(law) A decree issued by the court that becomes absolute at some later date unless cause is shown why it should not.

(law) The doctrine that no individual is above the law and that everyone must answer to it. / (law) The maxim whereby governmental decisions are made by applying known legal principles.

(law) A test of criminal insanity by which "it must be clearly proved that, at the time of committing the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong".

(idiomatic) A fundamental rule or principle. / (ethics) The principle that one should treat other people in the manner in which one would want to be treated by them.

(law) The rule stating that an unborn child, if subsequently born alive, is considered as already in existence whenever it is to its own advantage.

Alternative form of McNaughton rules

(physics) the rule which states that the number of degrees of freedom in a system at equilibrium equals the number of components minus the number of phases plus 2

(computing, of a computing language, or expert system) based on a series of simple "if then" rules

(sports) A rule that ends a one-sided contest prior to its natural conclusion.

(physics) Any of several general rules concerning the transitions between the states of a quantum mechanical system; they derive from the symmetry properties of the states and of their interactions