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The Constitution of the United States of America divides the central government into three distinct branches. Article I of the Constitution defines the large law-making body of the United States as Congress. Congress is bicameral, which means that it has two separately acting parts or houses. These two houses are the Senate and the House of Representatives. These bodies of elected officials do their respective business in the Capitol Building. Congress is also referred to as the Legislative Branch of the United States Government.
In Article II of the Constitution, the Executive Branch is defined. The Executive Branch consists of the President of the United States and the Vice President. The President is elected for a four-year term and can only be in the office of the Presidency if they are re-elected. Any given President is limited to two terms of service as the President. The Judiciary Branch of the United States Government is defined in Article III of the Constitution. Article III states that the Judiciary Power of the United States shall be the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has jurisdiction to all courts and cases therein. Of all the branches of government, the Judiciary Branch has the least written about it in the Constitution. It is now the duty of the writer of this paper, to inform the reader of this paper on what goes on in the Judicial Branch of the Government, more commonly called the Court System. When lawyers pass the Bar Exam, they have the ability to prosecute or defend in a court case. Some lawyers move on later to be judges and some move on to be senators. Judges in America are faced with some of the most complex and diverse problems every day.
Judges are faced with analyzing laws and what laws mean to the case in front of them. Judges must decide what laws are judgmental. Judgmental, meaning which laws do they need to interpret themselves. One law that appears to be plain and simple in the broad scheme of things, but is actually very complex in most cases is murder. More specifically what degree of murder. In America, there are three degrees or levels of intent in murder cases. 1 st Degree murder would mean premeditated, cold-blooded murder; that mean the person on trial intended to kill the person that died in that instance.
The degrees of murder decrease as intention decreases and ultimately, so does the severity of the sentence. Other subjective laws include those that deal with loss of money instead of life. Where a penalty is not as severe because the value that has been lost, can be returned. Every day in Congress a new bill is proposed.
A bill is something that is always striving to become a law. This can happen if both houses approve of the bill and it is then sent to be approved by the President. If the President approves the bill, he shall sign it and it shall then become law. If the President vetoes a bill, it still has a chance to become a law. This can only occur if each house of Congress has a two-thirds vote to override the veto. Once either of these situations is true the bill becomes a law and is affective immediately unless duly stated in the bill itself.
Back to the court system Court cases don t just come up from the ground. In civil courts it takes a complaint or a legal document that states the reasons why someone is being sued and the relief sought, for example, monetary damages or return of property. In criminal courts, the legal document that states the law (laws) broken and the reasons why the person (or persons) named in the complaint is accused of committing a crime. Generally, these complaints are filed by the state or by the person on which a crime was done or the plaintiff of a case.
The defendant is the person who is defending himself or herself when accused of a crime or wrongdoing. Now that there is a case, there needs to be a decision on whether a judge will hold the case or if it should be moved to trial. The judge of that case then hands the, now, trial to a jury. A jury generally consists of twelve people, that of which are all citizens of the United States and have sworn to decide the facts in a court case to reach a just verdict or decision.
In a trial by jury, the case is held and conducted with the lawyer s opening statements, evidence being shown, exhibit s displayed, testimonies heard, and lawyer s closing arguments. It is now up to the jury to decide upon a verdict. Now the jury goes into deliberation. This is where the jury discusses the evidence and evaluates which way the cases presented swayed them to believe to be true.
Juries some time can not agree as a whole to one decision in a trial. This is called a Hung Jury. When there is a trial with a Hung Jury the result is generally a new trial with different jurors residing. If the jury has decided on a verdict they must then decide on a sentence. A sentence is what the appropriate punishment for the defendant is.
The sentence can be decided by the jury or by the judge. Once a sentence is decided it is to be carried out in its appropriate manner. In court cases of today and the past, judges are faced with deciding what is just. Sometimes these decisions are eased by the use of precedent.
Precedent is term used in court systems that means a decision relevant to the current case, but that decision is from the past. Judges use these precedents to keep the law of America consistent. It would be unjust to decide in favor of the plaintiff of a case, when an extremely similar case had occurred twenty years ago but the decision was in favor of the defendant. That would be called an injustice in fact. So in a way, precedent is not only used to ease the decision of judges, but it is used to keep the courts of America fair and just. Both types of courts, civil and criminal, use precedents for final decisions or verdicts.
These courts see judgements of the past as valuable resources for not only the final decision in a case but in the influential propositions provided by the lawyers themselves. The precedents only seem to be expired when their content is out of date. For instance, in the case of the State vs. Andrews, a precedent was used to decide that Damon Andrews was guilty not only of murder, but murder in the first degree. The court decided that Andrews was guilty of first-degree murder and life in prison when they referred to the State vs. Mayfield case.
What the courts overlooked, was that in the State vs. Mayfield case, Edward Mayfield had killed a man in cold-blood. In the Andrews case, Damon Andrews had been in a mental institution for twenty-three years before committing his crime. The defense appealed the decision and the case went to trial once again, only this time Andrews was sentenced to be re-committed to the mental institution.
The Mayfield case was out of date because the Andrews jury had not considered looking into the court hearings, which were filed in entirely separate, under the category in the state treasury of ten-fifteen years past. The appeal saved the life of Damon Andrews. These types of references are used in nearly every court case and it is only the sharpest of lawyer s that fully utilize the power of them.
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Research essay sample on United States Government Mental Institution
