THE ENGLISH LEGAL SYSTEM

The English Legal System

The English Legal System

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to expand the boundaries of our knowledge by exploring some relevant facts and figures related to the English legal system. Although not technically a legal term, the phrase English legal systems conceptualizes the distinctive manner in which English laws are administered and depicts the various historical traditions, body of laws, procedures, and institutionalized functional units that form complex operational systems governing human interaction in a society. Although a review of English legal systems does not necessarily speak to an analysis of specific laws or areas of the law (i.e., criminal law, property, torts, etc.), it nevertheless includes what occurs when individuals resolve or avoid disputes and the manner by which people may access the law and effectuate change therein. The phrase also connotes those rules that create and manage a society's unique interconnected institutions that are critical to the functioning of a legal system, including law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, courts, facilities, and corrections (Ward &Wragg, 2005, pp. 13-19).

Structure of English Legal System

The common law originally meant, most basically, the immemorial customary law of England. It claimed roots in the ancient constitution predating the Norman Conquest (1066), and some scholars emphasize this historical dimension. Other scholars argue that common law jurists balanced this element with concern for legal reason, for consent of the community, and for adherence to jurisprudential principles of the Aristotelian and natural law schools of medieval Christianity. Common law was practiced in distinct courts, especially Common Pleas and the King's Bench, while other courts employed ecclesiastical, equity, or admiralty law; standing apart from all of these was statute law of Parliament. Nonetheless, the common law influenced the general principles of English law, in part, as the law common to all regions and classes—as ubiquitously affirmed by its characteristic institution, the jury of one's local peers. The epitome of classic common law is the jurist Sir Edward Coke (d. 1632), whose legal treatises and court rulings were still studied in the late eighteenth century by such American lawyers as John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Marshall, and which contain seeds for the idea of judicial review (Ward &Wragg, 2005, pp. 13-19).

Common law refers to the English legal tradition featuring independent courts of law and a legal profession, trial by jury of citizens to balance a judge, and liberty under rule of law—with law defined both as customs or principles affirmed by a court and statutes or codes made by a legislature. Further characteristics of common law include the selection of judges from the experienced lawyers (the bench from the bar), reliance upon precedent and traditional principles in adjudicating new cases, and a jurisprudential complexity that balances continuity and adaptability. These elements distinguish common law from the civil law, which stems from Roman law and casts judges as magistrates with administrative powers (Tamanaha, 2006, pp. 56-59).

Many citizens, lawyers, and political scientists in liberal democracies are unfamiliar with the influence of common law ...