Read the next article and make comments on it. Who is to blame in the case? Entitle the text

A boy of 15 died in hospital after allegedly being attacked while trying to steal a car.

Detectives launched a murder inquiry following the death of Steven Doherty, who was dumped outside the hospital with severe head injuries three days ago.

Relatives were at his bedside when he lost his fight for life. He had been on a life-support machine since the attack.

Police were last night questioning thee men over the incident. A further three people, including a woman, were released from custody without charge.

Officers were called to University Hospital in Lewisham, South-East London, at around 4am on Bank Holiday Monday.

Steven is believed to have been left there by the occupants of a car, which then drove off.

Detectives are linking his injuries to an attempted theft of a car in New Cross, South-East London, about 35 minutes earlier. They are investigating claims that the teenager, who lived in the area, was punched, kicked and hit over the head with a crowbar (лом) after he was caught trying to steal the vehicle.

In the evening, groups of youths around Steven's age hang around outside a pub on the corner, cycling and walking in the middle of the road.

Speaking before Steven's death, a friend claimed the 15-year-old was hit on the head with a crowbar. The friend, who was in his late teens but refused to give his name, said Steven, was one of five or six friends who had gone out to steal a car.

“ He was trying to steal a car. He got caught. They chased him and hit him around the head with a crowbar,” he said.

“I don’t know bow many people were chasing them or that they were but when they realized what they'd done they dumped him at a hospital”.

Work in pairs. You are a policeman and your partner is a witness or you are a detective and your partner is one of Steven’s friends. Ask all possible questions.

 

Read for Enjoyment

 

 

Lawyer: "Now that you have won, will you tell me confidentially if you stole the money?"

Client: "Well, after hearing you talk in court yesterday, I am beginning to think I didn't."

 

UNIT 3

 

For Study

Vocabulary

· corrupt v – подкупать judicial corruption - взяточничество судей

corruption in/of/ blood - лишение гражданских прав лица, осужденного за совершение тяжкого преступления

e.g. In some countries it would not be difficult to corrupt police because of their wide powers.

· bias n - предубеждение, пристрастное отношение

to be biased against smb. - иметь предубеждение против кого-либо.

e.g. The rule against bias means the rule against departure from the standard of fair justice required of those who occupy judicial office.

· legislature n - законодательная власть

e.g. In the UK legislature consists of Parliament, i.e. the Crown, the House of Commons, and the House of Lords.

· judiciary n - судоустройство, судебная власть

e.g. The judiciary is a collective term for all judges. In the UK, the Sovereign is head of the judiciary.

· violence n – насилие

crimes of violence - преступления, связанные с насилием над личностью

e.g. Unlawful imprisonment means violence.

 

Supply the sentences with the missing words, given in brackets below.

(violence, judiciary, corrupt, legislature)

1) To... a person means to give or offer to a member, officer or a public body any reward.

2)... is the body having primary power to make written law.

3) To separate the roles of the legislature and... it was necessary to make laws that were clear and comprehensive.

4) In some countries law courts are political instruments used both to control theft and....

 

Reading Practice

 

Read the text and point out the main idea of continental system of law.

 

Continental Systems

1. Continental systems are sometimes known as codified legal systems. They have resulted from attempts by governments to produce a set of codes to govern every legal aspect of a citizen's life. Thus it was necessary for the legislators to speculate quite comprehensively about human behaviour rather than simply looking at previous cases. In codifying their legal systems, many countries have looked to the examples of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, whose legislators wanted to break with previous case law, which had often produced corrupt and biased judgments, and to supply new egalitarian social theories to the law. Nineteenth century Europe also saw the decline of several multi-ethnic empires and the rise of nationalism. The lawmakers of new nations sometimes wanted to show that the legal rights of their citizens originated in the state, not in local customs, and thus it was the state that was to make law, not the courts. In order to separate the roles of the legislature and judiciary, it was necessary to make laws that were clear and comprehensive. The model of the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church often influenced the lawmakers, but the most important models were the codes produced in the seventh century under the direction of the Roman Emperor Justinian. His aim had been to eliminate the confusion of centuries of inconsistent lawmaking by formulating a comprehensive system that would entirely replace existing law. Versions of Roman law had long influenced many parts of Europe, including the case law traditions of Scotland, but had little impact on English law.

2. It is important not to exaggerate the differences between these two traditions of law. For one thing, many case law systems, such as California's, have areas of law that have been comprehensively codified. For another, many countries can be said to have belonged to the Roman tradition long before codifying their laws, and large uncodified-perhaps uncodifiable-areas of the law still remain. French public law has never been codified, and French courts have produced a great deal of case law in interpreting codes that became out of date because of social change. The clear distinction between legislature and judiciary has weakened in many countries including Germany, France and Italy, where courts are able to challenge the constitutional legality of a law made by parliament.

3. Despite this, it is also important not to exaggerate similarities among systems within the Continental tradition. For example, while adopting some French ideas, such as separation of the legislature and judiciary, the late nineteenth century codifiers of German law aimed at conserving customs and traditions peculiar to German history. Canon law had a stronger influence in countries with a less secular ideology than France, such as Spain.

4. Modern Japanese Law. Despite a tradition of private law that more closely resembled English principles of judicial precedent, the lawmakers of Meji Japan decided to adopt criminal and civil codes closely based on the existing French models. However, this rapid import of a new system was to a large extend an attempt to give Japan the appearance of a modernized, even Westernized country, and the way in which justice was actually administered continued to reflect older Japanese principles of refraining wherever possible from formal and open methods of solving disputes. New codes of law developed under the postwar occupation show some influence from Anglo-American common law traditions.

5. Socialist legal systems. According to classical Marxism, legal systems in capitalist and pre-capitalist nations were created to reinforce and justify property relations. Legal relations should not be thought of as in any way independent from political relations, which are based on ownership of property. In other words, the law is on the side of those with economic power. Marx theorized that with the coming of socialism, the state, and thus a state-produced system of law, would become irrelevant to social relations and would disappear.

6. However, socialist countries in the twentieth century have produced very strong centralized state institutions and complex legal systems alongside them. The leaders of the Soviet Revolution, and hence the governments of many nations that came under Soviet influence, tried to apply socialist ideology to a Continental civil law tradition in as systematic and comprehensive a way as possible. This ideology is clearly stated, and socialist lawmakers criticized both common law and previous Roman civil law systems for masking their own capitalist ideology in apparently neutral unbiased institutions. In China, law courts are still primarily regarded as political instruments used both to control theft violence (still sometimes referred to in China as the remains of the class struggle) and to deal with political opponents. But recently, citizens in some areas have been encouraged to seek legal redress in disputes with other citizens, for example, over consumer matters. Attempts have been made to codify Chinese law comprehensively, but so far there has been little progress. Even before the rejection of their socialist traditions, the Soviet republics had started to allow an increase in civil law cases, and a long process of revising existing civil and criminal codes had begun. As separatist movements grew in many parts of the Soviet Union, there was also development in Constitutional law, with some republics questioning the legality, both in Soviet and local law, of their obligations to the central government.

 

Comprehension Check