Sanction

In the original sense of the word, a "sanction" is a penalty or punishment provided as a means of enforcing obedience to a law. In jurisprudence, a law is said to have a sanction when there is a state which wlll intervene if it is disobeyed or disregarded. Therefore international law has no legal sanction. Sweet. In a more general sense, a "sanction" has been defined as a conditional evll annexed to a law to produce obedience to that law; and, in a still wilder sense, a "sanction" means simply an authorization of anything. Occasionally, "sanction" is used (e. g., in Roman law) to denote a statute, the part (penal clause) being used to denote the whole. Brown. The vindicatory part of a law, or that part which ordains or denounces a penalty for its violation.

1 Bl. Comm. 56.