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Compare And Contrast The Legal System Between The United States And The US

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The legal systems of the United Kingdom and the United States share a number of obvious resemblances which stem from the history of the countries. Today, throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland the primary legal system in place is still a Common Law system however the system in Scotland is a combination of both common law and civil law . A common law system will acquire the majority of its laws through past cases with inferior courts being bound by higher courts, in civil law systems there is no such precedent . Prior to gaining its independence, the US began as an English Colony and so the US legal system was directly derived from the English system . This therefore means that the legal system of the US is based upon the same fundamental concept of ‘Common Law’ with their common law being based upon their constitution. Despite sharing the same basis upon which their legal systems were developed, there are a number of differences between the two. Upon researching these differences I will be looking to answer if it is accurate or not to label these two systems as being part of the same legal family.

Arguably, the most imperative difference between the British and American legal systems is the constitution. The fundamental dissimilarity between the US and the UK is that the American constitution is codified in one document, whereas the UK constitution is made up of several constitutional conventions found in numerous Acts of Parliament. It is important to note, that

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