Assignment:
1. Briefly describe the major legal systems. Evaluate each of them from your personal perspective.
2. The Romano Germanic legal system, Common law system, Socialist legal system, and the Islamic legal system.
3. What is law? How would you define law? You are not bound by the definitions in the book.
4. Review of Functions and Dysfunctions of the law. Relate and discuss one or two examples of experience(s) that might relate to those functions and/or dysfunctions.
5. How does the social environment of the various theorists discussed affect their view of law in society? No advance, political or scientific, occurs in a vacuum!
6. How has the development of societies mirrored the development of law? Or is it the other way around?
7. Police "discretion" has been both critisized and praised. Why? What is it? Discuss some of the advantages and disadvntages of police discretion. Are there alternatives?
8. More than 85% of all criminal prosections end with a "bargained" plea of "guilty." Why? Evaluate the logic of this phenomenon. Why not require a trial in all cases?
9. About 80% of all jury trial occur in the United States. Other sources claim a higher percentage. Wold population exceeds 6 billion. The poulation of the U.S. is about 300 million. Why do 80% of the trial ocur in a country holding only 5% of the world's population? Is this a good thing?
10. Evaluate the relative merits of Public Opinion and Interest groups in the law making process.
11. "Over the years there has been a steady increase in Judicial Lawmaking in the United States'' Evaluate the role of Judicial Law Making in our 21st Century America.