Ban (law)

A ban is a formal or informal prohibition of something. Bans are formed for the prohibition of activities within a certain political territory. Some see this as a negative act (equating it to a form of censorship or discrimination) and others see it as maintaining the "status quo". Some bans in commerce are referred to as embargoes. Ban is also used as a verb similar in meaning to "to prohibit".

In current English usage, ban is mostly synonymous with prohibition. Historically, Old English (ge)bann is a derivation from the verb bannan "to summon, command, proclaim" from an earlier Common Germanic *bannan "to command, forbid, banish, curse". The modern sense "to prohibit" is influenced by the cognate Old Norse banna "to curse, to prohibit" and also from Old French ban, ultimately a loan from Old Frankish, meaning "outlawry, banishment".

The Indo-European etymology of the Germanic term is from a root *bha- meaning "to speak". Its original meaning was magical, referring to utterances that carried a power to curse.

In many countries political parties or groups are banned. Parties may be banned for many reasons, including extremism and anti-democratic ideologies, on ethnic or religious grounds, and sometimes simply because the group opposes government policies, with the ban sometimes alleging wrongdoing as the cause.Germany, for instance, has a long history behind its modern practice of banning political parties. The Nazi Party was banned in 1923; after the Nazi Party came into power in 1933 opposing parties such as the Social Democrats and Communist Party were banned, the Nazi Party was again banned and the ban on other parties lifted after the Nazi defeat in 1945, and the Communist Party was again banned from 1956 to 1968.

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