BLS 342 1st Edition Lecture 12/12: Post-script to the Magna Carta it is hard to overemphasize the importance of this document MC sperated the kings and queens from the law/Court of Common Pleas Now we can see how this Court of Common please developed over the next 250 years: no one saw these changes in one person’s lifetime—Who were the judges and where do they come from? It’s not like law school exists yet. It’s more like this… An aristocratic mother has three kids, two of which have career paths, and the other does not, but he is educated, so the king says I’ll make him a judgeBasically the courts are populated by non qualified people, they can’t base their decisions on anything Example: two people file a plea against each other, well to do farmers, one raised a strong pig and so did the other, so they agreed to breed them, and agreed to split the litter but 7 were born. Basically there was no factual dispute, and there’s nothing for an assize to decide. First step, do we call an assize? No. But if you stole my boar and you deny it then there is a dispute How do we make decisions? We use custom and tradition, we see if the king has issued statues about this etc, because we essentially have no guidance. Judge’s clerk says that the girl pig’s owner invested more than the boar’s owner, so the salle’s owners gets the 7th pig and you like this because it makes senseTwo years later, 2 aristoratic women from London, they have show dogs they bread and 5 show dogs are born, so you apply the precedent decision with the pig First 200 years it was based on bribery and money, but too much of this was happening and it got trashed we move to legal precedence Late 1400-early 1500s use of legal precedent, latin term stare – to stand upon decisis- what has been decided--? Stare decisisThey also relied on edicts and proclamations, customs and traditions These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.Tradition: Wir Gelt wir is man and gelt is money= man money if I was out raiding with men and I died, then my family gets “wir gelt” to feed my family, this was the money payment for a loss So the courts would use this “wir gelt” idea when there was a lossCompensation for killing a kid while drunk driving and the parents of the child get money this goes back to the idea of “Wir gelt”Common law-predominant legal system in every English speaking country, India, Philippines, but this is the minority legal system throughout the world What is the dominant form of legal system? For China, Russia, all of Europe besides the UK, all ofLatin America is known as civil law or code law a descendant of Roman Law, the first example is the Old Testament, the 10 commandments Code systems have rules and then applications the role of the judge is to find the appropriate rule and then the appropriate application In the 6th century AD, Rome in west had fallen, in the East it was thriving Emperor Justinian decided that Roman law for the past 800 years needed revision, so he hired scholars to modernize and rewrite the old roman code knowns as Justinians code In the late 1130s and early 1140s, during the English civil war, in the archives building they find a copy of Justinian’s code Everyone modernizes their law after the Justinian code, but the English (UK) because they were too busy in a civil war, so code law never got to EnglandThe next great revision in code law came from Napolean, he conquered all of Europe besides UK,and so all-modern day law is based on the Napoleonic codes How does this affect America? Louisiana uses code law approach and they are the only state that does that, they use a jury in all cases for a democratization effectWhat does it not mean to have common law? Panel of 3 judges that serve as judge and jury, trials are also handled differently an inquisitorial system, I don’t get to question witnesses, the judges get to question them with a set of questions I would want them to ask, in the code system the attourney’s first obligation is to the court, and not to his client, cases are not based on each other whatsoever1. Governmental regulations are code law CFR code of federal regulations, citationsIn common lawAdversarial approach, our cases are captioned smith vs. jones and the attourneys fight for them, and the judge and the jury are relatively passively, while lawyers present evidence, this tends to be much more organic because the cases build on each otherPresumptions of law approachno foe until it is proven-I say that ran over my wife. The presumption is that you didn’t do that until it is proven whoever is going against the presumption, whether the plaintiff or the prosecutor has the burden of proof Burdens of proof- is the evidentiary standard needed to overcome a presumption in law There are 3 burdens of proof Learn on