Common law in the United States provided judges with the power to interpret cases and use the precedent only as guidelines. As a result, the focus was on the individual character of the case, and much attention was paid to the appropriateness of the past decisions in order to apply them to the aspects of the discussed case. Furthermore, the common law was used not only as the system for discussing the legal cases in courts but also as the complex legal system of the country in contrast to the civil law system (Farnsworth, 2010). However, the development of the U.S. common law system was a prolonged process, as a result of which the U.S. legal system applied such features of the civil law system as the focus on prescribed regulations in the form of statutes (Steilen, 2011, p. 283). The common law system related to judges’ decisions cannot be discussed as out-of-date or static even today because it is rather responsive in terms of discussing the cases of individuals, and it is supported with statutes that regulate the interpretations of the U.S. law in court …show more content…
law. First, the grounds of the modern U.S. legal system are in the British common law that was adopted by the American colonies. However, the development of the nation led to the establishment of the specific principles of the law. The focus on the judge-made law was changed with the further focus on the statutory law. As a result, today, the legal system of the country functions in relation to such different principles as common law and statutory law in addition to the constitutional and administrative law. All these factors are also reflected in the approach to distributing the power between the federal and state organs. The specifics of the American federal and state courts’ jurisprudence can be discussed as influencing the individuals, organizations, and society both positively and negatively. The reason is that the combination of the common law and statutory law as well as the focus on the constitutional law can provide individuals with more liberties or, instead, limit their rights because of the dependence on precedent. In this case, judges play the important role in the legal system of the United States, and much attention is paid to the principles of the democratic rule-making in order to protect citizens and regulate the society’s development