Common Sense

One of the first questions I typically ask people is "What do you do?" Though it may seem like small talk, it is an incredibly revealing question. Time is one of the few truly non-renewable resources in the modern world. It doesn't matter how much cash or power you have at your disposal; time is (currently) universal. It's like they say: Every 60 seconds in Africa, a minute passes. What someone chooses to do as a profession takes up a significant amount of that time. And that choice can be revealing about the kind of person you are.

Abstracting a bit, you can tell a lot about a country's government by the way it writes, administers and adjudicates its laws. In the courts, though "justice" is a common theme, there are different approaches to what exactly that means.

Pictured: For a more thorough article on common law vs civil law, click here (which is where I stole this map from *shhhhhh*).

Called "common law," the United States's legal system is inherited from Great Britain (except for Louisiana because France). Indeed, professors still teach some British law in US law schools. For example, did you know that necessity is not a defense to murder? That principle comes from a UK case decided over 100 years after the US seceded from the UK. Common law is almost exclusively found in countries that were part of the British Empire. Outside of that influence, another prevalent system is that of "civil law" (which is what Louisiana does, their system is inherited from Napoleonic codes).

The difference between the two is what is considered the highest authority. Though both systems utilize statutes, codes, and regulations, common law's primary sources are legal opinions. In other words, US/UK law values judge's opinions about the law more than the laws themselves. Civil law is the opposite: the statutes and laws are the last word.

What is better? Well, would you prefer courts make their decisions based on what the law is or why it's applied?