Knowledge | Court | Law
Basic Functions of a Court
Settlement, interpretation and expectation
We’re gonna look at the basics of a system that affects all our lives:
The Law
And no, we’re not going to be talking about the laws of thermodynamics. That’s Mr. Science. Though we will be bringing the heat, ha! The law affects you even if you never committed a crime because there’s so much more to the legal system than just criminal justice, and even though we’re going to focus mainly on courts, the law is everywhere.
If you don’t believe me, read the user license on your next new piece of software, or if you fly anywhere read the back of your plane ticket. Hopefully won’t be more entertaining than what you’re watching now, but that’s examples of the law.
Settle disputes
In general, courts have three basic functions, only one of which you probably learned about in your history class. The first thing that courts do is settle disputes.
In pre-modern history (which is way easier to understand than post-modern history), kings performed this function, but as states got bigger and more powerful it became much easier to have specialized officials decide important issues like who owned the fox you caught on someone else’s land. Or what does the fox say, which was disputed a lot back then.
Interpret the laws
The second thing the courts do is probably the one you heard about in school, or on television, or perhaps while studying for the standardized test, and that’s interpret the laws. This becomes increasingly important when you actually try to read laws, or when you realize that legislators are often not as they might be when writing laws in the first place. Take a look at the Affordable Care Act. There are a few famous careless errors in that.
Expectation for future actions
Finally courts create expectations for future actions. This is very important if you want to do business with someone. If you know that you’ll be punished for cheating a potential business client, you’re less likely to do it. Still you might, ’cause there are a lot of jerks out there who would.
Are you one of them? Don’t be! At the same time if you know that people will be punished for cheating you, you’re more likely to do business. And it’s courts that create the expectation that business will be conducted fairly. Interpreting the laws can help this too, since the interpretations are public and they set expectations that everyone can understand and know what the law means and how it applies and then world peace.
No more law breaking ever. The first thing to remember about courts in the U.S. is that most legal action, if it occurs in court at all, occurs in state court. And if it occurs at night, it occurs in Night Court.
