Court System the Basic Structure of the

Court System The basic structure of the United States legal system comes from the Constitution. Constitutions are living documents that lay down principles and rules, as well as overall functions of how law should be used within society. Constitutions tend to be macro in scope, in that they define responsibilities between the three organs of U.S. Government (Judicial, Legislature and Executive). Laws are individual (micro) edicts that are made to define specific issues under the Constitution.

The Constitution is the basic framework, or the strategic direction of law; defining relationships and allowing for reasons that are fundamental to other laws (e.g. privacy, search, etc.). Laws are the manner in which the tactics of the legal system and/or philosophy are carried out and used within society.

A Constitution defines the theoretical basis of law, while laws incorporate the process of law and allow the government and its officers to use the Constitution to frame and enforce laws based on a philosophical and fundamental belief system (Samaha, p. 36).

The six characteristics of constitutionalism are: 1) Constitutions are a higher form of law that also speak with political authority; 2) Constitutions speak for the will of the entire population (the will of the people); 3) Constitutionalism binds all phases of government; 4) Constitutions cannot be changed on a whim, but are structures of the governmental system; 5) Constitutions can only be changed by direct action of the representative population; and, 6) Constitutions embody the fundamental rights of the population under government (Samaha, p. 26).

In the United States, the legal system is an interconnected system of regulatory, governmental and judicial authorities that operate under the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the United States, various State and Local Constitutions and laws, and agreed upon standards. The overall system operates at the federal, state and local level through Federal Courts, State Courts, and Governmental Regulatory Agencies (Neubauer and Fradella, 2010). All of this is based on the Common Law Adversarial System of Jurisprudence, dating back to the Middle Ages.

Common law is also known as case law, or law by precedent, is a type of legal tradition developed through decisions of legal bodies (courts, tribunals, etc.). Common law systems originated in Anglo-Saxon England as opposed to the Roman Empire, and believe that legal precedent, based on cultural tradition, should carry more weight that judicial mandates. Courts look at an incident and use what was found and decided as a way to base future decisions, thus guaranteeing a more solid legal tradition; but only binding in particular jurisdictions (Plucknett, 2001).

Law in the United States is based on common law, using the Constitution as the backbone for all legal theory. The system of law coming from the three branches of government and moving from the Federal system down to the local levels, and in the case of appeals, from the local level up to the U.S. Supreme Court, is part of the idea of federalism and is based on the assumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty (Von Mehren and Murray, 2007).

One important and basic argument within the U.S. legal system is that of the state vs. The federal in terms of authority and logistics. This harkens back to the nature of the argument on Federalism, but is essentially an issue of authority. While the federal system has limited access into the state system, the two systems are designed to operate on different legal levels.

Federal cours hear criminal and civil cases related to federal and constitutional crimes (cross border issues, etc.) while state courts deal with state criminal and civil cases. The superme court, however, is part of the federal system, and decisions trump all laws, whether state or federal, once decided (Neubaurer, et al., 2010). In terms of legal cases, there are a number of different developments that have occurred over time that may be traced to decisions that moved up through the courts and were finally decided by the Supreme Court.

Civil Rights, Abortion, Pornography, etc. all have a long history of development when dealing with the Court process. However, the trend, over time, seems to be moving to a basic idea of protection of Constitutional Rights that ensure that due process is used in an appropriate way. One particularly cogent example of this deals with the person being arrested understanding their rights under the law -- what they can and cannot say, when they can request legal representation, etc.

This is epitomized in the infamous "Miranda Warnings." In general, the Miranda rule makes it illegal for any suspect to say anything to incriminate themselves, to make any confession, or to advise police of their complicity in a crime without being properly advised of their rights. This decision was based on a 1966 Supreme Court decision resulting from a 1963 case in Arizona. This established the "Miranda Rights" of persons accused of crime.

During their arguments to the Supreme Court, Miranda's lawyers focused on the fact that the arresting officers not only did not indicate anything he said could be used against him, but that he had the right to be represented by an attorney, and if he could.