There are various sources of law in the American legal system. The Constitution of the United States is fundamental; U.S. law and common law must not conflict with its provisions. Congress creates legal law (with the president`s signature), and the courts will interpret constitutional law and law. Where there is no constitutional or statutory law, the courts work in the common law field. The same applies to the law in the fifty States, each of which also has a constitution or a fundamental law. The main alternative to the common law legal system was developed in Europe and is based on Roman and Napoleonic law. A civil law or code system is a system in which all legal provisions are contained in one or more complete legal acts. During Napoleon`s reign, a comprehensive code of law – a code – was developed for the entire France. The Code included criminal law, criminal procedure law, non-criminal law and non-criminal law as well as commercial law. The rules of the Code are still applied today in France and other legal systems in continental Europe. The Code is used to resolve certain cases, usually by judges without a jury.
In addition, judges are not required to follow the decisions of other courts in similar cases. As George Cameron of the University of Michigan noted, “the law is in the code, not in the cases.” He continues: “If several cases have interpreted a provision in a particular way, the French courts may feel obliged to reach the same conclusion in future cases according to the doctrine of settled case law. However, the most important body for growth and change is the legislative branch, not the courts. There are also legal systems that differ considerably from the common law and civil law systems. Other communist and socialist legal systems (e.g. in Cuba and North Korea) are based on assumptions very different from those of English common law or European civil law. Islamic legal systems and other legal systems based on religion bring different values and assumptions to social and commercial relations. “This text, with its in-depth analysis of a highly neglected issue, makes a valuable contribution to contemporary juvenile justice.
Arthur provides an informed, insightful and welcome account of the moral basis of responses to juvenile delinquency; which complements and extrapolates existing literature. The school of natural law has greatly influenced American legal thought. For example, the idea that certain rights are “inalienable” (as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and in the writings of John Locke) is consistent with this legal view. Individuals may have “God-given” or “natural” rights that the government cannot legitimately take away from them. A government that has only with the consent of the governed is a natural consequence from this point of view. Most of the cases that we will examine in this manual are civil cases. Criminal cases are certainly of interest to companies, especially since companies can violate criminal laws. A criminal case involves a government decision – whether state or federal – to prosecute someone (named as a defendant) for violating the laws of society. The law establishes a moral minimum, especially in the field of criminal law; If you break a criminal law, you risk losing your freedom (in prison) or your life (if you are convicted of a capital crime). In a civil lawsuit, you would not be sent to prison; At worst, you can lose property (usually money or other assets), for example if Ford Motor Company lost a personal injury case and the judge awarded the plaintiffs $295 million, or if Pennzoil won a $10.54 billion judgment against Texaco.
The legal realist view influenced the emergence of the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) school of thought. The “crits” believe that the social order (and the law) is dominated by those who have power, wealth, and influence. The CLS school believes that in the past, the rich oppressed or exploited those who had less wealth and maintained social control by law. In this way, the rich have maintained an unjust distribution of rights and goods in society. The law is political and therefore not neutral or worthless. The CLS movement would use the law to overthrow hierarchical power structures in modern society. [4] The historical law school believes that corporations should base their current legal decisions on past examples. Precedents would be more important than moral arguments. In each case (the general rule and its exception), the common law tradition requires the court to explain the reasons for its decision.
In the case of the general rule, “freedom of choice” could be the main reason. In the case of the perjury exception, the efficiency of the justice system and citizenship requirements could be cited as reasons. Since the court`s “reasons” will be convincing to some and not to others, there is inevitably a degree of subjectivity to judicial opinions. That is, reasonable people will not agree on the power of persuasion that a court can offer for its decision. Law has different meanings as well as different functions. Philosophers have been concerned with questions of justice and law for centuries, and various approaches or schools of legal thought have emerged. In this chapter, we will examine these different meanings and approaches, and examine how social and political dynamics interact with the ideas that animate different schools of legal thought. We will also examine typical sources of “positive law” in the United States and how some of these sources take precedence over others, and we will expose some fundamental differences between the American legal system and other legal systems. It is incumbent upon those working for peace – including those who call themselves for justice while mocking the BDS movement – to reflect not only on the language and purpose of human rights, but also on the personal qualities required to contribute to a just peace. My experience in peace negotiations in the Middle East and elsewhere has taught me the importance of open disclosure and avoiding misrepresentation. And yet, a staunch critic of the BDS movement, Philip Mendes of Monash University, spices up his writings with false generalizations such as: The University of Sydney`s Center for Peace and Conflict Studies has explicitly excluded pro-Israel Jews; Anti-Zionist Jews have no interest or knowledge of Jewish history; no Jewish community supports the BDS movement; And so on. The law does not correct (or purport to correct) all the injustices that occur in society.
At the very least, it aims to curb the worst form of injustice, the kind of injustice that violates what might be called the “minimum moral standards” that a community demands of its members. This includes not only violations of criminal law, but also offences and contractual promises. Therefore, it may be wrong to refuse to answer a call from a friend, but this injustice does not lead to a viable lawsuit against you. But if a phone (or internet) is used to slander or slander someone, a crime has been committed and the law can allow the defamed person to be compensated. There are different schools (or philosophies) about what law is. Legal philosophy is also called jurisprudence. There are many legal philosophies and, therefore, many different jurisprudential points of view, and the two main schools are legal positivism and natural law.