Re: American Lawyers

From: jeffrichard68 <richj_at_uiKJdm8qKDZTPZ6p9sAB_I5kqgL1dunnbT0eAUxkgaJCDR-rELJAG3fCMjHopkK_t0XvuZ>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 17:04:43 -0000

> To make matters clearer for Jane, the British parallel to the
> different laws between the states is the difference between
> English and Scottish Courts as they not only have different
> procedures but also different legal philosophies (the English
> use good-old fashioned Common Law while the Scots use
> Roman Law that is also practiced in Quebec, Louisiana,
> South Africa and the Continent).

This is pretty good analogy. Each US state has a different constitution and have no requirement that their legal procedures match that in the other states (except to the extent that would be required under the US Constitution). However, in practice it isn't quite as complicated as that sounds. Most of the fifty states use common law plus generally pretty similar statutory law. West of the Mississippi, state law has generally more similarity than east of the Mississippi. Louisiana, however, is an island of civil law (with a lot of common law influences) in a common law ocean.

Jeff