Introduction
in this session we’re going to coverlegal vocabulary terms that every lawstudent must knowso follow along with this illustratedguide and we’re going to go throughthe basic steps of what happens in acivil and criminal lawsuit so thatyou’re aware of these stepsand the vocabulary terms that go alongwith themso we’re going to start with a civilcase in a civil case the defendant doessomething that the plaintiff does notlikeso in that first drawing the defendantbreached a contract with the plaintiffand the plaintiff is unhappythe plaintiff is the one suing you canthink of it as the plaintiff is the onecomplainingand the defendant is the one defendingthemselves in a lawsuitso the plaintiff will have to decide tofile a lawsuit in state court or federalcourtmost lawsuits are brought in state courtso typical family law lawsuits contractlaw crim lawtort law property law all these types oflawsuits are filed in state courtfederal court will hear some cases sothey’ll hear cases based on theconstitutionfor example first amendment free speechclaims or federal lawor in some cases if the parties are fromdifferent states and they’re fightingover a large amount of moneyover 75 000 and you’ll get more into the.
Lawsuit
nuances of this in your civil procedureclass but that’s the basic thing thatyou should knowthe plaintiff will begin a lawsuit byfiling a complaint in the appropriatecourt after filing the complaint theplaintiff will have a certain amount oftime to serve the complaint on thedefendantso basically the plaintiff will firstfile a complaint with different countsso for example let’s say that anemployee is supposed to be paid by theiremployer and the employer does not paythemthe different counts might be breach ofcontract frauddifferent employment law claims so theywill file thiscomplaint in the court this tells thecourtthat the plaintiff is going to sue or issuing the defendantafter filing the complaint with thecourt the plaintiff has to let thedefendant know that they’re being suedso the way to do this is to serve thedefendant either by mail or by hiring aprocess server to do it but basicallyserving is just a fancy way of sayingyou’re giving the defendant noticethat you are suing them so the defendantwill then answer the complaintthe defendant can admit to deny or sayhe doesn’t know how to respond to theparagraphs in the plaintiff’s complaintbut basically the defendant is requiredto provide some kind of responseto the plaintiff’s complaint nextdiscovery begins so this is wheninformation is beingdiscovered the united states has a veryopen door policy for discoveryand a lot of information can bediscovered prior to trialso the plaintiff can send or thedefendant can send interrogatoriesthis is a fancy way to say questions isit true that blah blah blahblah request to admit please admit thatyou agreed to pay meten dollars an hour to do xyz request toproduceplease produce the contract that weinitially signed okay so all these canbe sent to the other sidealso sometimes depositions are takenduring discovery this is just a fancyway of saying that one partywill ask questions to another party or awitnessand the witness has to answer questionsthose questions under oathsometimes during this process a motionwill be filed in courtif the case does not settle in most
Trial
cases settleby and large a lot of cases will settlebut if it does notif the case does not settle then it willgo to trial the trial can be in front ofa jury this is called the jury trialor just in front of a judge which iscalled a bench trialboth sides can call witnesses to testifytestify just means to speakunder oath in court the burden of proofis on the plaintiff to proof her case bya preponderance of the evidence in mostcasesso think of this as being over 50percent so as long as the plaintiff canshow that it’s at leastmore likely that her version of thestory is true the plaintiffwill prevail if they cannot show thatthen they will not prevail they willlose
Verdict
a jury will reach a verdict or a judgewill reach a decision and issue ajudgmentso the verdict is basically like whowins and the judgment is okay how muchmoney do you winif you win any at all for criminal andcivil cases sometimes the court willwrite an opinion which basically sayswhy the case turned out the way that itdidand that’s the rationale courts usuallycite precedent which isbinding law remember that lower courtshave to follow the law as interpreted byhigher courtsso for example if the supreme court ofthe united states says somethingthey’re the highest court in the unitedstates so all the other lower courtshave to follow what they sayand this is true for any court any courtthat is abovethe court making the decision that courthas to followwhatever the higher court said rules oflaw come from the constitution forexample the u.s constitution or a stateconstitutionthey come from case law or common lawthis is created by judges when there isno controlling law so most of what youread in law school will be case lawyou’ll be reading contract cases tortcases where basically the judge justmakes up therule of law based on what makes sense tothem and then it becomes controlling lawand lastly rules of law come fromstatutes these are expressed statementsof law written by the legislaturethe party that is unhappy with thedecision can appeal it so there is anappellate system at both the state andfederal court level i’m going to kind ofsimplify it because every statehas their own system and their ownterminology but i’m going to tell yougenerally how the appellate system worksfirst the case will be heard by thelowest court this is the trial court orthe district courtgenerally just one judge hears the caseand they render a decisionthe party who loses or any party who isunhappy with that decisioncan appeal it this is the middle courtthe court of appeals or the appellatecourtgenerally three judges will listen towhat that party has to say and if aparty is unhappy with what the appellatecourt decidesthen they can appeal up to the supremecourt this is the highest court of thelandthere are nine justices in the unitedstates supreme courtthe reviewing court is usually bound bythe facts that the lower court found butcan decide areas of lawso basically what this means is thereviewing court is not going to re-hearall of the evidencewhatever the lower court found in termsof the facts this is what happenedthe reviewing court will accept is trueinstead they’re just going to look athow the law was applied to the factsand they’ll do one or two of threethings they could affirmthe lower court’s decision basically sayyep you are right lower courtwe agree with you so affirm is just afancy way to say we agree with youthey could reverse the lower court’sdecision by coming to the oppositeconclusion as the lower courtor they can remand the case back to thelower court and tell the court hey youneed to decide x y zyou need to tell me what the facts areon x y z so remand is just a fancy wayto saysend it back sometimes the court willwrite an opinion to say why it decidedthe way that it didsometimes the opinion will include aconcurrence or dissent along with amajority opinionso the majority opinion is the opinionthat is agreed to by the majority of thejudgesso this is like okay you know let’s sayfive out of nine judges agree with thisthat’s the majority opinionthe concurrence agrees with the outcomeso they concur in the outcomebut they don’t necessarily follow therationale of the majoritythey say yes the case should have turnedout this way but for a different reasonthan you said and lastly the dissentdisagrees with both the outcome and therationale they say nopethis case should not have turned outthis way at all and this is whyso that’s just a general overview of the
Criminal Justice
civil justice systemnext let’s talk about an overview of thecriminal justice systemso for a criminal justice system we alsohave a defendantthe defendant does something illegal andhe is then arrested by the policewith a defendant instead of having aplaintiff that is suing them in civilcourtwe have a prosecutor that brings acharge sometimes called anindictment against the defendant thecharge can be for a felony or amisdemeanorobviously a felony is more serious thana misdemeanorthe prosecutor has to prove the elementsof a crime beyond a reasonable doubtthis is a higher standard than thestandard for civil casesbecause more than just money is at stakehere it’s the defendant’s liberty andmaybe even life that’s at stakeso therefore the prosecutor has to provebeyond a reasonable doubtthat the defendant committed the crimevirtually every crime includes twoelements a guilty actalso called an actus reyes and a guiltymind also called a men’s realso basically the defendant has to dosomething and he also has to have a badmindset while doing it for exampleobviously if the defendant walked up tosomebody and intentionallyshot them in the head that’s a guiltyact of killing someone and he did sowith the guilty mindset he did itintentionallybut compare that to somebody who’sdriving very very carefully all of asudden a pedestrian comes out of nowhereand walks in front of themand then that pedestrian isunfortunately killed well the defendantdid a guilty acttechnically because he you know hit andkilled the pedestrianbut the defendant did not have a guiltymind he wasn’t acting intentionallyrecklessly or negligentlyit was just an honest accident andcaused maybe by the pedestrianor just caused by bad circumstances butnot the defendant’s guilty mind
Plea Bargain
so in order to be guilty of a crime youneed both a guilty actand a guilty mind in most cases insteadof going to trial the defendant willagree to a plea bargain where thedefendant and the prosecutor come to anagreementthis is the typical way that mostcriminal cases resolvei think something like 95 of cases aresettled with a plea bargainalternatively the case will go to trialwhere the defendant will either beconvictedso found guilty or acquitted sobasically foundinnocent of the crime so that’s just ageneral overview of how the criminaljustice system workshopefully this helps you as you comeacross this vocabulary in your criminallaw classand in this pre-law course.