A Comparison of British and American Legal Systems

We surely have seen movies and television programs depicting both American court trials as well as those in England and perhaps we tend to think of English courts as judges and barristers wearing wigs, such as in "Rumpole of the Bailey" while we think of American courts as dominated either by Perry Mason or Johnnie Cochran. In U.S. law, there are lawyers who may call themselves "trial lawyers"- they could be defense attorneys,. Lawyers in civil cases, as well as prosecutors working for the government or state. In Britain, there are solicitors- who basically represent people's legal needs, and barristers who are the ones with the wigs, taking cases to civil or criminal courts. Defendants in both legal systems have the right to face their accusers and are presumed innocent until proven guilty (the Napoleonic Code is not quite that liberal about innocence or presumed guilt).

Yet, while there are many similarities between English Common Law and the American legal system, there are a number of major differences. It is not so much that, from the very outset, there was an American system and a British system, going back to the 1700s. It is that, as Oliver Wendell Holmes is quoted: "the life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience...the law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries..." (Knight 1996 1)