Word.ws English Dictionary

principle of legality

principle of legality noun: the principle that the courts should not interpret any statute as curtailing or abrogating a common law right, freedom, or principle, unless the legislative body that made that statute clearly communicated the intention to impose such a restriction.

Noun

principle of legality

  1. The principle that the courts should not interpret any statute as curtailing or abrogating a common law right, freedom, or principle, unless the legislative body that made that statute clearly communicated the intention to impose such a restriction.

Questions about principle of legality

What does principle of legality mean?
Principle of legality means the principle that the courts should not interpret any statute as curtailing or abrogating a common law right, freedom, or principle, unless the legislative body that made that statute clearly communicated the intention to impose such a restriction.
What part of speech is principle of legality?
Principle of legality is a noun.

Words near principle of legality in the dictionary

  1. principle of least action
  2. principle of least astonishment
  3. principle of least knowledge
  4. principle of least surprise
  5. principle of least time
  6. principle of legality
  7. principle of locality
  8. principle of parsimony
  9. principle of Pseudo-Scotus
  10. principle of relativity
  11. principle of substitutivity

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: principle of legality (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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