Read Chapter 1, “Law: The Legal Battlefield,” in your textbook, Criminal Courts: Structure, Process, and Issues.
Instructions
Write a 7 page paper in which you do the following:
Explain the difference in informal and formal social controls, and examine the major effects of both on the legal system overall.
Identify the significance of the three stages of the evolution of disputes: naming, blaming, and claiming discussed within Chapter 1, and address the impact that each of the stages has on the formal criminal judicial process. Explain the answer.
Discuss the essential ways in which the law effectuates social change in American society through judicial activism. Provide a rationale for the response.
Examine the overall importance of both substantive law and procedural law and identify the differences between the two. Suggest three ways in which these two types of laws can protect both individual rights and social order. Discuss the invaluable aspects of substantive and procedural law in keeping the adversarial system in balance while protecting individual rights and social order. Justify the response.
Analyze the key differences between criminal law, civil law, and administrative law. Discuss the role of each when criminal and administrative law or civil and administrative law intersect in the litigation process. Propose two ways in which these three types of laws protect individual rights and social order. Justify the response.
Review the three functions of law. Explain the essential manner in which the law overall ensures the existence of adequate order, provides resolutions to conflicts, and protects civil liberties (for example, freedom of thought, belief, expression, and assembly; protection against unreasonable searches and seizures; and provisions for a court hearing prior to government taking of property) as set forth in the U.S. Constitution.
Debate whether or not social controls, as a function of law, play a fundamentally positive/creative role or negative/restrictive role in the development of modern American law. Provide a rationale for the response.