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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ripeness

Ripeness \Ripe"ness\, n. [AS. r[=i]pness.] The state or quality of being ripe; maturity;; completeness; perfection; as, the ripeness of grain; ripeness of manhood; ripeness of judgment.

Time, which made them their fame outlive, To Cowley scarce did ripeness give.
--Denham.

Wiktionary
ripeness

n. the characteristic of being ripe

WordNet
ripeness

n. the state of being ripe [ant: greenness]

Wikipedia
Ripeness

In United States law, ripeness refers to the readiness of a case for litigation; "a claim is not ripe for adjudication if it rests upon contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all." For example, if a law of ambiguous quality has been enacted but never applied, a case challenging that law lacks the ripeness necessary for a decision.

The goal is to prevent premature adjudication; if a dispute is insufficiently developed, any potential injury or stake is too speculative to warrant judicial action. Ripeness issues most usually arise when a plaintiff seeks anticipatory relief, such as an injunction.

The Supreme Court fashioned a two-part test for assessing ripeness challenges to federal regulations. The case is often applied to constitutional challenges to federal and state statutes as well. The Court said in Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, :

Without undertaking to survey the intricacies of the ripeness doctrine it is fair to say that its basic rationale is to prevent the courts, through avoidance of premature adjudication, from entangling themselves in abstract disagreements over administrative policies, and also to protect the agencies from judicial interference until an administrative decision has been formalized and its effects felt in a concrete way by the challenging parties. The problem is best seen in a twofold aspect, requiring us to evaluate both the fitness of the issues for judicial decision and the hardship to the parties of withholding court consideration.

In both Abbott Laboratories and its first companion case, Toilet Goods Association v. Gardner, , the Court upheld pre-enforcement review of an administrative regulation. However, the Court denied such review in the second companion case because any harm from noncompliance with the FDA regulation at issue was too speculative in the Court's opinion to justify judicial review. Justice Harlan wrote for the Court in all three cases.

The ripeness doctrine should not be confused with the advisory opinion doctrine, another justiciability concept in American law.

Usage examples of "ripeness".

Brother Cavil, we shall not guess whose seed came unto ripeness, for the Lord gave us this field together, for this time.

Its threatening advance towards the world became nothing more than fructiferous ripeness.

You recall your delight in conversing with the nurseryman, and looking at his illustrated catalogues, where all the pears are drawn perfect in form, and of extra size, and at that exact moment between ripeness and decay which it is so impossible to hit in practice.

Decres, not only chose you this Villeneuve, But you have nourished secret sour opinions Akin to his, and thereby helped to scathe As stably based a project as this age Has sunned to ripeness.

Queen Verity once told me it hurt like daggers to go unmilked for even a few hours past ripeness, and this queen.

Apples lack polygalacturonase, which is why they remain crisp until they degenerate and decaythe stage beyond ripeness when a fruit becomes subject to microbial attack and rot.

Looking up, in fact, it was impossible to see anything except green, and more green: galaxies of starbloom, riotous armies of orchids, fruits of every color, shape, composition, and degree of ripeness, all blurred and softened and hidden by the omnipresent density of the mist.

Where once it had patiently waited for the state that Citizens knew as meditation on connectivity, and the Pyramid itself perhaps knew as a stage of ripeness in the fruits of its wrist-watch mine, now it wanted a different taste.

But, before she could bring her aim to any ripeness of contrivance, her mother, having caught cold at church, was seized with a rheumatic fever, became delirious in less than three days, and, notwithstanding all the prescriptions and care of her admirer, gave up the ghost, without having retrieved the use of her senses, or been able to manifest, by will, the sentiments she entertained in favour of her physician, who, as the reader will easily perceive, had more reasons than one to be mortally chagrined at this event.

When the catechumens had given full proof of the ripeness of their knowledge, and of the stedfastness of their faith, they were baptized, admitted to the table of the Lord, and styled Fideles.

She was doubtless a virgin, since Mahomet consummated his nuptials (such is the premature ripeness of the climate) when she was only nine years of age.

She was tall, and built with the kind of curvacious ripeness in which there is hardly a margin of a pound between perfection and excess.

Jagun rounded a big bramble bush, carrying in one hand a vine from which hung some oval scarlet fruit, swollen near to the bursting point with ripeness.

This composition varies much, as in all fleshy fruits, with the ripeness and other conditions.

The modulations of the input signal changed, and other signs of ripeness from other parts of the world were noted and acted upon, and so the Eyes swarmed over Cairo and Kiev and Khartoum.