Figure 1.2
The American legal system is designed to establish a set of standards for acceptable behavior.
(Credit: joergelman/ pixabay/ License: CC0)
Promoting Consistency
The American legal system follows the British Common Law system, which is designed to leverage past judicial
reasoning, while also promoting fairness through consistency. Judges in the Common Law system help shape
the law through their rulings and interpretations. This body of past decisions is known as case law. Judges use
case law to inform their own rulings. Indeed, judges rely on precedent, i.e., previous court rulings on similar
cases, for ruling on their own cases.
All U.S. states, except Louisiana, have enacted “reception statutes,” stating that the judge-made common law
of England is the law of the state to the extent that it does not conflict with the state’s current laws.
However, the body of American law is now so robust that American cases rarely cite English materials, except
for a British classic or a famous old case. Additionally, foreign law is not cited as binding precedent. Therefore,
the current American practice of the common law tradition refers more to the process of judges looking to the
precedent set jurisdictionally, and substantially similar to, American case law.
Maintaining Order
Congruent with the goal of establishing standards and promoting consistency, laws are also used to promote,
provide, and maintain order.
4
Chapter 1 American Law, Legal Reasoning, and the Legal System
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