Blockade, use of naval forces to cut off maritime communication and supply. Blockades may be used to prevent shipping from reaching enemy ports, or they may serve purposes of coercion. The ter...

Drago, Luis María, 1859–1921, Argentine statesman, jurist, and writer on international law. As minister of foreign affairs under Julio A. Roca, he dispatched (Dec. 29, 1902) a note to the Arge...

Duress, in law, actual or threatened violence or imprisonment, by reason of which a person is forced to enter into an agreement or to perform some other act against his will. The constraint or...

Jackson, Claiborne Fox, 1806–62, governor of Missouri, b. Fleming co., Ky. In 1822 he moved to Missouri, where he practiced law. Speaker of the state legislature (1844–46), he later was a lead...

Vigilius, pope (537–55), a Roman; successor of St. Silverius. Empress Theodora exiled Silverius and made Vigilius pope in the expectation that he would compromise with the Monophysites. After ...

Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, 1953–, president of Haiti (1991, 1994–96, 2001–4). A radical Catholic priest who defended liberation theology, he worked among Haiti's poor and was part of a group of ...

Harold, 1022?–1066, king of England (1066). The son of Godwin, earl of Wessex, he belonged to the most powerful noble family of England in the reign of Edward the Confessor. Through Godwin's i...

Corporal punishment, physical chastisement of an offender. At one extreme it includes the death penalty (see capital punishment), but the term usually refers to punishments like flogging, cani...

Social contract, agreement or covenant by which men are said to have abandoned the state of nature to form the society in which they now live. The theory of such a contract, first formulated b...

Extraterritoriality or exterritoriality, privilege of immunity from local law enforcement enjoyed by certain aliens. Although physically present upon the territory of a foreign nation, those a...