"color of law" meaning in English

See color of law in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} color of law (uncountable)
  1. (law, US) A mere semblance of legal right; a means to do something with the apparent authority of law but actually in contravention of law. Tags: US, uncountable Categories (topical): Law Translations (mere semblance of legal right): lain varjo (Finnish)
    Sense id: en-color_of_law-en-noun-xZ~sJFES Categories (other): American English, English entries with incorrect language header Topics: law

Download JSON data for color of law meaning in English (1.4kB)

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          "text": "The plaintiff claimed that under color of law the officer had deprived him of his civil rights.",
          "type": "example"
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      "glosses": [
        "A mere semblance of legal right; a means to do something with the apparent authority of law but actually in contravention of law."
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        "(law, US) A mere semblance of legal right; a means to do something with the apparent authority of law but actually in contravention of law."
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      "topics": [
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      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "mere semblance of legal right",
          "word": "lain varjo"
        }
      ]
    }
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  "word": "color of law"
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        "A mere semblance of legal right; a means to do something with the apparent authority of law but actually in contravention of law."
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  "translations": [
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      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "mere semblance of legal right",
      "word": "lain varjo"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.