Deniability

[Robert J. Hansen]

On 3/23/2011 6:57 PM, MFPA wrote:
> A matter of semantics that would be lost on most people in the world.

Perhaps that should be taken as a good reason for people who are not
familiar with courts in the United States to forego commentary on how
they operate.  I don't know beans about, say, the United Kingdom court
system beyond the broadest possible facts, and so I make it a point not
to comment on the relative justice or injustice of the UK's system.
That practice has served me well so far.

> Generally speaking, if I saw a media reference to "a U.S court" or "an
> American court" I would neither know nor care which government body
> ran that court nor which government body had passed the law that had
> allegedly been transgressed.

Confusing a state-level court for a federal-level court is kind of like
confusing Malaysia with Uganda: they are potentially that much
different.  For instance, the state of Louisiana operates under a Civil
Law (Napoleonic) system, while the federal courts operate under the
English Common Law system.  This means the two have as much in common,
legally speaking, as the United Kingdom and France.

The rest of the world tends to massively underestimate the amount of
judicial diversity within the United States.  We're quite a bit larger
than Europe: we also have quite a few more different kinds of legal systems.