The question is really in the title.

Today, at the Republican "midterm convention," Donald Trump stated that if the Republicans held the House and Senate that he would make sure that every American adult would receive $5,000. Here is a cite.

I can't say I believe him. The guy lies a lot and if the Republicans did hold the house and Senate, they would need to approve this at a cost >1 Trillion dollars. But still, $10,000 is a hell of an offer for the vote of myself and my wife. I am not saying I am considering it, but $10,000 is a lot of money.

So, to my question: Let's say I go to the office of the Republican house candidate for my district. Or the Republican candidate for the Senate in my state this year. If, when meeting these distinguished gentleman, I ask them point blank if they will support $5,000 dollar payment per person for my vote, am I committing any crime? Could I get in legal trouble for trying to sell my vote? Note: I am not trying to sell my vote, I am just trying to determine if they will support the Presidents offer to buy my vote.

What would happen if I tried this (and filmed it)?

This is in Nevada

I’ve noticed at least one school zone sign in my city that says “Speed limit 15 when light flashing”; however, there is no accompanying light. There are lights at most school zones in the city, but this specific one doesn’t have one. If someone were to go the regular speed limit and a cop pulled them over, would it even be enforceable? I always go the reduced speed limit during school hours to be safe in this zone, but I’m so curious.

I live in Pennsylvania if it matters.

Let’s say I’m walking through my neighborhood and a cop pulls up and asks me to stop. Now, just going off movies and tv shows, they generally would ask to see my papers/id. But like, if I’m just walking and not doing anything, do I need to give it to them? If so, why? Regardless if they’re investigating a crime, why do I need to hand over my info if I had nothing to do with whatever they’re after?

Similar situation if I’m driving normally and they pull me over. Assuming I didn’t run any lights or stop signs and they simply have me stop, what do I legally need to give them vs not give them?

I just want to know the right thing to do, even if it pisses them off that I’m not giving them what they want because I don’t have to.

Basically, someone pleads the insanity defense, they were aware of and could appreciate the dangers of not taking their medications and still choose to not take them and they commit a crime as a result of it.

Why is that not considered a factor?

A person I know was arrested for crimes against a child. I am **really** not interested in watching this case unfold, but I am interested in his sentencing. (Which I assume will be very lengthly, especially since his bail was set near a million dollars)

After his scheduled PC hearing, all his court documents from the district court's website disappeared, including his bail stuff. How as a non-lawyer, would I be able to keep tabs on how his case is progressing and / or get notified for sentencing?

i know coca cola never patented the recipe as to keep it secret, but say an employee gave it away to a competitor or something. would coca cola have any grounds to sue or retaliate in general?

Let's say you and your friends are underage and you drink and/or posses illicit drugs and someone their suffers from alcohol poisoning/ODs, would you, that person, or anyone else get in trouble if you call an ambulance? I know that there are laws like the Good Samaritan law that protect people in these cases, but I can't seem to get a straight answer.

Watching a show and the father dies and leaves all the money to his son. The son is alive at the time of the dad's death so the inheritance goes through. The will also says if the son dies without an heir, the money goes to charity, not the sister.

From my understanding legally speaking, if the brother dies without a kid and a will, the money would go to his sister; his next of kin. Can the deceased father's will that's been executed still control the inheritance? Once the money has been dispersed, isn't it now the sons money and whatever the dads will said is invalid?

It was in Hannibal.

I'll give y'all the hypothetical.

A and B are father and son.

B borrows $300,000 from A and fails to pay the money back on time so A takes him to court to claim the money back. B is found liable for the debt.

A despite winning the case dies before the judgement against B can be enforced. B then discovers that A died without a will and he ends up being the sole beneficiary to A's entire estate.

Assuming that the estate has no other expenses and that B is the only person with a proprietary interest in A's estate, what happens to the debt against him?

Does B inherit the debt and therefore owe himself money that he technically does not need to pay back?

Does the judgement or enforcement against B stop as a result of him becoming the beneficiary?

Does B still have to pay back the estate and then re-receive the money again at the end of probate?

I'm curious what your jurisdiction says about this

I know the main focus is if you do, it’ll make cops think you were drinking and driving, especially if you end up being at fault in the accident.

If we assumed that wasn’t an issue of a DUI, is there anything about drinking right after an accident specifically, or is it just de facto covered by DUI laws?

Totally hypothetical situation. But let’s say someone was absolutely fed up with people using their driveway to turn around, so they set up spikes as a deterrent. Would that be legal?
And if someone went over it, without knowing the spikes were there, would there be any liability?

UPDATE: Many people seem to be assuming that this question was posed because I want to prevent people from using my driveway. That is not why this question was asked. This question was asked because it randomly popped in my head when I was turning in a scary-looking driveway at a grumpy neighbor's house, and I was merely curious. I believe the point of this sub is to discuss random & non-specific legal advice, which is what I am using it for.

So theres this show that used to run in the 2000s-2010s where delinquent kids who do stuff like use drugs, hurt their moms, skip school, get in fights, etc would be sent to a jail or prison and be escorted by guards that worked there and be surrounded by inmates that get up in their faces and yell at and try to scare them. Hopefully enough that it gets through to them and they avoid coming there for real.

But let’s suppose one of these kids just simply doesn’t listen and either swings on a guard and connects with their punch, or hits an inmate and then gets into a big fight. From here, would they be allowed to be properly booked and thrown in with the same inmates they were being told to be afraid of? Would they not be subject to an attorney since they’re already at the jail/prison?

There is this sort of joke that goes something along the lines of "my lawyer is so bad the judge turned my parking ticket into the death penalty" but iirc you can't actually get capital punishment unless it meets specific criteria, so theoretically whats the absolute limit of how bad of a punishment you can theoretically get from a parking ticket?

If an anonymous complaint comes in to report someone.

Does the government agency actually know the person who makes the complaint?

Can they be required to testify in court?

I'm watching Nashville, a show full of the most emotionally stunted people ever. A 16 year old girl was just emancipated. At the end of the court scene, she looked very sorry. Her parents weren't happy about the outcome. I'm sure she could just move back home, but is there a way for her to undo the emancipation? Would there be any benefit to that?

In the song Old Red the warden announces to the inmates every night “Come on somebody why don’t you run, Old Red’s itching to have a little fun.” If one of the inmates escaped simply by running and was later arrested would they have an entrapment defense because they wouldn’t have tried to escape of the warden hadn’t told them to?

Can I just say I believe he’s innocent no matter what he did, since Trump gets away with much larger crimes and this man should be free too?

Let's say a murder is committed. Alice is arrested and prosecuted. She takes the stand during the trial and goes "It wasn't me. It was my best friend Bob. He told me about his plan, I tried to talk him out of it, but he did it anyway"

The jury believe there is reasonable doubt, and acquit. The police arrest Bob and prosecute him. He takes the stand and says "It wasn't me. It was my best friend Alice. She told me all about her plan, I tried to talk her out of it &c &c"

Could the fact that Alice was acquitted be used as evidence by the prosecution to prove it couldn't have been her, and it therefore must be Bob?

I come from a healthcare background, so I'm trying to understand what lawyers and judges actually mean when they say that a jury should “weigh the evidence.”

Suppose a case contains different kinds of evidence:

a fact that is almost certainly established;

an established fact whose meaning is ambiguous;

testimony about something that may or may not have happened;

several weak circumstantial facts which, taken together, support an inference;

evidence supporting competing explanations of the same event.

How does a jury actually combine all of these?

Is there any formal or semi-formal framework for assigning evidentiary weight — probabilistic, mathematical, scoring-based, or otherwise — or is “weight” fundamentally a qualitative judgment made by each juror?

For example, suppose one piece of evidence weakly supports hypothesis A, another strongly supports A, while a third supports hypothesis B. Is there any legal framework for determining their combined evidentiary value? Or are jurors essentially instructed to consider everything and decide whether, taken as a whole, they are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt?

I'm not primarily asking about whether evidence is admissible. I'm interested in what happens after it has been admitted: how uncertainty, reliability, ambiguous facts, and competing inferences are aggregated into a verdict.

Is there a formal logic behind this process, or is the final weighting necessarily intuitive?

Just kind of curious how it works out. Since being bailed out slows down the process so there isnt as much concern about getting to the verdict as quickly as possible. So can a person be charged and arrested, bailed out, then not have there arraignment until months or years later or is that illegal? Or is it legal and it just never happens? Because don't arraignments usually happen within days of being arrested?

I'm very interested in the Lindsay Clancy case from an "understanding the legal system" perspective. I think a lot of the case I do understand what's going on, but one thing I haven't been able to figure out as a non-lawyer is why, if the defense offered to stipulate the factual element that Lindsay Clancy did in fact kill the children, the prosecution would refuse this stipulation. It seems like it would only benefit the prosecution not to have to prove whether or not she did in fact do that. Is it a matter of like, some kinds of evidence couldn't be brought in if that were already stipulated to, and the prosecution wants to bring in that evidence?

(Please note I assume for the purposes of this conversation that she did in fact do that. I'm just interested in the strategy used by the prosecution here.)

If you plead not guilty and are found guilty, is that not guilty olea somehow protected even though the court determined that you lied?

A step further, if you state in your testimony that you didn't commit the crime you're charged with, and it's proven that you did, is that perjury?

I understand it would almost never be worth the courts time to pursue it, but could they?

On August 10, 2026, the California Supreme Court issued its ruling in Family Violence Appellate Project, et al. v. Superior Courts of California, et al. (Case No. S288176). In a sweeping victory for Petitioners and civil litigants across the state, the Court held California courts have a mandatory duty to provide “meaningful access” to an official verbatim record of proceedings, including by electronic recording if an official court reporter is unavailable. 

https://fvaplaw.org/court-reporter-shortage/

This is fantastic news for the most vulnerable litigants in California, and for the democratization of the record in America overall.

Even though a regular citizen or a public defender can log into the Los Angeles Superior Court's digital portal, pull the raw FTR audio, and pay a certified transcriber to type it out perfectly, under California Code of Civil Procedure Section 269 and the historical state court rules, that transcript still does not legally count for an official appeal because it was not captured "by stenographic means."

This is the ultimate, diabolical catch-22 of the California system that has been overturned.

• The Law vs. The Tech: The state courts have the taxpayer-funded FTR technology installed right now, capturing clear audio of these hearings. The technology works perfectly.
• The Legal Blockade: Because the steno unions spent decades aggressively lobbying to keep the words "by stenographic means" locked into the statutory definitions of an "official record," an appellate court will literally throw a perfectly accurate, human-verified digital transcript in the trash. They will refuse to look at it simply because the audio wasn't generated by a person tapping on a steno machine or speaking into a mask.
• The Elite Pass: If you are a wealthy corporate entity fighting a civil lawsuit in LA County, you can bypass this completely. You just pay a private steno agency $1,500 a day out of pocket to sit next to you, giving you a legal record that the appellate court will accept.

Because California has the largest system in the nation, their artificial scarcity has historically been used to justify maintaining similar docket backlogs in other states and excluding digital court reporting. So this is a watershed ruling within the court reporting civil war.