A petition is a request to an authority, most commonly a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer. See also List of deities A deity is a Postulated Preternatural or Supernatural Being, who is always Prayer is the act of attempting to communicate with a Deity or spirit
In the colloquial sense, a petition is a document addressed to some official and signed by numerous individuals. A petition may be oral rather than written, and in this era may be transmitted via the Internet. The term also has a specific meaning in the legal profession as a request, directed to a court or administrative tribunal, seeking some sort of relief such as a court order. A court is a forum used by a power base to adjudicate disputes and dispense civil, labour administrative and criminal Justice under its A court order (or court ruling) is an official proclamation by a Judge (or panel of judges that defines the legal relationships between the parties to a hearing
A petition can also be the title of a legal pleading that initiates a case to be heard before a court. In Law as practiced in countries that follow the English model a pleading is a formal written statement filed with a Court by parties in a Civil action A court is a forum used by a power base to adjudicate disputes and dispense civil, labour administrative and criminal Justice under its The initial pleading in a civil lawsuit that seeks only money (damages) might be titled (in most U. S. courts) a complaint; an initial pleading in a lawsuit seeking non-monetary or "equitable" relief such as a request for a writ of mandamus or habeas corpus, or for custody of a child or for probate of a will, would instead be termed a petition. In Law, a writ is a formal written order issued by a body with administrative or judicial Jurisdiction. A writ of mandamus or simply mandamus, which means "we command" in Latin, is the name of one of the Prerogative writs in the Common Habeas corpus (ˈheɪbiəs ˈkɔɹpəs ( Latin: command that you have the body is the name of a legal action or Writ, through which a person can seek relief Probate is the Legal process of settling the estate of a deceased person specifically resolving all claims and distributing the decedent's Property
Contents |
Early history
In pre-modern Imperial China petitions were always sent to an Office of Transmission (Tongzheng si) where court secretaries would read petitions aloud to the emperor. Chinese civilization originated in various city-states along the Yellow River ( valley in the Neolithic era The Emperor of China ( refers to any sovereign of Imperial China reigning since the founding of the Qin Dynasty in 221 BC until the fall of [1] Petitions could be sent by anybody, from a scholar-official to a common farmer, although the commoners' petitions were more likely read to the emperor if they were persuasive enough to impeach questionable and corrupt local officials from office. Scholar-bureaucrats or scholar-officials were civil servants appointed by the Emperor of China to perform day-to-day governance from the Sui Dynasty to Impeachment is the first of two stages in a specific process for a legislative body to forcibly remove a Government official [1] When petitions arrived to the throne, multiple copies were made of the original and stored with the Office of Supervising Secretaries before the original written petition was sent to the emperor. [1]
Petitions were a common form of protest and request to the British House of Commons in the 18th and 19th centuries, the largest being the Great/People's Charter, or petition of the Chartists. The House of Commons' is the Lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords For chartism in financial markets see Technical analysis, and for the British socialist journal see Chartist (magazine Chartism was They are still presented in small numbers.
The Petition Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of the people "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme Law of the United States. " The right to petition has been held to include the right to file lawsuits against the government. The right to petition is the freedom of individuals (and sometimes groups and corporations to Petition their government for a correction or repair of some form of
Modern use
Petitions are commonly used in the U. S. to qualify candidates for public office to appear on a ballot; while anyone can be a write-in candidate, a candidate desiring that his or her name appear on printed ballots and other official election materials must gather a certain number of valid signatures from registered voters. A write-in candidate is a candidate in an Election whose name does not appear on the Ballot, but for whom voters may Vote nonetheless by writing in the A ballot is a device (originally a small ball—see blackball) used to record choices made by Voters Each voter uses one ballot and ballots are not In jurisdictions whose laws allow for ballot initiatives, the gathering of a sufficient number of voter signatures qualilfies a proposed initiative to be placed on the ballot. In Political science, the initiative (also known as popular or citizen's initiative) provides a means by which a Petition signed by a certain The 2003 California recall election, which culminated in the recall of Governor Gray Davis and the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger, began when U.S. Representative Darrell Issa employed paid signature gatherers who obtained millions of signatures at a cost to Issa of millions of dollars. The 2003 California recall election was a special Election permitted under California law Joseph Graham Davis Jr (born December 26 1942 better known as Gray Davis, is an American politician who served as California 's 37th Governor Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger ( German ˌaɐnɔlt aloʏs ˈʃvaɐtsənɛɡɐ born July 30 1947 is an Austrian American Bodybuilder, Actor The United States House of Representatives is one of the two chambers of the United States Congress; the other is the Senate. Darrell E Issa (pronounced Eye -suh (born November 1, 1953) is an American politician and formerly a CEO of a Consumer electronics Once the requisite number of signatures was obtained on the recall petition, other petitions were circulated by would-be candidates who wanted to appear on the ballot as possible replacements for Davis. After that step, a vote on the recall was scheduled.
Other types of petitions have included those which sought to free Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment by the former apartheid government of South Africa. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (xolíɬaɬa mandéːla born 18 July 1918 is a former President of South Africa, the first to be elected in fully representative The Republic of South Africa (also known by other official names) is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa The petitions had no legal effect, but the signatures of millions of people on the petitions represented a moral force which may have helped to free Mandela and to end apartheid. Non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International often use petitions in an attempt to exert moral authority in support of various causes. Amnesty International (commonly known as Amnesty or AI) is a Western based international Non-governmental organization which defines its mission as "to
In February 2007, an online petition against road pricing on the UK Prime Minister's own website attracted over 1. 8 million e-signatures, from a population of 60 million people (although it has not been verified that there was only one e-signature per person, merely one per email address). The site was official, but experimental at the time. Shocked government ministers were unable to backtrack on the site's existence in the face of national news coverage of the phenomenon. The incident has demonstrated both the potential and pitfalls of online e-government petitions. e-Government (from electronic Government, also known as e-gov, digital government, online government or in a certain context It remains to be seen if policy will be permanently affected.
See also
Notes
References
- Brook, Timothy. (1998). The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22154-0
External links
- E-petition website of the Government of the United Kingdom
- The PETI committee of the european parliament
- Free E-petition Website for the United Kingdom
Dictionary
petition
-noun
- A formal, written request made to an official person or organized body, often containing many signatures.
- A compilation of signatures built in order to exert moral authority in support of a specific cause.
- (law) A formal written request for judicial action.
-verb
Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic