Jurist in the context of "Hooding"

An uncodified constitution is a type of constitution where the fundamental rules often take the form of customs, usage, precedent and a variety of statutes and legal instruments. An explicit understanding of such a constitution can be developed through commentary by the judiciary, government committees or legal experts. In such a constitutional system, all these elements may be (or may not be) recognized by courts, legislators, and the bureaucracy as binding upon government and limiting its powers. Such a framework is sometimes imprecisely called an "unwritten constitution"; however, all the elements of an uncodified constitution are typically written down in a variety of official documents, though not codified in a single document. However, there may be truly "unwritten" constitutional conventions which while not usually legally enforceable may hold just as much sway as the letter of the law.

An uncodified constitution has the advantages of elasticity, adaptability, and resilience. A. V. Dicey described the uncodified constitution as "the most flexible polity in existence." A significant disadvantage, however, is that controversies may arise due to different understandings of the usages and customs that form the fundamental provisions of the constitution.

Albert Venn Dicey, KC, FBA (4 February 1835 – 7 April 1922) was a British Whig jurist and constitutional theorist. He is most widely known as the author of Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885). The principles it expounds are considered part of the uncodified British constitution. He became Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford, one of the first Professors of Law at the LSE Law School, and a leading constitutional scholar of his day. Dicey popularised the phrase "rule of law", although its use goes back to the 17th century.

Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (/ˈveɪbər/; German: [ˈveːbɐ] ; 21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sciences more generally. His ideas continue to influence social theory and research.

Born in Erfurt in 1864, Weber studied law and history in Berlin, Göttingen, and Heidelberg. After earning his doctorate in law in 1889 and habilitation in 1891, he taught in Berlin, Freiburg, and Heidelberg. He married his cousin Marianne Schnitger two years later. In 1897, he had a breakdown after his father died following an argument. Weber ceased teaching and travelled until the early 1900s. He recovered and wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. During the First World War, he initially supported Germany's war effort but became critical of it and supported democratisation. He also gave the lectures "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation". After the war, Weber co-founded the German Democratic Party, unsuccessfully ran for office, and advised the drafting of the Weimar Constitution. Becoming frustrated with politics, he resumed teaching in Vienna and Munich. He died of pneumonia in 1920 at the age of 56, possibly as a result of the post-war Spanish flu pandemic. A book, Economy and Society, was left unfinished.

Lucius Cincius Alimentus (fl. about 200 BC) was a celebrated Roman annalist, jurist, and provincial official. He is principally remembered as one of the founders of Roman historiography, although his Annals has been lost and is only known from fragments in other works.

The Deipnosophistae (Ancient Greek: Δειπνοσοφισταί, Deipnosophistaí, lit. 'The Dinner Sophists', where sophists may be translated more loosely as 'sages, philosophers, experts') is a work written c. 200 AD in Ancient Greek by Athenaeus of Naucratis. It is a long work of literary, historical, and antiquarian references set in Rome at a series of banquets held by the protagonist Publius Livius Larensis [de] for an assembly of grammarians, lexicographers, jurists, musicians, and hangers-on.

Customary international law consists of international legal obligations arising from established or usual international practices, which are less formal customary expectations of behavior often unwritten as opposed to formal written treaties or conventions. Customary law is also referred to as opinio juris (means “opinion of law”), which is a term used in international law to signifiy state practices taken under the belief that such actions are legal obligations. Generally, customary international law applies equally to all states. Along with general principles of law and treaties, custom is considered by the International Court of Justice, jurists, the United Nations, and its member states to be among the primary sources of international law.

Rules that are considered customary law are binding upon all states. Customary international law need not be codified in a treaty. If a treaty, or any portion thereof, becomes customary law, it will bind all states that are not persistent objectors. A treaty or international agreement can bind a state not party to the treaty when: the treaty codifies customary international law; or when the treaty has become customary law or represents an obligation erga omnes. For example, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties is widely described as codifying customary international law concerning treaties.

Jeremy Bentham (/ˈbɛnθəm/; 4 February 1747/8 O.S. [15 February 1748 N.S.] – 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.

Bentham defined as the "fundamental axiom" of his philosophy the principle that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong". He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedoms, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and (in an unpublished essay) the decriminalizing of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery, capital punishment, and physical punishment, including that of children. He has also become known as an early advocate of animal rights. Though strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights (both of which are considered "divine" or "God-given" in origin), calling them "nonsense upon stilts". However, he viewed the Magna Carta as important, citing it to argue that the treatment of convicts in Australia was unlawful. Bentham was also a sharp critic of legal fictions.

Martianus Minneus Felix Capella (fl. c. 410–420) was a jurist, polymath and Latin prose writer of late antiquity, one of the earliest developers of the system of the seven liberal arts that structured early medieval education. He was a native of Madaura.

His single encyclopedic work, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii ("On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury"), also called De septem disciplinis ("On the seven disciplines"), is an elaborate didactic allegory written in a mixture of prose and elaborately allusive verse.