All Rise': The American Judicial System

AuthorScott A. Hatch/Lisa Zimmer Hatch
ProfessionFounders of The Center for Legal Studies and developed their award-winning paralegal curriculum in 1980, offering it through 600 colleges nationwide
Pages39-56
CHAPTER 4 “All Rise”: The American Judicial System 39
Chapter4
“All Rise”: The American
Judicial System
The study and practice of paralegalism is exciting because the law reects
society’s changing modes of conduct. So, the law has to be exible and
evolve with society. Despite its exibility, however, the law has specic the-
oretical and historical origins, and before studying paralegalism, it’s good to know
the theoretical and historical context from which the U.S. legal system has evolved.
Law has two main interpretations: One is based on the concept of natural (or God-
made) law, and the other is a secular (or nonreligious) interpretation. The more
ancient of the two interpretations is Aristotle’s cosmic law theory. Aristotle
believed that there was a law inherent in the universe that was more important
than the laws made by people. In contrast, the more recent secular, or common
law, theory holds that law develops from the history of a nation and that legal
experts only interpret the historical drift of a nation.
Although there are two fundamental bases of the law, U.S. society is most rmly
grounded in the secular, or common, law. This law is the kind that’s created by
court decisions, which we discuss in more detail in the following section.
To become a good paralegal and understand the basis of your daily responsibilities,
you need to be familiar with these background concepts of the U.S. legal system.
IN THIS CHAPTER
»
Understanding the signicance of
legal precedence
»
Reviewing the three branches of the
U.S. system of government
»
Identifying the various forms and
levels of government and their courts
»
Grasping the important dierences
between trial by judge and trial by jury
40 PART 2 Important Legal Concepts Every Paralegal Should Know
Spend a little time getting acquainted with the conguration of the U.S. government,
the dierent levels and types of its courts, and the way these courts are set up.
Everything Old Is New Again: The
Importance of Legal Precedence
Law is relatively easy to study and understand, because most of the issues that
crop up in court every day have been decided in previous trials. U.S. law didn’t
materialize overnight. Our legal system has been around for a long time, but it’s
also constantly evolving. The U.S. system of justice is based upon the doctrine of
stare decisis (pronounced stare-y di-sigh-sis), which means that past court deci-
sions (known as precedent) largely determine the outcome of future cases. As long
as the facts and issues of a precedent case are pretty much the same as those of
the current case, and as long as the court that rendered (made) the decision in the
precedent case is within the same system as and higher than the present court,
the present court must adhere to the decision of the precedent case as authority in
rendering its decision. (Say that ten times fast.)
In other words, say the U.S.Supreme Court says that police have to advise suspects
of their rights whenever the suspects are taken into custody. The doctrine of stare
decisis says that this rule will be followed in any other court that considers the
same issue in a criminal case. That’s because all other courts in the United States,
whether state courts or federal courts, are lower than the Supreme Court. They
essentially have to rule as the Supreme Court did.
The notion of stare decisis means that a court will follow prior precedent and
decide similar cases the same way unless there is a good reason for the court to
reject that prior legal precedent.
Stare decisis consists of statutory law and prior case decisions and provides para-
legals, attorneys, and judges with security, certainty, and predictability in
researching the law. The paralegal’s goal is to nd the most applicable case pre-
cedent (case law) and statutes, integrate that authority into a memorandum of
law (a brief), and present that memo or brief to the supervising attorney. (For
more on a paralegal’s duties in the trial process, check out Chapter14.) The attor-
ney then argues the applicability of that particular stare decisis to the court.
The vast majority of cases that you’ll research are based upon facts and issues that
have already been decided. Public policy has already been set. However, as soci-
ety’s modes of conduct change, so do laws. So, there are times when you’ll nd
very little, or no, stare decisis for a case because of the uniqueness of that case’s
facts and issues.

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