American law is based on the English system of Common law. This could be related to culture diffusion. Which is the movement from one culture to another. Also the English legal system and the American Legal System are forms of conflict resolution.

English legal system has a structure that is similar to the American system. The English court system is composed of both criminal and civil law. Over both courts is the Supreme Court. There are three courts under that fall under the criminal court. Those are court of appeal, crown court, and magistrates courts. Courts of appeal, much like the United States court, only have appellate jurisdiction. The Crown court have both appellate and original jurisdiction. Magistrates Courts only have original jurisdiction. The civil system varies in some ways from the criminal court.

The civil court has three court’s, besides the Supreme Court, that handle cases. The court of appeals have appellate jurisdiction. The High Court of Justice (Queen’s Bench, Chancery, and Family) has appellate and original jurisdiction. At the bottom is the County Courts which only have original jurisdiction.

Statutes in England have some similarities to American Statues. Statutes were organized originally by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. This office is now known as the Public General Acts and General Synod Measure. Records are compiled every year. These records contain current laws and statues from 1866 to 1951. Some statute books go back further.

Statutes in Force contain statues organized by subject order and amendments. This book has statues that date back to the 1235 to 1992. Current statues are not found in this book , however this book is good for historical research. Current statues can be found in text and on the web.

One current publication of English statutes is Halsbury’s Statues of England and Wales. This document contains records of current statutes and is in its fourth publishing. English law can also be found on various online data bases. Two of the common online sources are Westlaw and LexisNexis. Statues can also be found also on publications that are exclusive to the United Kingdom.

Primary and secondary statutes passed since 1988 are found on the Office of Public Sector Information. Recent statutes and amendment to statutes can be found on the UK Statue Law Database (SLD). The SLD contains statues from the early nineties.

Statutes are not always made directly by Parliament in England. The authority to make statutes can be transferred to another party if Parliament wishes to. The rules that are made by other authority are have the same power as law and are known as statutory instruments. Statutory Instruments are published yearly by Halsbury’s Statutory Instruments. These laws summaries can also be found in Current law and LexisNexis. English law is also derived from case law.

English case law has been in effect since 1865. Case law can be found in Law Reports. Law report’s contain four types of cases. The cases those reports contain is Appeal Cases, Queen’s Bench Division, Chancery Division, and Family Division. Behind both the court and police system is the very root of all power. That power is vested in the English government.

I found this infomation at http://www.law.duke.edu/lib/researchguides/english