4 ms·
Here, laws are written by legislation, and interpreted by judges. As judges rule on different laws, the laws build up a case history. This is why becoming a law
by warfangle 17y ago
Here, laws are written by legislation, and interpreted by judges. As judges rule on different laws, the laws build up a case history. This is why becoming a lawyer in the US (especially if you want to be a trial lawyer) is so onerous. Not only do you need to be very familiar with the laws themselves - you have to be very familiar with how the laws have been interpreted since enactment.
- sili 17y agoIs there one single repository that links each law to cases that have referenced or interpreted it?
- joeyo 17y agoAFAIK, no. There are the Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis databases, but I'm not sure if even they can be called completely authoritative. (And access to them is certainly not free.)
- praptak 17y agoThe implications are a bit disturbing. Paid access to those databases combined with case law means that if you are poor then you won't have full information about what can get you jailed.
- abalashov 17y agoYep.
- warfangle 17y agoEven if you are rich, case law alone is so onerously large that perusing it and studying it would take a lifetime. I spent about ten minutes trying to find out just how large the corpus of case law is, and could find no references. Score one for the little guy, though: Google Scholar indexes (some; not sure how much of the corpus is covered) case law, as of Nov. 17, '09: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/finding-laws-that-govern-us.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/finding-laws-that-gov...