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Black's Law Dictionary defines unlawful as "not authorized by law, illegal." Illegal is defined as "forbidden by law, unlawful." Semantically, there is a slight difference. It seems that something illegal is expressly proscribed by statute, and something unlawful is just not expressly authorized.
I think this backs up my post.
My colouring. You are in a wicked triangle: unlawful>illegal>unlawful. There is no softening of definition, illegal and unlawful are totally synonymous according to Black and Oxford.
Firefly wrote: ↑Sun Sep 29, 2019 11:56 am
Sorry Devil, you choose to go against a law dictionary, so be it.
Not at all, Black and Oxford both define unlawful as illegal. Even Webster says so, amongst some other words. Even the Thesaurus offers illegal as the first choice. There are no shades of meaning in either 'unlawful' or 'illegal' which are both synonymous.
