AMERICAN-BRITISH LEGAL SYSTEMS

We surely have seen movies and television programs depicting both American court trials as well as those in England and perhaps we tend to think of English courts as judges and barristers wearing wigs, such as in "Rumpole of the Bailey" while we think of American courts as dominated either by Perry Mason or Johnnie Cochran. In U.S. law, there are lawyers who may call themselves "trial lawyers"- they could be defense attorneys,. Lawyers in civil cases, as well as prosecutors working for the government or state. In Britain, there are solicitors- who basically represent people's legal needs, and barristers who are the ones with the wigs, taking cases to civil or criminal courts. Defendants in both legal systems have the right to face their accusers and are presumed innocent until proven guilty (the Napoleonic Code is not quite that liberal about innocence or presumed guilt).

Yet, while there are many similarities between English Common Law and the American legal system, there are a number of major differences. It is not so much that, from the very outset, there was an American system and a British system, going back to the 1700s. It is that, as Oliver Wendell Holmes is quoted: "the life of the law has not been logic, it has been experienceàthe law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuriesà" (Knight 1996 1)

The development of English Common Law, on which much of Anglo-Saxon laws are b

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legal system in the Executive branch, and the Supreme Court and Federal courts serving in the balance of power structure of the U.S. Constitution, in Britain it is the Home Secretary who has "overall responsibility for the criminal justice system in England and Wales, and for advising the Queen on the exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy to pardon a person convicted of a crimeà" (Britannia 2001 1) Under the U.S. Constitution, the President has pardon power, and some of that was clearly demonstrated in some of the Presidential pardons that were handed out shortly before Clinton left office. Some of these pardons, in American jurisprudence, are political, of course. The difference in legal systems is perhaps strongest in the balance of power development of the U.S. Constitution, which gives the Judiciary control over its own actions, and therefore is not (supposedly) subservient to the Executive or Legislative branches. Interestingly enough, federal judge appointments and those to the Supreme Court, are originated by the Executive branch and must be approved by Congress, so just how "independent" the American judiciary is, is a point that is open for discussion. While so-called "colonial law" in the decades before
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