Legal fiction

Not to be confused with legal drama, legal thriller, or police procedural.

A legal fiction is a construct used in law where, in order to facilitate a specific outcome, a position is taken to be true, even if such a position is not literally true. Legal fictions can be employed by the courts or found in legislation.

Legal fictions are different from legal presumptions which assume a certain state of facts until the opposite is proved, such as the presumption of legitimacy.

The term legal fiction is sometimes used in a pejorative way. Jeremy Bentham was a famous historical critic of legal fictions. Proponents of legal fictions, particularly of their use historically, identify legal fictions as "scaffolding around a building under construction".

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.