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General overview on American legal system

Law of the United States was originally derived from the common law system of English. The supreme Law of the land is the United States Constitution, and under this constitution, congress enacts many laws and treaties. Under the supremacy clause, constitution has given wide powers to congress to make laws and to enact them.

In the United States, the law is derived from mainly four sources. Constitutional law, Administrative law, Statues and common law. Among these the most important source of law is the Constitutional law. For example, if congress enacts a law which is contrary to the Constitutional law then the court can invalidate it as unconstitutional. Treaties are also considered as sources of law. If the congress does not interfere with a court rule, then it becomes a law. Court rules are framed by judicial conference. This conference are made by advisory committee consisted of judges, scholars and person’s specialized in particular branch of law. Some of the court rules are Federal rule of civil procedure, Federal rule of criminal procedure etc.

Common law is also an important source of law. The principle behind why courts refer to case laws when there is no enacted laws is stare decisis. The rule helps the court to look back to past cases for deciding future matters. It allows the court to decide the present matter as decided in past.

State laws, each state is separate from the other and has its own sovereign powers.
Fifty states have their own state constitutions and state governments, state enacts their own laws and the federal courts cannot extend its jurisdiction to interfere in state matters. They retain plenary powers to make laws covering anything not preempted by federal constitution.
State Constitutions delegated its law making power to number of agencies, public bodies and other governmental departments in some particular matters. All states constitution, statutes and administrative laws are subject to judicial interpretation by the court like the Federal.

Finally American citizens are bound by a number of federal and state laws, which they themselves find it difficult to trace out under which geographical location they fall to determine a case. Moreover efforts are still going on to codify a uniform state law, which is not yet achieved.

Author:RajadasKurias
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