The History of English Legal System Essay Example for Free

The History of English Legal System Essay I would like, therefore to discuss about the History of The Juries System, the roles and the composition of Juries System on how it was brought to the ENGLISH LEGAL SYSTEM. Firstly the modern jury derives out of the ancient custom of many ancient Germanic tribes whereby a group of men of good character was used to investigate crimes and/or judge the accused. The same custom evolved into the Vehmic Court system in medieval Germany. In Anglo-Saxon England, juries investigated crimes. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, some parts of the country preserved juries as the means of investigating crimes. The use of ordinary members of the community to consider crimes was unusual in ancient cultures, but was nonetheless also found in ancient Greece. The modern jury trial evolved out of this custom in the mid 12th century during the reign of Henry II. Juries, usually 6 or 12 men, were an ancient institution in some parts of England. (Henry II 286) Members consisted of representatives of the basic units of local government—hundreds (an administrative sub-division of the shire, embracing several vills) and villages. Called juries of presentment, these men testified under oath to crimes committed in their neighborhood and indicted. The Assize of Clarendon in 1166 caused these juries to be adopted systematically throughout the country. The jury in this period was self-informing, meaning it heard very little evidence or testimony in court. Instead, jurors were recruited from the locality of the dispute and were expected to know the facts before coming to court. The source of juror knowledge could include first-hand knowledge, investigation, and less reliable sources such as rumor and hearsay. Between 1166 and 1179 new procedures including a division of functions between the sheriff, the jury of local men, and the royal justices ushered in the era of the English Common Law. Sheriffs prepared cases for trial and found jurors with relevant knowledge and testimony. Jurors found a verdict by witnessing as to fact, even assessing and apply information from their own and community memory — little was written at this time and what was: deeds, writs, were subject to fraud. Royal justices supervised trials, answered questions as to law and announced the courts decision which was subject to appeal. Sheriffs executed the decision. These procedures enabled Henry II to delegate authority without endowing his subordinates with too much power. (Henry II 293) In 1215 the Roman Catholic Church removed its sanction from all forms of ordeal — procedures by which suspects were tested as to guilt (e. g. , the ordeal of hot metal was applied to a suspected thief by pouring molten metal into his hand, if the wound healed rapidly and well, it was believed God found the suspect innocent, if not then guilty). With the ordeals banned, establishing guilt would have been problematic, had England not had forty years of judicial experience. Justices were accustomed to asking jurors of presentment about points of fact in assessing indictments; it was a short step to ask jurors if the accused was guilty as charged. (Henry II 358) An early reference to a jury type group in England is in a decree issued by Aethelred at Wantage (997), which enacted that in every Hundred the twelve leading thegns together with the reeve shall go out and swear on the relics which are given into their hands, that they will not accuse any innocent man nor shield a guilty one. The resulting Wantage Code formally recognized legal customs that were part of the Danelaw . The testimonial concept can also be traced to Normandy before 1066, when a jury of nobles was established to decide land disputes. In this manner, the Duke, being the largest land owner, could not act as a judge in his own case. [ One of the earliest antecedents of modern jury systems are juries in Ancient Greece, including the city-state of Athens, where records of jury courts date back to 500 BCE. These voted by secret ballot and were eventually granted the power to annul â€Å"Unconstitutional Law†, thus introducing judicial review. In modern systems, law is self-contained and distinct from other coercive forces, and perceived as separate from the political life of the community, but all these barriers are absent in the context of classical Athens. In practice and in conception the law and its administration are in some important respects indistinguishable from the life of the community in general. In 1730, the British Parliament passed the Bill for Better Regulation of Juries. The Act stipulated that the list of all those liable for jury service was to be posted in each parish and that jury panels would be selected by lot, also known as sortition, from these lists. Its aim was to prevent middle-class citizens from evading their responsibilities by financially putting into question the neutrality of the under-sheriff, the official entrusted with impaneling juries. Prior to the Act, the main means of ensuring impartiality was by allowing legal challenges to the sheriff’s choices. The new provisions did not specifically aim at establishing impartiality, but had the effect of reinforcing the authority of the jury by guaranteeing impartiality at the point of selection. The example of early 18th century England legal reform shows how civic lotteries can be used to organize the duties and responsibilities of the citizen body in relation to the state. It established the impartiality and neutrality of juries as well as reiterating the dual nature of the citizen-state relationship 1 CRIMINAL TRIALS -juries hears 1% of criminal cases -tried by 12 jurors and a judge in Crown Court -Juries are Sole Arbiters of Fact (Bushell’s’ case, which will explained below) -Juries decides whether the defendant should be found guilty or not guilty CIVIL TRIALS -Juries in civil case has declined less than 1% -tried by 8 jury in (County Court) and 12 Jury in (High Court) juries were restricted to 4 areas; defamation, malicious prosecution, fraud and false imprisonment -Juries decide the defendant liability and the amount of damages to be awarded A Basic Summarisation of the Different Trial and their role held by the Jury Nevertheless, the independence of the jury has given recognition from the case of Bushell’s Case (1670), this case established that the jury were the, â€Å"sole judges of fact, with the right to give a verdict according to their conscience, and could not be penalized for taking a view of the facts opposed to that of the judge†. This case was a benefit to the legal system, as previously judges would try to intimidate or even bully juries into convicting a defendant, particularly where the crime had political implications. Therefore the importance of the jury system is that it could acquit a defendant, even when the law demanded a guilty verdict and it showed defendants that the trial by jury was not only a protection against injustice but also a loophole whereby real criminals could escape from â€Å"2. Besides that this rule remains today with a more modern examples stating that judges must respect the independence of the jury as in R v McKenna(1960) this case† the judge had threatened the jury, who had been deliberating for about two and quarter hours, that if they did not return a verdict of guilty within another ten minutes they would be locked up all night†, hence Justice Cassels stated it is a cardinal principle of our criminal law that in considering their verdict, concerning as it does, the liberty of the subject, a jury shall deliberate in complete freedom, uninfluenced by any promised, unintimidated by any threat, because they still stand between the Crown and the subject, and they are still one of the main defences of personal liberty†3. The Jury System is considered as a need because it is a significance part of the English legal system, although only a minority of the cases is tried by the jury in these days. In a sense it plays an important role in ensuring that the criminal justice system works for the assistance of the public rather than for the benefit of disproportionate leaders. It promotes not only a fair criminal justice system but also a healthy society, where political leaders cannot misuse criminal justice system to silence their opponents, hence according to LORD DEVLIN which he has wrote on 1956 â€Å"trial by Jury is more than an Instrument of Justice and more than a wheel of the Constitution; it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives†4. Moreover, as many scholars and practitioners have commented over the centuries, the common law jury that develops in Britain was branched in other parts of the world as a UNIQUE INSTITUTION. Therefore Juries are, it brings all together a small group of lay people whom are assembled on a temporary basis for the purpose of deciding whether an accused person is guilty of CRIMINAL act or which of two sides should prevail in a CIVIL dispute. Hence, the jurors are untutored in the formal discipline of law and its logic, besides that they hear and see confusing and challenging evidence and they were provided with instructions, most of the time only in a oral form, about easily understood legal concepts and sent into a room alone to decide a verdict without further help from the professional persons who developed the evidence. 5 Therefore the Juries service is a public duty that citizens should readily undertake, in practice, it is made compulsory, and failure to act/perform one’s civic responsibility is subject to the sanction of a ? ,1000 fine. Now, we may examine the eligibility and the selection process of the Juries, since it has also certain requirements need to be fulfilled. The basic requirements for a Jury Service are that a person must be aged between â€Å"18-70† and must have been a resident in the United Kingdom for atleast 5years. Therefore jurors are selected at random from the electoral register, which is the responsibility of a Central jury Summoning Bureau (CJSB) and the name are generated by the computer, for those who are not registered to vote and the homeless will not be selected. After the selection process, more than 12 people will be called by the Summoning Officers to be â€Å"officially† selected as the ‘panel’ of the case, but according to some certain circumstances those people are excused or disqualified for the certain reasons†¦. On the part of the excusals, those whom prior to the Criminal Justice Act 2003, such would be â€Å"The Juries Act 1974† stated those whom are eligible for excusals are those being part of a profession such as legal professionals, Member of Parliament and Doctors, but as result of Para 3 of Schedule 33 to the Criminal Act 2003,has removed the members of the judiciary and lawyers from the classes of those ineligible to eligible to serve as a Juries which can be seen in the case of R v Abdroikof (2007) and R v Williamson (2007), besides that, the AULD REVIEW recommended that everyone should be eligible except for those who are mentally disordered, those who have criminal conviction for more than 5 years. Evaluating whether the Jury System is an Outmoded Method of Determining Judgments and whether It should be removed or reformed To answer the following question that rose above, we should weight up the â€Å"arguments for and against† the Jury System in the English Legal S ystem. Firstly, there are several arguments for the Jury system in England that I would like to raise†¦. According to (Spooner,1852) â€Å"The central plank of trials within a jury based system is this: No free man shall be captured, and or imprisoned, or disseised of his freehold, and or of his liberties, or of his free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we proceed against him by force or proceed against him by arms, but by the lawful judgement of his peers, and or by the law of the land . 6 For an illustration, the Jury System reflects a democratisation of justice compared to a purely judicial system, it is merely necessary to consider the Socratic judgments of antiquity, or the very wide latitude given to Japanese judges today. The freedom of action and interpretation that is held by one individual in these cases has two primary problems. Firstly, justice is hugely dependent on the competence and impartiality of one person, with a single point of failure for corruption to be introduced. Secondly, judges have been of high social status throughout history, and thus can be criticised as having a possible lack of intuition and empathy with poorer defendants. This illustration is a practical example for the need of the Jury system. In addition, the jury is likely to have a greater experience of contemporary cultural trends and pressures then a judge who has spent 30-40 years in intense study of the law, and a correspondingly greater understanding and empathy with the actions of the parties involved in the case. A jury also often has far less of a stake in political issues†¦. Moreover the United Kingdom does have a somewhat unhappy history relating to judge-only proceedings, through the actions of the Northern Ireland Diplock courts. The Diplock courts were set up in 1972, with the brief of effectively intervening against terrorism. This very assumption could be seen to reflect the view that a purely judge based system was more likely to convict in these cases, and thus reflects the importance of jury trial in other cases. The Diplock courts, as might have been expected, then proceeded to be involved in several extremely contentious convictions, notably that of Christy Walsh. In this case, several sections of the trial were criticised for unfairness during the trial itself, with the defence faced by a judge apparently uninterested in this (British Irish Rights Watch, 2006)7. Therefore the Jury system could be fresh defence of injustice. According to Peter Jefferson, â€Å"We all know that permanent judges acquire an esprit de corps; that, being known, they are liable to be tempted by bribery; that they are misled by favor, by relationship, by a spirit of party, by a devotion to the executive or legislative; that it is better to leave a cause to the decision of cross and pile than to that of a judge biased to one side; and that the opinion of twelve honest jurymen gives still a better hope of right than cross and pile does. †8, this can be easily illustrated by the role of Lord Chancellor is the head of the judiciary and has a major role in the selection of judges, however he is also a member of the cabinet and the position is a political appointment decided on by the Prime Minister and the position has been strongly criticised as being involved in too many different functions of the State, besides that It has also been suggested that the Lord Chancellors selections of judges and also his special adviser could be biased because Lord Chancellor selected his special adviser from a small group he already knew, comprised mostly of white males.

schwarzenegger and fiscal policy Essay -- essays research papers

California’s Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, outlined a budget proposal January 9 that constitutes a massive assault on health, education and other social service programs upon which millions of people in the state rely. The $99 billion budget is aimed at eliminating a $14.3 billion gap between expected tax revenues and expenditures. It will include $4.6 billion in cuts, $1 billion in fund shifts from gasoline taxes (by postponing road construction projects) and an additional $2 billion reduction in education spending. In addition, the budget mandates a $729 million cut from higher education and a $165 million reduction from child-care programs for school goers. The budget also forces state employees to pay an additional five percent of their wages into their pensions, to pay off state borrowing. Nearly one-tenth of the state budget gap will be shifted to local governments, as $1.3 billion in property taxes due to cities and counties will be siphoned off to the state. There will also be a severe reduction in health and welfare services, in a state where six million residents have no health insurance and 60 hospitals have shut over the last decade. Administration officials admit that more than 110,000 poor Californians will lose health insurance due to the cuts, which include $880 million from Medi-Cal and $10 million from public health services. The state’s welfare program for mothers with dependent children—Cal-Works—will lose $790 million, while $126 million will be slashed from in-home services, $134 million from Supplemental Income payments and an additional $800 million from other health services. It is hard to exaggerate the human impact of the proposed budget. Counties, already strapped for cash, will be forced to lay off thousands of employees. The budget will reduce public assistance benefits for 481,000 poor families, including childcare services, while stiffening work requirements. Enrollment for the state universities will be capped and those that enter will face increasing costs and fewer and smaller grants. Health services for the young and poor will be capped. Programs will be curtailed at youth correctional facilities. Under conditions in which 1.13 million people are unemployed in the state and a record number of families have been dropped from employer-provided health insurance, cities and counties will be forced to engage in y... ... to stave off even greater cuts. Several other unions are also negotiating concessions with the governor. During last summer’s recall campaign Schwarzenegger concealed from the public the type of measures he would take if he reached the governor’s mansion. Instead he promised to eliminate the deficit by auditing the government and finding waste. While giving no specifics about his program he suggested he would not cut education or basic services for the poor. The news media also concealed this reality and gave its full support to the recall election and Schwarzenegger’s candidacy, which it generally hailed. The Socialist Equality Party opposed the recall campaign as an attempt by the Republican Party to subvert democratic processes and impose a right-wing agenda rejected by the voters less than a year before. The SEP ran its own candidate in the recall campaign, John Christopher Burton, to present a socialist alternative for working people. The SEP campaign warned that whether Davis or Schwarzenegger prevailed, the working class would face drastic attacks on jobs, living standards and public services. This warning is now being confirmed in the actions of both big business parties.

Coronary Heart Disease Essay

Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) is the leading cause of death in the United States. There are many types of heart diseases that fall into this title. Two of the most popular forms of cardiovascular diseases are heart attack and stroke. The increasing amount of exposure of known risk factors for these diseases to young adults is why I feel it is necessary to promote what it takes to lead a heart healthy lifestyle in order to avoid becoming another statistic. I feel as though I did not choose this topic as much as it chose me, as 2 years ago my Father was hospitalized and underwent a Quadruple Heart By-pass surgery in order to remove the blood clots in his 4 main arteries. Knowing that this disease is partly hereditary I feel as though it is important to educate myself and others with early intervention steps that could keep you from being affected by any heart diseases. In my research I plan to introduce how heart diseases are caused and also the best prevention techniques to ensure that the number of people affected by Coronary Heart Diseases, specifically Heart Attacks, is falling each year instead of climbing. In my research I came across an article provided by the ProQuest Research Library entitled â€Å"Coronary Heart Disease: Primary and Secondary Prevention†. This article is a published study done by The College of Pharmacy and Drug Topics of the University of Florida and discusses the many â€Å"do’s† and â€Å"don’ts† in order to lead a heart healthy life. The focus of this article is to prevent your body to become a future hot spot for a heart disease. The article counters these risk factors with ways to prevent the â€Å"modifiable factors† from occurring. The article states that risk factors are classified as modifiable or non-modifiable. â€Å"Non-modifiable risk factors include age, family history, and gender. Modifiable risk factors include smoking, diet, obesity, physical inactivity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus, and metabolic syndrome† (Brenner, Michael, and Allison Butcher). Most of these factors are obvious but some may be less known. Hypertension is the occurrence of high-blood pressure in your body, while dyslipidemia is the occurrence of high cholesterol. Diabetes mellitus can increase the risk of developing a heart disease by 2 to 4 times as likely. A second article I found through ProQuest was the scholarly journal provided by The New England Journal of Medicine titles â€Å"Cardiac rehabilitation and secondary prevention of coronary heart disease†. This article provides a more detailed look into some prevention techniques used in order to stay healthy in both the physical sense, but in the long term heart health. An idea that this article brought the table was the â€Å"Prescription of Exercise†. â€Å"Preliminary data suggest that a regimen of low-intensity, prolonged, daily exercise, called â€Å"high-caloric training† because it maximizes the expenditure of calories, results in greater fat loss and greater modification of risk factors than does a regimen of more intense but briefer exercise sessions.† (Ades, Philip A) As mentioned in the statement, maximizing the length of time that you are exercising maximizes the fat/calories being burned in your work-out. This in the long run brings my researc h back to the facts stated in my first source, which states that improving the modifiable factors like obesity and physical inactivity can greatly reduce your risk if developing a heart disease. A third article that I found through the ProQuest Research Library was a scholarly journal published by the British Medical Journal entitled â€Å"Triggering a heart attack†. This article allowed me to shine a different light on my research as it discusses momentary impacts on your heart. This article was done in response to numerous news headlines that involved fatalities due to unexpected heart attacks and strokes during a physically and/or emotionally strenuous activity. This study focused on activities like jogging, shoveling snow, and swimming that have been commonly lead to cardiac death due to vigorous physical effort. This idea relates very similarly to that of the â€Å"Prescription of Exercise† idea stated in my other source. The relation between the two stems from the idea of the less beneficial short and strenuous activities and exercise in correlation to the recommended longer low-intensity activities and exercise. This article is proving that not only are the more strenuous and shorter periods of activity less beneficial, but they can also become fatal when asking the body to do too much. Coronary Heart Disease is the leading cause of death in The United States which is why I believe that it is crucial to educate others about the many risks that factor into such a group of fatal diseases in the heart. Thru ought my research I learned that it is often the less suspecting individual that can become a victim of a Coronary Heart Disease simply because he/she did not know what steps to take to lead a heart healthy lifestyle. In order to stop the constantly rising number of fatalities caused by heart disease, we must first become educated on how to prevent them from occurring in the first place. Works Cited Ades, Philip A. â€Å"Cardiac Rehabilitation and Secondary Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease.† The New England journal of medicine 345.12 (2001): 892-902. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. Brenner, Michael, and Allison Butcher. â€Å"Coronary Heart Disease: Primary and Secondary Prevention.† Drug Topics 153.12 (2009): 50-9. ABI/INFORM Complete; ProQuest Research Library. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. â€Å"Know Your Facts.† York Weekly Record: 14. Jun 13 2006. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 23 Oct. 2012 Petch, M. C. â€Å"Triggering a Heart Attack.† British medical journal 312.7029 (1996): 459-. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. â€Å"Study: Treatment Reduces Risk of Heart Attack by 70 Percent.† FDA consumer 2002: 7-. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 23 Oct. 2012 .

Profile of the Roman God Jupiter

Jupiter, also known as Jove, is the god of sky and thunder, as well as the king of gods in Ancient Roman Mythology. Jupiter is the top god of the Roman pantheon. Jupiter was considered the chief deity of Roman state religion during the Republican and Imperial eras until Christianity became the dominant religion. Zeus is Jupiter’s equivalent in Greek Mythology. The two share the same features and characteristics. Due to Jupiter’s popularity, the Romans named the largest planet in the solar system after him. Attributes Jupiter is depicted with a beard and long hair. His other attributes include scepter, eagle, cornucopia, aegis, ram, and lion. Jupiter, the Planet The ancient Babylonians were the first known people to record their sightings of the planet Jupiter. The Babylonians’ recordings date back to the seventh century BC. It was initially named after Jupiter, the king of the Roman gods. To the Greeks, the planet represented Zeus, their god of thunder, while the Mesopotamians saw Jupiter as their god, Marduk. Zeus Jupiter and Zeus are equivalents in ancient mythology. They  share the same traits and characteristics. The Greek god Zeus was the top Olympian god in the Greek pantheon. After he took credit for rescuing his brothers and sisters from their father Cronus, Zeus became king of heaven and gave his brothers, Poseidon and Hades, the sea and the underworld, respectively, for their domains. Zeus was the husband of Hera, but he had many affairs with other goddesses, mortal women, and female animals. Zeus mated with, among others, Aegina, Alcmena, Calliope, Cassiopeia, Demeter, Dione, Europa, Io, Leda, Leto, Mnemosyne, Niobe, and Semele. He is king on  Mount Olympus, the home of the Greek gods. He is also credited as the father of  Greek heroes  and the ancestor of many other Greeks. Zeus mated with many mortals and goddesses but is married to his sister  Hera (Juno). Zeus is the son of the  Titans Cronus and Rhea. He is the brother of his wife Hera, his other sisters Demeter and Hestia, and his brothers Hades, Poseidon. Etymology of Zeus and Jupiter The root of both Zeus and Jupiter is in a  proto-Indo-European  word for the often personified concepts of day/light/sky. Zeus Abducts Mortals There are many myths  about Zeus. Some involve demanding acceptable conduct of others, whether human or divine. Zeus was enraged with the behavior of  Prometheus. The titan had tricked Zeus into taking the non-meat portion of the original sacrifice so that mankind could enjoy the food. In response, the king of the gods deprived mankind of the use of fire so they wouldnt be able to enjoy the ​book theyd been granted, but Prometheus found a way around this, and stole some of the gods fire by hiding it in a stalk of fennel and then giving it to mankind. Zeus punished Prometheus with having his liver pecked out every day. But Zeus himself misbehaves—at least according to human standards. It is tempting to say that his primary occupation is that of a seducer. In order to seduce, he sometimes changed his shape into that of an animal or bird. When he impregnated Leda, he appeared as a swan [see Leda and the Swan]. When he abducted Ganymede, he appeared as an eagle in order to take Ganymede to the home of the gods where he would replace Hebe as cupbearer; and when Zeus carried off Europa, he appeared as a tempting white bull—although why the Mediterranean women were so enamored of bulls is beyond the imaginative capacities of this urban-dweller—setting in motion the quest of Cadmus and the settling of Thebes. The hunt for Europa provides one mythological version of the introduction of letters to Greece. The Olympic Games were initially held to honor Zeus.