NON LIQUET

non liquet (non lI-kwet orli-kwet). [Latin “it is not clear”] 1.Civil law. The principle that a decision-maker may decline to decide a dispute on the ground that the matter is unclear. • Even British judges formerly sometimes said Non liquet and found for the defendant. 2.Int’l law. A tribunal’s nondecision resulting from the unclarity of the law applicable to the dispute at hand. • In modern usage, the phrase appears almost always in passages stating what a court must not do: tribunals are routinely disallowed from declaring a non liquet. — Abbr. n.l.

[Blacks Law 8th]