Comminatory
Clause inserted into law
In law, a comminatory is a clause inserted into a law, edict, patent, or similar instrument that describes a punishment to be imposed on delinquents but that, in practice, is not carried out with the severity described or is not carried out at all.
In some countries, when an exile is enjoined not to return on pain of death, the sanction is treated as a comminatory penalty because, if the exile does return, the threatened punishment is not strictly executed; instead, the same threat is renewed, which is more than comminatory.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Comminatory”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
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