The term " the people" refers to the public or Common people of a polity.
Concepts
Legal
Chapter One, Article One of the Charter of the United Nations states that "peoples" have the right to self-determination.
Though the mere status as peoples and the right to self-determination, as for example in the case of Indigenous peoples (
peoples, as in all groups of indigenous people, not merely all indigenous persons as in
indigenous people), does not automatically provide for
independence sovereignty and therefore
secession.
[See the following:
] Indeed, judge
Ivor Jennings identified the inherent problems in the right of "peoples" to self-determination, as it requires pre-defining a said "people".
Constitutional
Both the
Roman Republic and the
Roman Empire used the
Latin term SPQR]], (the Senate and People of Rome). This term was fixed abbreviated (SPQR) to Roman legionary standards, and even after the
achieved a state of total personal
autocracy, they continued to wield their power in the name of the Senate and People of Rome.
The term People's Republic, used since late modernity, is a name used by sovereign state, which particularly identify with a form of socialism.
Judicial
In
criminal law, in certain jurisdictions, criminal prosecutions are brought in the name of
the People. Several U.S. states, including
California,
Illinois, and New York, use this style.
[See, e.g., California v. Anderson 6 Cal. 3d 628; 493 P.2d 880; 100 Cal. Rptr. 152; 1972 Cal. LEXIS 154 (1972)] Citations outside the jurisdictions in question usually substitute the name of the state for the words "the People" in the case captions.
[See generally, , rule 10.] Four states —
Massachusetts,
Virginia,
Pennsylvania, and
Kentucky — refer to themselves as
the Commonwealth in case captions and legal process. Other states, such as
Indiana, typically refer to themselves as
the State in case captions and legal process. Outside the United States, criminal trials in Ireland and the
Philippines are prosecuted in the name of the people of their respective states.
The political theory underlying this format is that criminal prosecutions are brought in the name of the sovereignty; thus, in these U.S. states, the "people" are judged to be the sovereign, even as in the United Kingdom and other dependencies of the British monarchy, criminal prosecutions are typically brought in the name of the Crown. "The people" identifies the entire body of the of a jurisdiction invested with political power or gathered for political purposes.[ Black's Law Dictionary, 5th ed., "People".]
See also
External links
