Law in the United States » (2nd Edition)

Arthur T. von Mehren (1922-2006) was Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School. He represented the United States for 38 years in the Hague Conference of Private International Law. He wrote 210 publications in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Japanese. They include the groundbreaking Civil Law System, his pioneering two books and nine articles on Japanese law, his highly original Law of Multistate Problems, his foundational monographs on contract formation and form, his articles on jurisdiction, and his award-winning Hague lectures.

Peter L. Murray is the Robert Braucher Visiting Professor of Law from Practice at Harvard Law School. He served as the Faculty Director of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and continues to serve as Director of the Winter Trial Advocacy Workshop. He is the author of Basic Trial Advocacy, an advocacy training treatise; a co-author of Green, Nesson and Murray's Problems, Cases, & Materials on Evidence, and an author and co-author of many legal articles. He has worked extensively in comparative law, with particular reference to civil procedure in Germany and Europe.

This book is about the American legal system for jurists of civil law backgrounds.

Preface     xiii
The Sources of American Law     1
Historical Roots     1
Allocation of Authority to Create and Adapt Legal Rules and Principles     5
The Judicial Decision     7
Legislation     14
Court Rules     19
Secondary Sources     20
Finding American Law     23
American Common Law     27
The Two Western Legal Traditions     27
The Reception of the Common Law on the North American Continent     32
The Post-Revolution Development of American Law     35
Common Law Reasoning and Analysis     40
Public Policy and Legal Decision Making     40
Precedent and Case Distinctions     42
Overruling and Departing from Precedent     45
American Common Law at the Beginning of the Third Millennium     46
An Example of the Common Law in Action     47
Comparative Perspectives on American Contract Law     71
Looking at Law Comparatively     71
Comparative Law Methodology     72
Contract Law - Offer and Acceptance     76
The Common Law of Offer and Acceptance     76
Comparative Analysis     78
The Doctrine ofConsideration     82
The Common Law Doctrine of Consideration     83
The Problem of Unenforceability, Relative and Absolute     85
Delineating Transaction Types Unenforceable in Their Natural or Normal State     86
Classifying Individual Transactions to Determine Whether They Fall Within an Unenforceable Transaction Type     87
Determining and Devising Extrinsic Elements Capable of Rendering Enforceable Otherwise Unenforceable Transactions     93
The Problem of Abstractness     97
The Screening of Individual Transactions for Unfairness     98
Conclusion     99
American Federalism     103
The American Governmental Scene Prior to the Constitution of 1789     104
The Federal System Established by the U.S. Constitution     105
The Spheres of Federal and State Authority - Interstate Commerce     108
The Federal and State Judicial Systems     116
Interaction between the State and Federal Systems of Justice     120
American Federalism Compared     131
American Constitutional Law and the Role of the United States Supreme Court     134
Introduction     134
The Supreme Court's Threefold Role     137
The Supreme Court's Institutional Character     138
The Founding Fathers' Understandings Respecting the Supreme Court's Role     140
The Court as Balance Wheel of the Federal System: The Commerce Clause     145
The Court as Guardian of Individual Rights     146
The Court as Arbiter of the Allocation of Powers among the Branches of the Federal Government     149
The Court's Standing in American Society     154
American Constitutional Law Compared     159
American Civil Justice     162
The Role of Civil Justice in American Society     162
Civil Procedure and Adversarial Legalism     165
American Civil Procedure and the Continuous Trial     167
Fundamental Principles and Basic Institutional Arrangements     168
The Significance for First-Instance Procedure of Concentrated Trials     170
Further Procedural Characteristics Associated with Concentrated and with Discontinuous Trials     174
Civil Justice as Punishment?     179
Collective Litigation     182
American Criminal Justice     187
American Federalism and Criminal Law     189
Criminal Constitutional Review     191
The Adversary Criminal Justice System     194
The Prosecution Function     196
Criminal Justice and Jury Trial      200
The Death Penalty in the United States     202
American Trial By Jury     206
Historical Background of American Jury Trial     206
The Jury as Fact Finder and Case Decider     209
Selection and Composition of Juries     209
Function of the Jury at Trial     213
Rules of Evidentiary Admissibility     216
The Application of the Law in Jury Proceedings     219
Jury Deliberations     220
Accountability of the Jury and Review of Jury Determinations     222
The Role of the Judge in Jury Trial     224
The Role of Lawyers in Jury Trial     226
The Future of American Trial by Jury     227
Choice of Law, International Civil Jurisdiction, and Recognition of Judgments in the United States     231
Introduction     231
Choice of Law     233
Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments     237
Jurisdiction to Adjudicate     241
European-American Problems of Discovery and Taking of Evidence Abroad     246
The American Legal Profession     249
American Legal Education     251
The American Law School     252
The Law School Curriculum     254
American Legal Pedagogy      256
Clinical Legal Education and Law Reviews     258
Examinations and Grading     260
Transitions to Law Practice     261
Admission to the Bar     262
The American Legal Profession     263
Private Law Firms     264
Bar Associations and Regulation of the Bar     265
Legal Aid and Access to Justice     266
Lawyers' Fees and Compensation     268
The American Judiciary     269
The United States and the Global Legal Community     273
The American Legal System in World Context     274
American Private Law in the Modern World     278
American Litigation Abroad     282
American Public Law and the Modern Democratic World     285
America and the World Language of Law     287
American Legal Culture on the World Scene     288
America and World Public Law     291
America and the Legal World of the Future     294
Index     299