

A nation is a type of social organization where a collective identity, a national identity, has emerged from a combination of shared features across a given population, such as language, history, ethnicity, culture, territory, or society. Some nations are constructed around ethnicity (see ethnic nationalism) while others are bound by political constitutions (see civic nationalism).

A nation is generally more overtly political than an ethnic group. Benedict Anderson defines a nation as "an imagined political community […] imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion", while Anthony D. Smith defines nations as cultural-political communities that have become conscious of their autonomy, unity and particular interests. Black's Law Dictionary also defines nation as a community of people inhabiting a defined territory and organized under an independent government. Thus, nation can be synonymous with state or country. Indeed, according to Thomas Hylland Eriksen, what distinguishes nations from other forms of collective identity, like ethnicity, is this very relationship with the state.

Sumptuary laws (from Latin sūmptuāriae lēgēs) are laws that regulate consumption. Black's Law Dictionary defines them as "Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures for apparel, food, furniture, or shoes, etc." Historically, they were intended to regulate and reinforce social hierarchies and morals through restrictions on clothing, food, and luxury expenditures, often depending on a person's social rank.

Societies have employed sumptuary laws for various purposes. They were used to try to regulate the balance of trade by limiting the market for expensive imported goods. They made it easy to identify social status and privilege, and as such could be used for social discrimination and to stabilize social hierarchies. They could also be used to prevent, or at least reduce, opportunities for political bribery and corruption.

Henry Campbell Black (October 17, 1860 – March 19, 1927) was the founder of Black's Law Dictionary, the definitive legal dictionary first published in 1891.

Born in Ossining, New York, went to school at Trinity College in Connecticut, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1880, a master’s degree in 1887, and a Doctor of Laws (LLD) degree in 1916. He was also the editor of The Constitutional Review from 1917 until his death in 1927.

In the common law legal system, an expungement or expunction proceeding, is a type of lawsuit in which an individual who has been arrested for or convicted of a crime seeks that the records of that earlier process be sealed or destroyed, making the records nonexistent or unavailable to the general public. If successful, the records are said to be "expunged". Black's Law Dictionary defines "expungement of record" as the "Process by which record of criminal conviction is destroyed or sealed from the state or Federal repository." While expungement deals with an underlying criminal record, it is a civil action in which the subject is the petitioner or plaintiff asking a court to declare that the records be expunged.

The function of an expungement is significantly different from that of a pardon. When an expungement is granted, in many jurisdictions, for most purposes the person whose record is expunged may treat the event as if it never occurred. A pardon (also called "executive clemency") does not "erase" the event; rather, it constitutes forgiveness. In the United States, an expungement can be granted only by a judge, while a pardon can be granted only by the President of the United States for federal offenses, and the state governor, certain other state executive officers, or the State Board of Pardons and Paroles (varies from state to state) for state offenses.