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SIGNIFICANCE: As a neighbor of the United States and one with which the United States shares a long border, Canada is a nation whose criminal justice system is of great importance to many Americans.

SIGNIFICANCE: The judicial system in the United States is complex. Each state has courts of specialized, limited, and general jurisdiction. A separate hierarchy of federal courts parallels the fifty state judiciaries. In many states efforts have been made to reduce the number of court types.

Description: Right not to be deprived by the government of life, liberty, or property without notice and an opportunity to be heard according to fair procedures.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution promises freedom of speech and press, and the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment grants to criminal defendants the right to public trials by impartial juries. Sometimes these two rights conflict. For example, if the public attending a trial loudly proclaims its views on the proceedings, insisting that the defendant is guilty, the defendant can claim that the trial was not fair. More subtle forces may also influence a public trial. To balance the rights of the defendant and the public, judges may issue orders that restrict the rights of the public to attend a court proceeding or to view it on television. In addition, judges may restrict out-of-court statements made by attorneys and, in rare circumstances, may attempt to limit information the press reports about a case. Judges also may decide that the sensational nature of a case requires that the jury be sequestered, or isolated, for the length of the trial. Thus, a judge has considerable discretion to fashion remedies ensuring a defendant’s right to a fair trial. In doing so, there is some infringement, or censorship, of the First Amendment rights of the public, the press, the jurors, attorneys, and other trial participants. Courtrooms

The courts have played a complicated and often misunderstood role in deciding questions of censorship. They often decide whether particular regulations, statutes, or executive decisions constitute unconstitutional censorship or lawful exercises of governmental authority. The American court system encompasses several distinct judicial institutions. There are fifty-one separate court systems—one federal system and fifty state systems. Generally, civil and criminal cases begin in a trial court (known as a district court in the federal system); many cases end there. If appealed, cases proceed through one and possibly two appellate courts. In the federal system, there are courts of appeal, followed by the U.S. Supreme Court. In most states, there are courts of appeal and a state supreme court, followed by review in the U.S. Supreme Court. Cumbersome at first glance, these multiple levels of appeal ensure that decisions are subject to critical review.

The judiciary is the branch of government tasked with interpreting laws, adjudicating cases and controversies over the application of laws, and levying judgements when laws are violated. Judicial systems have been in use since the emergence of the earliest organized human civilizations. Today, judicial systems are typically composed of different courts overseen by judges who have varying responsibilities and levels of authority based on their position in the judicial hierarchy. In the United States, the judicial hierarchy consists of state and local courts, district courts, circuit courts, and the Supreme Court. Although their primary responsibility is to resolve legal cases tied to violations of the law, these courts, especially the Supreme Court, often find themselves playing an important role in the development of public policy.

When Europeans first reached the Americas, they encountered native peoples whose ancestors had occupied the entire landmass for more than twenty thousand years. The numerous North American tribes used many different legal systems that functioned successfully under natural law without police, formal courts, or prisons. Decisions affecting individual rights were resolved in a manner that gave considerable weight to the best interests of the group and sought restoration of community harmony and balance. Around the fifteenth century, the indigenous peoples encountered Europeans holding different views of legal rights and posing a serious threat to native sovereignty and rights. American Indians;in the justice system[justice system]

The development of the criminal justice system in the United States is closely tied to that of Great Britain, from which the United States drew the basis of its own government and legal system. The origins of the British criminal justice system date back to tenth century England, when the mutual pledge system arose. Under that system, families banded together in groups of ten called tithings. The tithings in turn banded together in groups of ten, each helping to keep order among the others. An officer called the shire rieve—which later gave rise to “sheriff”—oversaw groups of hundreds. That system began the development of , but there was poor law enforcement because there was no supervision and some people did not want to participate in the mutual pledge system. Mutual pledge did not reduce or deal effectively with crime; this led to the creation of the system, in which members of communities were chosen to help victims of crime bring justice to offenders.

SIGNIFICANCE: Slavery defined the legal treatment of African Americans for two and one-half centuries. The crusade against slavery gave rise to modern concepts of citizenship and civil rights.

English law, also known as common law, is a set of generally applied rules used in England as well as most other English-speaking countries, most notably the United States. Gradually developing since ancient times, English law is based on precedent , or prior rulings by law courts, rather than on statutes written by kings or other lawmakers. English law most often deals with civil issues such as inheritance and possession of property and conduct of individual citizens.

While technology has long been used to uncover evidence germane to the commission of crimes and the adjudication of the accused at trial, the past several decades have resulted in an exponential increase in the technical sophistication of exploratory and explanatory methods in criminology and their use in the American judicial system. These methods include DNA testing and forensics in general, as well as the use of cell phone records and GPS tracking. As for judicial management, assistive technologies and telejustice have brought a new level of accessibility to, and participation in, the US judicial system. Finally, from a strategic perspective, computer information systems and the Semantic Web hold the potential to provide richer data sets about those accused of crimes.

GENERAL INDUSTRY: Government and Public Administration

SIGNIFICANCE: The American court system embodies the adversary system of justice, in which it is the role of all parties in cases to take the lead in investigating the facts, presenting evidence, and formulating legal arguments to demonstrate why they, and not their adversaries, should prevail, within the settings of neutral forums.

SIGNIFICANCE: Mexico has a criminal justice system that differs significantly from that of the United States in both its philosophy and its practice. Until mid-2016, the most fundamental difference was the system’s tendency to presume criminal defendants guilty before they were even tried and to make it almost impossible for defendants to be judged fairly on the basis of legally obtained evidence. In 2008, the administration of President Felipe Calderón set forth reforms to the Mexican judicial system that were implemented in 2016, with mixed results.

Description: The doctrine that the liberties protected by the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments encompasses more than the procedural rights owed by the government when it seeks to punish someone for a crime.

In common law countries (such as the United States), an economic tort, resulting from business transactions, is one in which the legal injury suffered involves economic losses rather than physical harm. In the United States, typical economic torts include tortious interference, fraud, conspiracy, and restraint of trade. Because the American common-law tradition departed from English common law at an early point in the development of American industrialism, the common-law system of torts is fairly skeletal in its address of industry and the business world, compared to its treatment of disputes between individuals. As a result, most relevant law governing business is statutory rather than common, with large bodies of antitrust, labor, intellectual property, and occupational safety laws, for instance, having been adopted in the twentieth century. But economic torts, though they may be a smaller one than others, remain an important area of law.

The rule of law is a legal concept referring to the adherence of all individuals and institutions within a society to a fair and equally enforced set of laws. In the twenty-first century, countries operating under the rule of law generally make their laws publicly known to their citizens and have impartial courts in place to arbitrate the laws.