spirit of the law
spirit of the law noun: either the intent behind a law's wording, or the reasonable effect that the law ought to be applied toward; the interpretation of the law towards the end of providing justice, even if this interpretation competes with one that is asserted to be overliteral, pedantic, or punctilious.
Noun
spirit of the law
- Either the intent behind a law's wording, or the reasonable effect that the law ought to be applied toward; the interpretation of the law towards the end of providing justice, even if this interpretation competes with one that is asserted to be overliteral, pedantic, or punctilious.
Questions about spirit of the law
- What does spirit of the law mean?
- Spirit of the law means either the intent behind a law's wording, or the reasonable effect that the law ought to be applied toward; the interpretation of the law towards the end of providing justice, even if this interpretation competes with one that is asserted to be overliteral, pedantic, or punctilious.
- What part of speech is spirit of the law?
- Spirit of the law is a noun.
Words near spirit of the law in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: spirit of the law (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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