De facto

De facto is a Latin expression that means "in fact" or "in practice",
commonly used as opposed to de jure (meaning "by law") when referring to
matters of law or governance or technique (such as standards), that are
found in the common experience as created or developed without or against a
regulation.

De facto standards

A de facto standard, for instance, is a technical or other standard that is
so dominant that everybody seems to follow it like an authorized standard.
The de jure standard may be different: one example is the metric unit of
kilometre, which is the de jure standard for road distances in the United
States, while the mile (1.609 * 103 meters) is the de facto standard. In
addition, there is no law preventing one from adding a twenty-seventh letter
such as ß to the alphabet, as letters were added, centuries ago, without
much difficulty, but one is prevented from doing so today by the practical
difficulties involved. Thus there is a de facto limit on modifications to
the alphabet. The de facto standard is not even formalized in all cases and
may simply rely on the fact that someone has come up with a good (hopefully
unpatented) idea that everybody else likes so much that it is
copied/plagiarized. Typical creators of de facto-standards are individual
companies, corporations and consortiums.

De facto rulers

In politics, one speaks of a de facto leader of a country or region, meaning
one who has illegally assumed authority, typically by deposing a previous
leader or undermining the rule of a current one. De facto leaders do not
usually hold a constitutional office, and exercise power in an informal
manner. It is important to note that not all dictators are de facto rulers.
Many current and past dictators have initially emerged as de facto leaders,
but later formalize their rule through constitutional revisions. For
example, Augusto Pinochet of Chile initially came to power as the chairman
of a military junta, but then later switched his title to president, making
him the formal and legal ruler of Chile.

Some notable true de facto leaders have been Deng Xiaoping of the People's
Republic of China and General Manuel Noriega of Panama. Both of these men
exercised near total control over their respective nations for many years
despite not having the legal authority to do so.

De facto has also been used in reference to the role the Governor-General of
individual commonwealth countries plays as head of state. While they are
constitutionally appointed by the Crown to serve as representative of the
monarch, who is the de jure head of state, they actually function
independently of the monarch and function as the day to day head of state in
each otherwise independent former colony of the British Empire. They are
usually appointed by the Prime Minister of the country and are invariably
citizens of that country and not of any other member of the Commonwealth or
Great Britain. Historically the office of Governor-General was an actual
appointment by the Crown in Westminster and it had political signficance
during the British Empire.

Other usages

Another common usage of the term de facto is "de facto segregation": Users
of a given library or school tend to be residents of that neighborhood, and
thus such facilities tend to become racially or ethnically segregated
without "de jure segregation" (which would require segregation by force of law).

A de facto monopoly or oligopoly is a system where multiple or infinite
players are allowed, but there is too much deregulation (not existing
antitrust laws in general or in the specific economic sector, specially in
the utilities) or where antitrust law is not applied.

One's unmarried partner is referred to as the de facto husband or wife by
some authorities. This has passed into the Australian language as the slang
term defacto to refer to one's significant other. e.g. "This is my defacto,
Rachael". In other territories, e.g. the UK, this is equivalent to the term
common law husband or wife.

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