Common Law

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|U.S. GOVERNMENT > The Three Branches > The Judicial Branch > How U.S. Courts Work |
|Common Law V. Civil Law Systems |
|Source: http://usinfo.org/enus/government/branches/messitte.html || |
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| ||Judicial independence is a hallmark of the American legal system. As a co-equal branch of government, the judiciary -- to a |
|remarkable degree -- operates free of control by the executive and legislative branches, deciding cases impartially, |
|uninfluenced by popular opinion. The American people respect their courts and judges, even if they sometimes criticize them. In |
|thiscontrast of common v. civil law, U.S. District Court Judge Peter Messitte (Maryland), considers some basic aspects of both |
|systems and explains how the American common law system compares with that of civil law. |
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|The twoprincipal legal systems in the world today are those of civil law and common law. Continental Europe, Latin America, |
|most of Africa and many Central European and Asian nations are part of the civil law system; the United States, along with |
|England and other countries once part of the British Empire, belong to the common law system. |
|The civil lawsystem has its roots in ancient Roman law, updated in the 6th century A.D. by the Emperor Justinian and adapted in|
|later times by French and German jurists. |
|The common law system began developing in England almost a millennium ago. By the time England's Parliament was established, its|
|royal judges hadalready begun basing their decisions on customary law "common" to the realm. A body of decisions was |
|accumulating. Able lawyers assisted the process. On the European continent, Justinian's resurrected law-books and the legal |
|system of the Catholic Church played critical roles in harmonizing a thousand local laws. England, in the midst of constructing |
|a flexible legalsystem of its own, was less influenced by these sources. It never embraced the sentiment of the French |
|Revolution that the power of judges should be curbed, that they should be strictly limited to applying the law such as the |
|legislature might declare. |
|Thus, Britishcolonists in America were steeped in this tradition. Indeed, among the grievances enumerated in the American |
|Declaration of Independence were that the English king had deprived the colonists of the rights of Englishmen, that he had made |
|colonial judges "dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices" and that he had denied the people "the benefits of|
|Trial by Jury."...