The American Legal System: The History Of The American Court System

Overview

While the overwhelming majority of legal cases cycle through the judicial system by settling out of court, courts remain crucial to the orderly operation of American society (Friedman, 1984). The court system as we know it is not unique to the United States. The American legal system is the result of the synthesis of other legal traditions brought on by early immigration, with elements of Dutch, Spanish, English, French, and even Native American law within the system. Perhaps most definitively, due to English colonial supremacy, the American system to most closely resembles the English legal system (Friedman, 1984)

English Example

From the English legal system, the American court system has inherited several critical concepts. First, the principle of due process states that all

Each state has varying laws based on the history of that state and the culture of its initial inhabitants (Friedman, 1984). Historically, the most dramatic difference between states have centered around issues of race. Until the mid 1800’s, these variances were most pronounced in issues surrounding slave ownership between states in the Northeast and Southeast (Friedman, 1984). Until the second half of the 1900s, this north and south divide centered around issues of segregation and voting statures. Other differences between regions, such as differences in statutes regarding same sex marriage, continue to this day. In other, more subtle ways, the federal legal system makes our legal system quite complex. The degree of sovereignty granted to individual states allows those states to run their state court systems so as to reflect the culture of the state. For this reason, people may be under the jurisdiction of multiple courts at the same time, which can lead to complicated trials and difficulty between law enforcement agencies (Friedman,