My law and justice experiance

My law and justice experience actually happened recently when i received a misdemeanor and had to appear in front of a judge. It actually started with me getting pulled over because one of my tail lights were out, but it also turned out that my tags were way out of date and my license plate was expired. I got the notice that I had to go to court on a specific date. The date came up and I was extremely nervous expecting a big court room with a lot of people. I went into the courthouse and asked the reception where I was supposed to go and she pointed me towards a room. Even before I came before the judge I decided that I would plead guilty and try to get some lesser sentence. I didn't even know before I took this class that what I did was called plea bargaining. I went before just the judge and I told him that I did not realize my tags were out of date and really it was my responsibility to get them renewed. The judge responded in a good tone and decided that since it was my first misdemeanor that he would lower the charge from a 100 dollars to 50 dollars. I was extremely happy with his decision and thanked him. I left the court room with a good feeling about how the law system works. It wasn't really an epic law and justice experience, but it was the first time I was ever in front of a judge being charged with something and it really meant a lot to me.

Chapter 13: Comparative Law: Law in Other Cultures

This section was vaguely covered in class, but the two main things that I took away from it were law in tribes and bands and socialism. Law in the tribes and bands were more basic human nature laws, but did hold some intelligence in actually starting the Law system in the world. Some of the things that bands and tribes did practice though were highly brutal such as blood feuds where one family member would be killed so that family would kill a member of the family they thought killed their family member. This would go back and forth until someone stopped it or the family's were wiped out. If you look at the picture above of a rap battle where two rappers make fun of each other back and forth is actually a form of law in early tribes. Tribes practiced insulting one another and who ever one won the argument and that's how civil law was in early humanity. However banishment and punishment for the guilty really started the law system in tribes and bands. Its amazing how even the first humans had law in bedded in them.

Socialism is actually quite a harsh system. It relies on a low tolerance crime system. In words this system is quite good because after some time the people of a country will fear their leaders and law will not be needed anymore or they could overrun the government. The only problem with this system is that the leaders made laws that would benefit themselves not the people. Therefor it was really just a system to get things that the rulers wanted and in my opinion too harsh of a system for a people to handle.

Chapter 12: Racial Minorites and the Law

If I was to reflect back to this chapter I would have to say that even though racial discrimination in the law has lessened over a long period of time it still exists and is a long way away from being solved. Some thing that really amazed me was the Dred Scott case. How could someone live in a free state for so long and still be considered a slave. I know that slaves were considered property at that time, but in free states shouldn't they revert back to humans. Many products change their orientation when they go from one country to another such as gum is illegal in some countries, but not ours. If we go by that logic if a slave goes from the south to the north they should have automatically become free.

The slaves were freed with the emancipation proclamation, but for a great number of years and even today they are discriminated against. However, I believe that discrimination has lessened over the years because of the work of the people of this nation. African Americans choose not to take the discrimination, so they stood up and made the government give them their rights. A lot of the changes though actually came because of court cases such as Smith v. Allwright in 1944 which made it so states could not deny black people the right to vote. This case started a chain of other cases that gave black people a lot of the rights they have today. I was really amazed by how just one case can start something so big and I really wish it could happen more often.

If you would like to know more about how African Americans gained their rights please watch Martin Luther King's speech "I have a dream". The speech can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk.

Chapter 11: Woman and the Law

If I was to reflect upon this chapter I would have to say that women would have to be the most under protect class in the world. Black men even received rights before women did and I find that quite disturbing. However, over time women started to gain more and more rights, but they are not yet equal to anyone else in our society. Most if not all governments in the world are still patriarchy's or dominated by males. I do have an opinion on women being equal though. I believe that women should not be equal for a number of reason. First of which is that women physically are not equal to men therefor in specific jobs males should be payed more based on their strength. Second, women are the sole producers of children. A woman should not be payed less nor should she be fired from work for missing any type of work because of the pregnancy. Some say this is unfair, but when it comes down to it without women the human race would die out.

One thing that should really change is that men and women should be treated equally in the eyes of the law. In old England if a man killed his wife he would be hung and if a woman killed her husband it would be considered treason. This is unfair and in my opinion men and women should get the same charge. Even thought they are physically different men and women have the same mental capability's.

In concluding this blog I have one last thing to say. Men and women should be treated equally in some aspects of life, but really I do not believe that they will ever be fully equal just because of the nature of the human race.

Chapter 9: The law and Social Control

I found out from this chapter that one punishment of a criminal can have a ripple effect on society. Every time I saw a person get pulled over I never really realized that I slowed my car for the rest of my drive home and for the rest of that week I never really went over the speed limit. The criminal being arrested was a direct formal type of social control while me slowing my driving the rest of week was a more indirect formal social control. In my opinion if the police showed more punishments of criminals then society would be more deterred to commit crimes.

I also learned quite a bit about plea bargaining and am completely against it. What made me against it was Bordenkircher v. Hays. If Hays plea bargained he would have only got five years in prison. However, he still wanted to go with a trial and the prosecutor found a way to give him life in prison. This is ridiculous. Just because someone wants a fair trial does not mean he should be punished more for it. As Americans we have the right to a free trial and anything that can hinder that should exist.

Chapter 8: Juvenile Justice

In my opinion the juvenile justice system should be more strict.I believe that at the age of 10 most if not all juveniles know what is right and wrong in the world. They should get the same punishment as adults do, but should be separated from adults. They should be separated because if they were to be put in the same prison with adults they would be torn apart. However, I do agree with Roper v Simmons that the death penalty should not apply to minors. Minors have so much more time to live than adults do and have more time to change. However, they should still have to serve time in a prison of their own where they can get rehabilitation.

Juvenile's should also not get more time in prison than their adult counterparts. One of the cases that really unnerved me was the case about the teenager that made lewd remarks to a woman over the phone. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison because of this while if he was an adult he would have only had to pay 5-50 dollars and go to jail for around 60 days. The juvenile should have just had the same exact charge or perhaps less because of their raging hormones during the teenage years.

Chapter 7: Civil and Administrative Law

I found the part about tort reform extremely interesting. I still thought that the number of tort cases was still increasing since 2000. However, I found out from this section that judges are actually starting to throw out these ridiculous cases of people trying to sue just to get money. A great example of this is the McDonald's case where someone spilled hot coffee on themselves and sued McDonald's for an enormous amount of money. First of all any normal human can feel that the coffee is really hot by just holding the cup. Second, she spilled the coffee on her self. This case should have been thrown out just because of those two reasons, but it actually went threw and the woman earned 640,000 dollars. This is ridiculous because even if she did need skin grafts the costs would only be around 50,000 dollars. I was happy to see that now a days these types of cases are thrown out and every year the number of tort cases lowers. I am guessing it was just a fad that is starting to die out.

I also found adverse possession interesting. If you can openly use someones property for over seven years then you can make it your property. When I read this I thought it was ridiculous at first, but really when you think about it its pretty reasonable. let me explain this more. If a piece of owned land is left and never used for seven years then it is a waste of that land. Business could be set up on that land or you could grow something on that land. In my opinion if someone chooses to waste their land like this then the land should be taken away. However it should only apply to land and not property. If you borrow something for seven years it should not become yours. The owner of the item could just have forgotten it, but with land you really cant forget you have it.