LEB 320F Final notes - Unit 1 Intro to Legal Environment...

Unit 1: Intro to Legal Environment and Court Systems
Law Classification
· Federal Law: come from US, same all over the country
Vs.
· State Law: decides law within their own state border, varies state by state
· Common Law: legal ideas or principles that have established in past court
decisions, comes from courts, creates precedents
Vs.
· Statutory law: created by elected representatives or bodies of elected
representatives at the national level (congress), or at the state level through the state
legislature
· Civil Law: private people looking for compensation for losses they have against
someone else/some company
Vs.
· Criminal Law: government goes after someone who has broken a law, private
person can’t bring a criminal case, government can impose fines/imprisonment/death
penalty
Felony - More serious.
Misdemeanors - crimes carrying lesser penalties ex: most traffic offenses
Law and Ethics
Laws: comes from government, they try to reflect society’s moral beliefs and if they don’t
they try to change and adapt, sets requirements
Ethics: comes from variety of sources like parents/friends/media/religion, sets standards
that you ought to meet but are not required to
Soldano v. O’Daniels
o Fight at a bar got out of control, good samaritan left to find a phone, while looking for
a phone at bar #2 they wouldn’t let her use their phone, one guy ended up killed, Family
sued bar #2
Result: The bartender owed a duty to the plaintiff’s decedent to permit the patron from
Happy Jack’s to place a call to the police or to place the call himself.
Shows the “inherent capacity of the common law for growth and change.”
Court system:
The Typical State System
1. Courts of Limited Jurisdiction
1. Limited as to the kinds of cases they can hear
b. General Trial courts/ District Courts/ Common Plea Courts/ Superior Courts/
State Trial Courts
1. Most important cases involving state law
2. Empowered to hear all cases (Except those expressly assigned by statute
to the courts of limited jurisdiction)
3. Exists in every county of every state
b. Appellate Courts
1. If parties to a lawsuit are dissatisfied with how a trial court handled a
case, they can take an appeal here.

2. In some states there is only the supreme court, but in more populous
states a layer of appellate courts is interposed between the trial courts
and the supreme court.
3. Decide legal questions, do not hear testimony of witnesses or otherwise
entertain new evidence.
b. State Supreme Courts
U.S DISTRICT COURTS
1.Specialized U.S Courts
a. some federal courts have very specialized subject matter jurisdiction
2.Federal District Courts
1. most federal cases originate in these courts
2. 94 judicial districts
3. Not really courts of general jurisdiction
4. Federal gvt. & have power to hear only cases that have been placed w/in
their jurisdiction by the Constitution and federal statutory enactments.