Unit 2: Introduction To Legal System Flashcards
(41 cards)
What is Law?
Law is the body of rules made by government that can be enforced by the courts or by other government agencies.
What is substantive Law?
Substantive law establishes, not only the rights an individual has in society, but also the limits on his or her conduct.
Procedural law
Procedural law determines how the substantive law will be enforced. The rules, governing arrest, investigation, and pre-trial and court processes in both criminal and civil cases are examples.
Public law
Public law includes constitutional law, which determines how the country is governed, and laws that affect individual’s relationship with government. Criminal law, and the regulations created by government agencies are also examples of public law.
Private Law
Private law involves the rules that govern our personal, social, and business relations. Contract law and tort law are two examples.
Civil Law Legal System
The most important feature of French civil law is it central code— a list of rules stated as broad principles of law, that judges apply to the cases that come before them. Under this system, people wanting to know their legal rights or obligations referred to the
civil code.
Stare Decisis
Judges are required to follow each other’s decision.
“Following precedent”
Most significant features of common law
The most significant future of the common law legal system today is that the decision of the judge at one level is binding on all judges in the court hierarchy who function in a court of lower rank, provided the facts in the two cases are similar.
Why was Law of Equity Developed?
Common law courts had some serious limitations. Parties seeking Justice before them, found it difficult to obtain fear and proper redress for the grievances they had suffered because of the rigidity of the process the flexibility of the rules applied, and the limited scope of the remedies available. People often went directly to the king for satisfaction and relief. The version of this process made it necessary for the king to delegate the responsibility to the chancellors, who intern appointed several vice chancellors. This body eventually became known as the court of chancery, sometimes referred to as the court of equity.
Will common law and Equity law be overridden by statue?
Yes, because the parliament is supreme.
Equity
Legal principles found upon fairness, as developed in the court of chancery to relive the harshness of the common law.
Statues
Law, in the form of legislation passed by parliament
Parliament supremacy
The principle that the primary law making body is parliament, or the provincial legislatures in the respective jurisdictions, and that statues take priority over the common law.
When was Canada Born?
1867 - With the Constitution Act, 1867
Constitution Act -1867
It created dominion of Canada
It divided power among the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government
It determined the structure and powers of the provincial and federal levels of government.
What are section 91 and 92 of Constitution Act.
These section divide the power between federal and provincial governments.
What is Rule of Law
An unwritten convention inherited from British that recognizes that although Parliament is supreme, and can create any law considered appropriate, citizens are protected from the arbitrary actions of the government.
What does the federal government have power over?
The federal government has exclusive power over such matters as the military, trade and commerce, banking, currency, the Postal Service, criminal law (not it’s enforcement), taxation and the appointment of judges in the federal and higher level provincial courts.
What does the province have power over?
Hospitals, education, the administration of the courts, and commercial activities carried on the provincial level.
Look
Loook
What Three branches have law making power?
1- Legislative Branch: Consists of Parliament, which creates legislation or statue law
2- The Judicial Branch: Court system, and judiciary interprets legislation and makes case law.
3-The executive Branch: prime minister, cabinet, deputy ministers, and government departments and officials; also known as the Crown
How are Jurisdiction disputes are resolved?
By courts
What is Paramountcy?
There are occasions where the laws truly conflict between provincial and federal laws, and it is not possible to obey both. In those situations the principle of paramountcy may require that the federal legislation to be operative, and the provincial legislation go into abeyance and no longer apply.
Royal Ascent
Formality that grants royal permission from representatives of queen ( Governor General and Lt. Generalas) for a bill to become law. (last stage of making a bill into a law)
