Discussion Questions
1. If justice is defined as the fair, impartial consideration of opposing interests, are
law and justice the same thing? No. There can be law without justice—as
happened in Nazi-occupied Europe, for ex-ample. There cannot be justice without
law.
2. What is jurisprudence? Jurisprudence refers to the study of law and the ethical
values used in defin-ing what the law should be. Which of the schools of
jurisprudential thought matches the U.S. system? None of the approaches
mentioned in these sections is an exact model of the American legal system. They
rep-re-sent frameworks that can be used in evaluating the moral and ethical
considerations that are an integral part of the law.
3. What is the common law? Students may most usefully understand common
law to be case law—that is, the body of law derived from judicial decisions. The
body of common law originated in England. The term common law is sometimes
used to refer to the entire common law system to distinguish it from the civil law
sys-tem.
4. Define and discuss the sources of American law: What is the supreme law of
