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.

Chapter 6 the criminal procedure

Something that really bugged me about the criminal procedure is the consent rule when it comes to searches. Generally any police officer could say that they need to search your car and as long as you say ok their aloud to search it as much as they want unless you tell them to stop. However, most regular people don't know that police officers are not allowed to search your car unless if you give them permission and really any normal person isn't going to tell a police office to stop searching their car. In my opinion police officers shouldn't really be able to search your car unless your felon or if they have a warrant. The consent rule in my eyes is just a way for the police to trick you in giving up your right against self incrimination.

Another thing that really bothers me is the vagueness of the reasonableness clause. If an officer finds a reasonable cause along with an exigent circumstance then they are allowed to search your home without a warrant. However the reasonable cause could be something as small as someone telling the officer that I had a gun and was threatening to kill someone. With just those words the officer would get his reasonable cause and an exigent circumstance, so he could just search my home based off some words someone said. In my opinion an exigent circumstance should only be allowed if the officer knows for a fact that someone is in danger or if evidence is going to be destroyed.

Criminal Law

This is perhaps the best chapter I have read in this whole book. Mostly because of all the examples they give in it. I like how in order to prove a crime you have to go through such a long process. There has to be physical element such as someone stabbing another person. A mental element such as someone wanting to stab a person. Concurrence which means the thought of stabbing someone led to the actually act of stabbing someone. Cause the act of stabbing someone was actually the cause of the persons death. Finally result which is the dead body of the person that got stabbed. The process being this through makes it so that the person that actually committed the crime is guilty or not.
I also found the specific crimes section of this chapter extremely amusing. Such as how some one can be charged with an incomplete crime. I believe this is ridiculous because if someone doesn't commit a crime why should they be charged. If someone is about to shatter a window with a hammer to steal something and has a change of heart and stops don't they have the right to not be arrested. I do believe that conspiracy should be a crime as long as the plans to do the crime are extremely detailed. They should at least have times and dates of the crimes they are going to commit because just saying your going to do a crime shouldn't count as conspiracy.

The federal and State Courts

I want to start this post with a picture of dog the bounty hunter because without him I may not have found much from this chapter interesting. Now if you can't guess what I am going to talk about bails. I could not believe how many types of bail we offered people. From third party contractors to the offering the criminal to pay 10% and then when they come back they get it back. When I thought of bail before this I thought you never got it back and it was just a fine every criminal had to pay to get out of jail, but in reality its a pretty good system to allow criminals to stay out of jail before their court trial comes up. This allows every criminal the chance to gather information and help for their trial before it happens.
I also found it interesting that court cases are basically like plays. Every person in the court has a defined role. The judges play the role of interpreting the law. The prosecutors are for trying to find if the defendant is guilty or not guilty and the defense attorney is their to give the defendant a fighting chance in being found not guilty. The witnesses are their to provide information to help the trial and the jury is their as members to support the society's decision if the defendant is guilty or not guilty. I like this because they have so many roles in a court to make sure the defendant is getting a fair trial.

Making law

The most I learned about in this chapter was the bill of rights. I didn't know that the government could put clauses in each individual amendment such as the warrant and responsible clauses of the fourth amendment. I believe that this is great because not one constitution or one bill of rights can always be correct in every situation. Law evolves over time and I also believe our bill of rights and constitution should evolve over time.
I also found that most laws come from court case decisions. Personally before this I thought that most laws were just created by the congress, but their actually created by judges. This makes it so the law system is flexible. If someone needs a law to protect their individual rights and it doesn't exist yet they have the chance to get it created.

Justice, law, and what they mean to me

Justice is probably one of the most broad terms in life. Justice could be anything to anyone. However, usually when one thinks of Justice they think about evil getting punished by good. Who is evil and who is good? You can never have one natural good and one natural evil there will always be someone else that pictures it differently. However, there are two distinct types of Justice: Distributive and Retributive. Distributive is when you give out punishment based on what crime they did such as theft they would make you pay for the item you stole or give it back. Retributive is basically eye for an eye justice. However, if retributive was always used society would never be able to grow because everyone would either have a missing eye, leg, hand, or foot and where would that get us.
The second part of the chapter about if law just existed or was it created is really up to the individual. Murder could be right for one person and wrong for another. However, you could say some things are always wrong because of what the victim feels. If the victim doesn't want to be murdered then the act of murder is always wrong. If the victim doesn't want to have something stolen from them then the act of theft is always wrong. This method can be used for quite a number of acts, so in reality some laws do naturally exist. So what about the laws that are created? Well every law that is not created for naturally evil deeds is created for the time that it started. If everyone is spitting chewing tobacco everywhere and it is dropping the quality of the town they live in then the people of the town will make the law that it is illegal to spit chewing tobacco on the ground. However, in our current time we have trashcans and ashtrays everywhere, so people aren't spitting on chewing tobacco on the ground and that law doesn't really apply anymore. Basically where im getting with this is that law evolves with time. Coming up I will be talking about how law is made.

What is Law?

This chapter was probably the chapter we had the most discussions in class and really all of the things in it can be taken a different way by anyone. The first thing we learned in the class was what was law. You could take the some of the book definitions such as legal documents setting forth rules governing a particular kind of activity or the collection of rules imposed by authority. However, does law have to be controlled by some sort of authority or could it just be something that just exists. If you think about it law is really just a set of rules enforced by someone or something. It doesn't just have to be one person or one group. It could be an entire civilization that enforces the law. Who creates law though? Does it naturally exist or did someone make a book of laws. I believe that some laws naturally exist inside people, but really law doesn't take form until its actually practiced in a society. Now what is a society? If you look at the picture above I would define this as society. These people all have similar beliefs and culture and are all commemorating an idea. Some say society it is a group of people who choose to live together, but really its more than that. I learned from this chapter that a society needs to at least share some similar characteristics, such as beliefs, values, norms, symbols, technology, or language. They don't have to share all of them, but really if they don't share any of them their just a group of people around each other not a society. Personally in my opinion the philosophical part of this chapter shouldn't be taken too literally. All of the theory's that were presented are all just opinions of the people who wrote them. I believe that everyone should just take their own belief on what law is rather than following others. Coming up I will discuss chapter two: law and justice and what they mean to me.