De Jure

de jure, (Latin: “from the law”) legal concept that refers to what happens according to the law, in contrast to de facto (Latin: “from the fact”), which is used to refer to what happens in practice or in reality. For example, a de jure leader has the legal right to authority over a jurisdiction, but a de facto leader is someone who exerts authority without holding the legal right to do so. The term de jure is often used in legal matters to distinguish legal standard from de facto practice.

In the political sphere, the terms de jure and de facto can distinguish between nominal authority and actual authority. A king or queen, officially appointed or legally entitled to the throne, serves as the de jure head of state in many countries. In some of these cases, owing either to constitutional practice or to incapacitation of the monarch, the head of government carries out the duties of head of state, thereby functioning as the de facto head of state.

De facto is often used to refer to governments that have come into power through illegitimate means, although they may later receive de jure recognition. For example, Augusto Pinochet, who had been appointed commander in chief of the military, led the junta that overthrew the government of democratically elected Pres. Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973. Pinochet assumed the top leadership position in the military government, making himself the de facto president in 1974. He later oversaw the promulgation of a new constitution in 1981, which granted him an eight-year term as the de jure president.

De jure and de facto serve as important distinctions in litigating cases of racial segregation in the United States. In many court cases, legal action depends on determining whether the treatment at issue was conducted unofficially, in a de facto manner, or de jure, as a legally sanctioned prejudice. For example, the Jim Crow laws that followed the Reconstruction period in the South are clear examples of de jure segregation, because the segregation and disenfranchisement of persons of colour was codified into law.

Racial segregation was largely outlawed during the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, but courts continue to litigate cases of racial segregation into the present. After decades of de facto housing and employment discrimination helped create heavily segregated neighbourhoods in Seattle, the city’s public school board attempted to remedy disparities between neighbourhood schools by giving parents a choice of high schools for the students. In an effort to reach greater racial parity, the district classified students as “white” or “nonwhite” and considered race in the decision of which students to assign to schools. The nonprofit organization Parents Involved in Community Schools brought a lawsuit against the district’s practice, led by the organization’s president, Kathleen Brose, who was dissatisfied that her daughter was assigned to their fourth-choice school. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1 et al. (2007) the U.S. Supreme Court found the school board’s approach to be in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, ruling that race could not be used as a tiebreaker in admission to remedy past instances of de facto segregation—rather than de jure segregation, which had been mandated by law.

Another example of the distinction between de jure and de facto is in the treatment of Native Americans by the United States government. From 1953 to 1964 a series of federal statutes were passed that “terminated” 109 Native American tribes, revoking the de jure tribal affiliation of 12,000 Native Americans, thereby disbanding their tribes, removing their federal protections, and resettling the members in urban areas. By contrast, statutes and court rulings in the 20th century made it difficult for Native American tribes in Alaska to operate, but their de jure status was never directly affected.

De jure may also be used to distinguish between situations determined by legal status as opposed to situations determined by practice (de facto). For example, Germany has designated German as its de jure official language. In contrast, the United States has no de jure official language, even though it uses English (its de facto official language) for government documents and proceedings. Likewise, the term de jure may be used to refer to legal marriages instead of domestic partnerships. If domestic partnerships meet the same prerequisites but no legal action has been undertaken, they may be referred to as de facto marriages.