health care policies week 2

Chapter 3:

Law and the Legal System

Chapter Overview

• Considers the role law plays in everyday life

• Defines law and describes its multiple sources

• Discusses several key features of the legal

system, including the separation of

government powers, federalism, the role of

courts, and due process

The Role of Law

• Law’s importance in U.S. stems from its primary

purpose: to function as the main tool with which we

organize ourselves as an advanced, democratic

society

• A society as sprawling and complex as ours needs

formal, enforceable rules of law to provide a measure

of control

The Role of Law

• The main way the law governs the many kinds of

relationships in society is to recognize and establish

enforceable legal rights and to create the institutions

necessary to define and enforce them

• A legal right denotes a power or privilege that has

been guaranteed to an individual under the law, not

merely something that is claimed as an interest or

something that is a matter of governmental discretion

Defining Law

• Think of “law” not just as words on a page, but

as the many interacting parts that are involved

in drafting those words in the first place, and in

bringing them to life once they have been

enacted as laws

• Thus, consider “law” as a system by which

rules are created, disseminated, enforced,

violated, disputed, interpreted, applied,

revised, etc.

Sources of Law

• Regardless of how “law” is defined, at the core

of the legal system lays a body of enforceable

written rules:

— Constitutions

— Statues

— Regulations

— Common law/case law

Key Features of the Legal System:

Separation of Powers

• The legal doctrine that supports the

arrangement of shared governance

• To guard against a concentration of political

power, governmental powers and

responsibilities are divided among three

separate, co-equal branches

• Includes concept of “checks and balances”

Key Features of the Legal System:

Federalism

• Refers to the allocation of Federal and State

legal authority

• Under the Constitution, the federal government

is one of limited powers, while the states more

or less retain all powers not expressly left

exclusively to the federal government

Key Features of the Legal System: The

Special Role of Courts

• Courts have responsibility to determine what

the Constitution means, permits, and prohibits.

• Courts protect and enforce individual legal

rights, determine whether the political

branches of government have violated the

Constitution, and maintain stability in the law

through the application of legal precedent