A pure common law system is created by the judiciary, since the law comes from the judiciary and not from the law. As a result, a common law system places a strong emphasis on judicial precedents. However, a purely civil system is governed by laws rather than jurisprudence. The first group includes countries whose system is “mixed” influenced by both civil and customary law. The old uncodified civil law of Holland forms the basis of the Romano-Dutch law of South Africa, Zambia, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana and Sri Lanka; It is characterized by a rich legal literature, which comes from Hugo Grotius (de Groot) in the 17th century. But their long contacts with Britain mean that their public law and judicial systems owe much to the common law. Each of the different schools of legal thought has a particular vision of what a legal system is or what it should be. Natural law theorists emphasize the rights and duties of government and the governed. Positive law assumes that the law is simply the command of a sovereign, the political power to which the governed will obey. Recent writings in different schools of legal thought emphasize long-standing models of the domination of the rich over others (the CLS school) and men over women (ecofeminist legal theory). At a more local level, counties and local companies or townships may be entitled under a state constitution to issue or promulgate ordinances. Examples of ordinances include local building codes, zoning laws, and offenses, or violations such as skateboarding or jaywalking.
Many of the most unusual laws that make headlines from time to time are local ordinances. For example, in Logan County, Colorado, it is illegal to kiss a sleeping woman; In Indianapolis, Indiana, and Eureka, Nebraska, it`s a crime to kiss when you have a mustache. But according to reports, some states still have strange laws here and there. Kentucky law states that every person in the state must take a bath at least once a year, and not doing so is illegal. A common law system is less prescriptive than a civil law system. A government may therefore wish to include the protection of its citizens in specific legislation related to the planned infrastructure programme. For example, it may want to prohibit the service provider from interrupting the water or electricity supply to defaulting payers, or it may require that documents related to the transaction be disclosed in accordance with an access to information law. There may also be legal requirements that include equivalent tariff provisions in a contract when one party is in a much stronger negotiating position than the other. For more information, see Laws and Regulations. State constitutions and laws define the criminal justice system within each state and delegate the authority and responsibility of criminal justice to various jurisdictions, officials and institutions.
State laws also define criminal conduct and groups of children or acts that fall within the jurisdiction of juvenile courts. As the legal philosopher John Austin put it succinctly: “The law is the command of a sovereign.” The law is a law only if it emanates from a recognized authority and can be enforced by that authority or sovereign. Authority within each nation-state. Sovereignty is what sovereigns exercise. This usually means the power to enact and enforce laws within the nation-state – such as a king, president or dictator – that has power over a particular territory or territory. Positivism is a philosophical movement that claims that science provides the only knowledge that is precise enough to be worth it. But what about the social phenomena of laws? Beyond the court`s decision, by examining the court`s reasoning, you are most likely to understand which facts were most important to the court and in which theories (legal schools of thought) each trial or appellate judge believes. Since judges do not always agree on first principles (i.e., they join different schools of legal thought), there are many divided opinions in appellate opinions and in each term of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The law has different meanings as well as different functions. Philosophers have been dealing with questions of justice and law for centuries, and different 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 drive different schools of legal thought. We will also examine the typical sources of “positive law” in the United States and how some of these sources take precedence over others, and describe some fundamental differences between the U.S. legal system and other jurisdictions. The school of historical law believes that societies should base their current legal decisions on the examples of the past. Precedents would be more important than moral arguments. Most of what we discuss in this book is positive law – especially positive law in the United States. We will also take into account the laws and legal systems of other nations. But first, it will be useful to cover some basic concepts and distinctions.
The treatment of juvenile offenders is not entirely different from the criminal treatment of adults, but there are crucial differences. Many adolescents are referred to juvenile courts by law enforcement officers, but many others are referred by school officials, social services, neighbors, and even parents for behavior or conditions that require intervention by the formal system of social control. No matter how bad a person`s actions may seem to you, the only mistakes you can correct in court are those that may be related to one or more pleas of action, a complaint, a legal basis on which a claim is based. The legal basis may be a constitutional law, a law, an order or a previous court decision that sets a precedent to be followed. Positive law is full of cases, treaties, laws, ordinances and constitutional provisions that can be called upon. If you have an agreement with Harold Hill that he will buy you seventy-six trumpets and not pay for them after delivery, you will likely feel treated unfairly, but a court will only respond positively to your claim if you can prove that his conduct gives you a cause of action based on part of your state`s contract law. This case would give you a cause of action under the law of most states; If Harold Hill did not have a legal excuse recognized by the applicable state contract law – such as his lack of legal jurisdiction, his age of less than eighteen, his drunkenness at the time of the agreement, or his claim that the instruments were trumpets rather than paper clips, or that they had been delivered too late to be useful to him – you might expect compensation for his breach of your agreement with him. Scotland, Louisiana, Mauritius and Quebec are examples of private law based on older civil and customary rules (not codified in Scotland) that must exist in a common law environment.