Lis Pendens

Dear Readers,

Hello again! I’m glad you’ve come back for the third part of this series. This time I think we’ll take a quick look at a very important document that established the backbone of our government as we know it today. I am, of course, talking about the United States Constitution.

The U.S. Constitution

For those of you that may have forgotten; the constitution came into effect in 1789 and it established the rules and separate powers of the three branches of federal government. We have a legislature, congress, an executive branch, lead by the President, and a judicial branch headed by the United States Supreme Court. There are checks and balances in place that prevent any one branch from having too much power.

As the law of the land, it establishes the fundamental laws and, more importantly, the guaranteed certain basic rights of its citizens. What this means is that no power, not even the government itself, can violate the basic rights granted by the U.S. Constitution. This is a very big deal because the government is forced to cooperate with its population to find the best possible solutions while stepping on the least amount of toes.

The job of defining the scope and application of the Constitution has been assigned to the Supreme Court in the historic case of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803). The Supreme Court’s ruling answered a very important question; Does the Supreme Court have the authority to review acts of Congress and determine whether they are unconstitutional and therefore void?

“It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.” – Marbury v. Madison. This means that any issues that are constitutionally questionable are answered by the Supreme Court. A perfect example of this exercise of power is in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). The case brought to the Supreme Court the issue of whether segregation was constitutional or if violated the basic rights provided by the 14th Amendment.

If you want to learn more, or if you want to actually see the constitution then this Link will take you to the official site.

Dear Readers,

Well, the semester is slowly coming to an end and I wanted to discuss what’s coming up for the next semester of my legal journey. I know that this blog hasn’t covered the earlier classes, but eventually I hope to get that knocked out so you can get a full picture of my time here.

This semester I took only two law classes, Real Estate Law and Legal Research. I would have taken more but the pre-requirement for a majority of the classes was Legal Research.

In Real Estate Law we looked at how the law interacts with real property. More specifically; the buying, selling, and owning of real property. This class started off a little slow with some annoying legal concepts of different types of real property ownership but, eventually, it picked up. Pretty soon we started looking at how everything came together in the contracts that dictate the terms of a sale and I found myself greatly enjoying that aspect of the law. Contracts of sale are not controlled by the law, they are only enforced by the law if and when the need arises. Once we established how everything is connected, it all came together for me and I found it quite interesting.

Legal Research, on the other hand, was a little more troublesome. We focused on the proper methods of citing cases and doing the legal research that is required of my chosen profession. It is designed to be straight forward and logical but until you are in that mindset, it just feels daunting and like your in way over your head. Ultimately, I managed to figure out how to go about doing the research and while it may be time consuming or tedious there is just something about it that I enjoy.

Next semester should see an increase in the workload. I will be taking; Estates, Wills and Trusts, Family Law, Legal Research II, Law through Literature and Business Organization. I’ll keep you guys posted on my progress!

Dear Readers,

The last post of this series quickly glanced at the definition of the law itself and a very brief look at criminal law. As this blog evolves and my writing improves I hope to try out a few different writing styles before settling on the most comfortable one.

What this means for you is that you might see some posts that cover more information than others, at least until I manage to find that perfect median between boring you to death and informing you. This post will cover only one type of law, as opposed to multiples. I would greatly appreciate any comments about how much information you guy are comfortable reading each post.

Torts Law

Tort is a funny word so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it comes from the Latin and it translates to “wrong”. Last post we discussed that criminal law is when the government prosecutes an individual for an action that is classified as a crime. The remedy that the prosecution seeks is punishment of an individual by taking away their fundamental rights of freedom. In laymen terms this means that if you break the law, you gotta do time until you have paid your debt to society. While paying society back is fine and dandy, what happens to the individuals who were affected by your actions? Do they not have any avenue of seeking compensation for wrongs committed against them?

Enter torts law, often referred to as civil proceedings or civil law. The goal of tort law is to provide relief to people who have been harmed by the actions of another by shifting the cost of the damages to the individual that committed the action. It all might sound great on paper, but in order to accurately provide relief there are some requirements that must be met. These requirements can be broken down into three elements that must be established in every tort action.

First, the person that suffered the harm (known as the plaintiff) must establish that the wrongdoer (defendant) was under a legal duty to act in a particular fashion. Secondly, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the defendant breached this duty by failing to act or not act in a particular fashion. Third, the plaintiff must prove that he suffered injury or loss as a direct result of the defendant’s action or lack of an action. Time for a real world example. Let’s say that a doctor prescribes a handful of medication without ensuring that there is no conflict with the drugs and it causes you to develop some form of malady. The doctors failure to act in the full capacity that is required of his/her profession is sufficient to bring a lawsuit against them. This example is known as negligence, or negligent behavior.

Without these requirements, we would be able to sue any one for just about any reason. Look at me the wrong way? I’ll sue you for causing me emotional distress!

Dear Readers,

I have decided to start off by going into the different branches of law and providing a brief description the subject matter. Hopefully, you can get a better idea of how much the law affects your day to day life without you ever realizing it. Now, this list is quite exhaustive so I’ll be tackling it in parts, with this being the first one. A quick disclaimer; the laws discussed below confine themselves to the United States and New York unless otherwise stated.

What is Law?

Before we get too ahead of ourselves; we must first establish what it is we’re even discussing here. This is a fundamentally difficult question to answer because there is simply no one answer that can accurately describe the idea of law. I would argue that the law is the instrument through which society establishes the norms that govern our everyday life. Let’s take an everyday action as an example; You’re waiting to cross the street but you notice that the light says ‘don’t walk’, so you wait until the light changes (or until the cars start going slower than you can walk in New York). That is something most of us do all the time without a seconds notice. Without the laws and regulations that manage traffic in place, we would live in a very different place.

Criminal Law

I figured it would be best that I start off with every bodies favorite family of law; Criminal law. Criminal law, as most of you know already, is the family of law in which a person(s) is/are prosecuted by the government for an act that has been classified as a crime. Punishment is the remedy to the criminal act, an important fact that is often left out of prime-time television. Crimes are usually categorized as felonies or misdemeanors based on their nature and the maximum punishment that can be imposed. A felony involves serious misconduct that is punishable by death or by imprisonment for more than one year.

Generally, two elements are required in order to find a person guilty of a crime: an overt criminal act and criminal intent. An overt act means that the defendant’s action was done on purpose and it is something that is prohibited by law, and they do not need to know that it was against the law at all.  Criminal intent is a bit more difficult to truly explain but the textbook definition would be a little something like; Intent refers to the mental state of mind at the time that the action took place.

Let’s take another real world example; You’re playing baseball with some friends and you lose grip of the bat mid-swing, which flies and hits the pitcher straight on the head, killing him instantly (you’ve been working out). From the facts, it sounds like it was just an odd accident and not some devious criminal homicide.

Now, using the same tools as before, a baseball bat and a friend, lets change the scene a bit. You were playing baseball with some friends, but had to cut it short due to a tragic loss of a pitcher, and are on your way home when you see an old “friend”, the one that stole your dog  and had it put down (only a monster could do that). You, still upset by this “friends” actions, decided to introduce their head to the Louisville slugger and so you threw it and, with surprising accuracy, managed to kill your “friend”. Needless to say, the intent that you exhibited in both examples was quite different and it should be fairly obvious that in the second example the desire to hurt your “friend” is what made the factually similar incident a crime.

It isn’t always quite that obvious, which is exactly why it makes for great television. Next update will cover Civil Law and perhaps some of the constitution. Thanks for reading.

-Fernando

Dear Readers,

For the few of you out there, I’ve updated my About page. It now includes; a blurb about me and I also posted my mission statement directly below said blurb.

I’ll have some more stuff posted soon for you guys, hopefully a bit more interesting. Thanks for coming by.

-Fernando

Hello World! This is just a quick trail run before we begin posting real work.