Positive
Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence · Benjamin Vaughan Abbott · 1879
Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence
Has some technical uses. Positive condition. When the result is made dependent on something to happen, the condition is called positive, in distinction from one made to depend on a thing's not happening, called a nega^ tive condition. See Bouvier. Affirmative would designate this class of conditions more accurately and appropriately than positive does.
Positive la-w
A rule established by authority, as distinguished from one founded on natural reason or ethical considerations; express or enacted law: a statutory rule.
Positive proof
Convincing evidence. If " proof " were used, as Greenleaf recommends, in the sense of the effect of evidence, the mental conviction induced by evidence, instead of being sometimes employed as an equivalent of " evidence," there would be little or no need of the expression positive proof.