Evolution of Legal Systems Flashcards
What are the three main legal systems according to Johnathan Turner
Traditional, Transitional, and
Modern
What is the Traditional Legal System
Common in hunter and gather/simple agrarian societies
* Unwritten laws (which often overlap with ancient norms)
* Elders often adjudicators (over disputes—judges) and leaders
(politicians)
* Can have ceremonies that resemble the court process (with each of
its components, sometimes including lawyer-type figures)
What is the Transitional Legal System
Transitional Legal System
* Common in advanced agrarian/early industrial societies where sub-
systems/institutions start to differentiate from kinship relationships
* Distinction between substantive and procedural laws emerges
* Specialized training for court specialists like judges and lawyers
what is the Modern Legal System
Much like the Transitional system but on a larger and more elaborate scale
* Administrative law
* Statutory law (legislator-made law) increasingly dominates over common
law (judge-made law)
* Array of administrative staff in courts (bailiffs, clerks, and such)
* Hierarchies (provincial and federal courts etc.) and specialization (different
types of enforcement officers) becomes more common
What are the theories of Law and Society
Natural Law and Legal Positivism
what is natural law
a system of justice held to be common to all humans
and derived from nature rather than from the rules of society (where
the “moral” and the “legal” are the same thing)…
what is legal positivism
Legal Positivism: where the legal and the moral are seen as two
different entities (the opposite of Natural Law)
Barron D. Montesquieu came up with the idea for the separation of powers, where a constitution should consist of three different legal powers, what are the three legal powers?
1).Executive
2). Judiciary
3). Legislature (influenced the US Declaration of Independence)
How does Class conflict between labour and capital, relate to the law?
in their quest for dominance (profit maximization) over the proletariat,
the business owners are able to leverage social institutions, including
government, media, academia, organized religion, and, of course, the
entire criminal justice system, as tools and weapons against the proletariat
with the goal of maintaining their positions of power and privilege.
what is Karl Marx’s three ideas about the Law
(1) Law is a product of evolving economic forces. It revolves around maintaining
and perpetuating the capitalist system and the dominance of capital (business
people) over labour (workers)
(2) The law is a tool used by business people to maintain their power and
dominance over the lower classes
(3) the capitalist system will eventually collapse and communism will take over
What is Emile Durkheim’s two types of solidarity
1). Mechanical solidarity, which prevails in traditional and
homogeneous societies, where unity is ensured by close interpersonal
ties and people with similar outlooks.
2). Organic solidarity, which prevails in more modern societies, are
heterogenous and differentiated by a complex division of labour.
