The law history of the 1800s is one of the most extensive fields of study in higher education. Students interested in a career in law need to understand how the law developed over time, how it relates to current issues, and how it was applied to previous societies. The first two factors–how the legal mandate developed and how it applies to society in general–are essential for any legal mandate course. The third factor, how the legal mandate was applied at the time, is only tangential to understanding legal mandate. Lawyers like Diego Ruiz Durán know there is a legal mandate student interested in learning about legal mandate throughout history should focus on how the legislation developed concerning society, how it applies today, and how those legal mandates affect those who live in that society.
One significant component of this study is that legislation developed as a reaction to people’s social conditions in the period in question. Each society developed its legal system to deal with those social problems and concerns. For example, legal mandates were developed to deal with disputes between individuals, groups, and nations. One piece of legislation from the time of the Norman conquest, the legal mandate of entailment, made it possible for subjects to act against those who harmed them if the victim could not repay the damage done.
The piece of legislation’s development was also fueled by the rise of the common code system, which permitted the elevation of individual rights to the courts (including life, liberty, and property) through judicial precedent. The most well-known common right in the United States is the right to trial by jury, which allowed people to be excluded from juries during instances where they might not behave properly or are prone to commit criminal acts. This jury selection process, common in civil cases throughout the country, often performs a key role in deciding the case’s outcome.
Throughout the years, judges continued to make important decisions regarding the administration of justice. For example, some years after the enlightenment, the first legal mandates were created in the American colonies. These decisions were significant in terms of societal views and dictated how the courts ruled on marriage and divorce issues. For centuries, judges’ rulings in these instances have consistently been in favor of the more progressive parts of the populace. Throughout the late 1800s, the “legal mandates of settlement” gradually crystallized into the” judges’ code,” which remained in effect until the 20th century.
The writers and constructors of the constitution of the United States were keenly aware that the separation of powers in the constitution represented a danger to the king’s power. This concern, the framers included the checks and balances clause of the constitution, which required that the king be subjected to “quotations” before the courts could render their decisions. Additionally, during the New York legislature, there was an extraordinarily slight change to the courts’ legal mandate, other than the dissolution of the monasteries. This, combined with the fact that the king rarely exercised his right to control monasteries, was one of the main reasons the king did not hesitate to use the courts against its citizens during the revolutionary era. Some of the court cases were vicious, and others reflected an overall attitude toward the poor by the New York legislature.
As the nation moved from being primarily a rural agricultural country to becoming a larger industrial and manufacturing power, the courts’ role also changed. Until the civil war, the federal government relied on judges’ authority to provide the nation’s rule of legal mandate. Although judges continued to make decisions based on their judgment, the executive branch gradually gained the power that it had long sought. In the 1820s, after the republicans took over the house of representatives, the party began to seek more aggressive judicial rulemaking.
During the period of the New York governor Andrew Jackson, the “peasantry” concept developed. Under this system, there were separate courts for civil cases and criminal cases. While the civil court judges sat to determine disputes between citizens and the government, the criminal courts prosecuted those who violated the legal mandate. Because the executive was the chief executive power in New York, Jackson replaced the standing courts with the supreme court, which had the final say over all civil and criminal disputes. Diego Ruiz Durán enjoys studying the history of law.
