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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 05 2012 @ 07:39 PM EDT |
Very much so. The 3 areas unique to each other was an amazing concept to
counter (at the time) the problem of the House of Commons, House of Lords, and
then the Monarch. It was 3 parts, just sequential, not independent. Funnily
enough, the UK system has drifted far in practice to the terrible state it used
to be (King George III was mad but it turned out a good thing he 'gave away' so
much control), and now there's a 'dampening' effect with the House of Lords
slowing down more of the wilder excesses of the lower House.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 06 2012 @ 01:35 AM EDT |
The US constitution is a product of its time and place drafted by wealthy white
males
It is very much a document of the Enlightenment that in many ways broke with the
feudal social order of its time, based as it was on rational thought; as defined
by white land- and slave owners.
It may be among the best examples on efforts to craft a just society but that
doesn't make it neither a gospel nor perfect (just ask the native Americans).
Don't forget, it took less than three generations before a Civil war was needed
to settle matters. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Ian Al on Saturday, October 06 2012 @ 06:41 AM EDT |
The Magna Carta introduced a written and widely published common law that
applied to monarchy, nobility and all subjects. The US Constitution, in part,
calls for the same rights that developed in the centuries after the Magna Carta
such as trial by a jury formed from citizens, a single framework of law that
applied to every citizen, law written by elected representatives of the
citizenry and habeas corpus. The adversarial process, secrecy of jury
deliberations and the primacy of the jury verdict came out of the English law
system from the sixteenth century onwards.
The US Constitution goes
much further than any English or British charters in establishing tenets for
commerce, citizens' rights, including free speech, and governance. Such
governance principles such as the life of an elected parliament have to be drawn
from the letter of the law in England (,NI and Wales. There is a different legal
system in Scotland).
The letter of English law can be changed by
Parliament. The letter of the US Constitution can be changed by Congress, but
that is almost impossible, in practice. Amendments have, of course, been made,
but that is somewhat harder than making changes via the 'English'
Parliament.
The US courts still use the English common law as
precedent.
Supreme Court, Parker v. Flook:This is also the
teaching of our landmark decision in O'Reilly v. Morse. In that case the Court
rejected Samuel Morse's broad claim covering any use of electromagnetism for
printing intelligible signs, characters, or letters at a distance.
In
reviewing earlier cases applying the rule that a scientific principle cannot be
patented, the Court placed particular emphasis on the English case of Neilson v.
Harford, Web. Pat. Cases 295, 371 (1844), which involved the circulation of
heated air in a furnace system to increase its efficiency. The English court
rejected the argument that the patent merely covered the principle that furnace
temperature could be increased by injecting hot air, instead of cold into the
furnace. That court's explanation of its decision was relied on by this Court in
Morse:
Before the US Constitution, the US courts were an extension
of the English court system. John Adams, who became US President after George
Washington presided over the institution of the Constitution, started as a
lawyer in the English court system within North America.
As I hear it,
John Adams had a lot to do with the writing of the Constitution and would have
reflected the judicial system in which he had faith, in the tenets of the
Constitution. It would certainly appear, on the evidence, that English courts
can provide precedence to US courts when the tenets of the English court and the
Constitution are in concert.
--- Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid! [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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