A modern and up-to-date description of issues related to the English Legal system as it stands nowadays.

1. Jesús Lorenzo Vieites
The UK Legal System
A SERIES OF GRAPHIC SKETCHES TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE UK LEGAL
SYSTEM IS STRUCTURED NOWADAYS.
Based on G. Slapper & D. Kelly’s The English Legal System, 11th ed.

2. Law is a formal mechanism of social control.
If we want to tackle satisfactorily the study of the
legal system we must always bear in mind that this
study is not merely learning legal rules and acts but
considering the English legal system as a social
institution of fundamental importance.
What relationship exists between law and morality?, or just put it in another way,
can laws be detached from moral arguments?
It goes without saying that there is not an easy answer; best approach seems to treat both
abstract concepts from an ideological viewpoint as they both are manifestations of particular
social and economic relationships which they also are trying to explain and justify.

3. At first sight it might appear that law and morality are inextricably linked: there appears to be a rather similar use
of concepts in both and, what is more worth mentioning, there also seems to exist an “invisible” relationship in
terms of rights and duties and much of law’s ideological justification comes from the claim that it is essentially
moral.
However, opinion about this relationship between law and morality is reflected in two schools of thought:
 Natural law approach  The legal positivists approach
Law must be moral in order to be law, therefore, Law has no neccessary basis in morality and
“immoral” law is a contradiction in terms. Natural it is simply imposible to assess law in terms of
lawyers usually base their ideas of law on underlying morality.
religious beliefs and texts which are “sacrosanct”

4. What about the morality of the law maker?
Judges have the power not just of make and mould law but , and this
is really relevant to legal issues in general, but to make and mould law
in line with their own ideological values, that is to say, their attitudes,
prejudices, own personal views, in other words, their moralities.
So, what can law do about this unsolvable problem? Not much.
Why is this so? Simply, because morality in itself constitutes an external
environment which interacts with the lawmaking process due to the
fact that laws tend to be based on value-loaded information which
percolates to the lawmakers. This amount of information is, so as to
say, running in our ancestral past as human beings. We can even add
that the lawmakers’ own individual values do influence –although we
might agreed that in most cases, unintentionally- upon the process of
lawmaking.

5. and
Sys tems
mo n Law Systems: 2. Com
1. Com ivil Law ms.
l syste e Two his mon Law
C t lega toric and
istinc llow th united al sources o Equity:
wo d Wales fo stem in the E f
nglish claw, now
ribe t &
Desc England on Law sy ourts.
m
Co m
Categorising law
4. Private Law and Public Law:
3. Common Law and Statute: Private law regulates the
relationship between ordinary
Common Law = judge-made; citizens, while public law is
Statute = enacted by Parliament. addressed to public bodies.
5. Civil Law and Criminal Law:
Civil law regulates disputes
between individuals, while
criminal law allows the State to
regulate the behaviour of citizens.

6. 1. Common Law & Civil Law
The use of the term “common law” refers to all those The term “civil law” refers to all other jurisdictions that
legal systems that have adopted the historic English have adopted the European continental system of law
legal system: the US and former Commomwealth derived basically from ancient Roman law, but owing
countries much to the Germanic tradition.
 Codified body of general abstract
 Case-centred principles which control the exercise
 Judge-centred of judicial discretion

7. 1. Common Law & Equity
The terms refer to a particular division within the English legal system
It emerged as the product of a particular struggle for political power. Prior to the Norman Conquest of 1066 there was no
unitary legal system in England. The emerge of the common law represents the imposition of such a unitary system under
the auspices and control of a centralised power in the form of a sovereign King.
By the end of the XIIIth cent, the central authority had established its precedent at least partly through the establishment
of the common law.
Originally, courts had been no more than an y
adjunct to the Curia Regis or King’s Council. quit
Gradually, however, the common law courts dE
di
w
began to take on a distinct institutional existence
t ho op?
in the form of:
, bu vel
ine st de
f ir
t’s f
 The Courts of the Exchequer
T ha
 Common Pleas
 King’s Bench

8. Equity So, plaintiffs who could not get Access to the three
common law courts (the Court of the Exchequer, the
Common Pleas court and the King’s Bench) might
Refusal to respond satisfactorily in a most effective and directly appeal to
quick way to queries raised by the citizens in the
previously mentioned courts lead to a series of injustices
not properly dealt with in those courts and,
consequently, a new need to remedy those injustices the king,
was felt to be neccessary; this perceived weakness in the
common law system was the source of the establishment
of equity.
who will pass the pleas for consideration and
decision to
the setting up of new Equity courts to deliver
“equitable” or “fair”decisions in cases that the
common law courts declined to deal with. The Lord Chancellor, who acted as the King’s
conscience.
As the common law courts became more
formalistic and more inaccesible, pleas to the
Chjancellor increased with the consequence of
By way of the Judicature Acts 1873-75 the
division between the common law courts and
the Courts of Equity reached its end.

9. 3. Common Law & Statute Law
The common law here refers to the substantive
Statute law, on the other hand, refers to the law
law and procedural rules that have been
that has been created by Parliament in the form of
created by the judiciary through the decisions in
legislation.
the cases they have heard.
4. Private Law & Public Law
Public law is the main concerned of the
Private law is deals with relations between State as it is a participant in the legal
individuals with which the State is not issues. The State and the citizens are
directly concerned nor involved in. interrelated.

10. 5. Civil Law & Criminal Law
It is a form of private law and involves the relationships
between individuals. It helps to facilitate the interaction
It is an aspecto of public law and relates to conduct
between individual citizens and the law.
which the State considers with disapproval and which it
By way of Civil law the citizens can assert claims against
seeks to control and/or eradicate.
others and have those rights adjudicated and
enforced.
 It settles disputes between individuals
 The State enforces compliance of the law
 It provides remedies
 It is not concerned with punishment as such
 Criminal cases are brought by the State in
 A claimant sues or brings a claim against a the name of the Crown (and cases are
reported in the form of Regina v….)
defendant
 A prosecutor prosecutes a defendant /the
accused)

11. 5. Civil Law & Criminal Law
In distinguishing between criminal and civil actions, it has to be remembered that the same event
may give rise to both.
A crucial distinction between criminal and civil law is the level of proof required in the different types
of cases.
The prosecution is required to prove that the
The degree of prove is much lower and has only
defendant is guilty beyond reasonable
to be on the balance of probabilities.
doubt
den of the
b ur
The need for the person making an
is t he o f ? allegation, be it the prosecution in a
What p ro
criminal case or the claimant in a civil
case, to prove the facts of the case

12. In certain circumstances, once the prosecution/claimant has demonstrated
certain facts, the burden of proof may shift to the defendant/respondent to
provide evidence to prove their lack of culpability. The reverse burden of proof
may be either legal or evidential, which in practice indicates the degree of
evidence they have to provide in order to meet the burden they are under.
c e?
en
of f Those situations in which distinction
b rid between civil & criminal responsibilities
a hy are blurred; that is to say, situations in
t ’s
which a court awards a civil order
ha
against an individual, but with the
W attached sanction that any breach of
the order will be subject to punishment
as a criminal offence.

13. It should not be forgotten that although prosecution of criminal offences is usually the prerrogative
of the State, it remains open to the private individual to initiate a private prosecution in relation to a
crime offence. Even in the private prosecution, the test of the burden of the proof remains the
criminal one requiring the facts to be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
What possible approaches are there to the study of law?
Various posible approaches, each of which has its own
implications for how law is understood, located and studied.
The traditional or formalistic (also The contextualist approach:
Law as a social phenomenon which operates
called “the black letter” approach: within a social context.
Concerned with establishing a knowledge of
the specific legal rules that regulate social
activity. The critical/theoretical approach:
Study centred on legal issues without Law in context is an object of study and the
reference to the social activity to which the context within which law functions is itself an
legal rules are applied. object of study too.

14. Differences between Criminal and Civil law

15. This work has
been a compilation
of several
handbooks on
current English
legal system being
carried out by
Jesús Lorenzo
Vieites, being the
main one The
English Legal
System, by G.
Slapper and D.
Kelly
Málaga, Christmas
Eve, 2012