Chapter 1

The Legal Environment

Answers to Learning Objectives/ For Review Questions at the Beginning and
THE END OF THE CHAPTER

NOTE THAT YOUR STUDENTS CAN FIND THE ANSWERS TO THE EVEN-NUMBERED FOR REVIEW QUESTIONS ON THIS TEXT’S WEB SITE AT WWW.CENGAGE.COM/BLAW/BLT. WE REPEAT THESE ANSWERS HERE AS A CONVENIENCE TO YOU.

1A Sources of Law
Primary sources of law are sources that establish the law. In the United States, these include the U.S. Constitution and the state constitutions, statues passed by Congress and the state legislatures, regulations created by administrative agencies, and court decisions, or case law.

2A COMMON LAW TRADITION
Because of our colonial heritage, much of American law is based on the English legal system. In that system, after the Norman conquest, the king’s courts sought to establish a uniform set of rules for the entire country. What evolved in these courts was the common law—a body of general legal principles that applied throughout the entire English realm. Courts developed the common law rules from the principles underlying judges’ decisions in actual legal controversies.

3A Precedent
Judges attempt to be consistent, and when possible, they base their decisions on the principles suggested by earlier cases. They seek to decide similar cases in a similar way and consider new cases with care, because they know that their conflicting decisions make new law. Each interpretation becomes part of the law on the subject and serves as a legal precedent—a decision that furnishes an example or authority for deciding subsequent cases involving similar legal principles or facts. A court will depart from the rule of a precedent when it decides that the rule should no longer be followed. If a court decides that a precedent is simply incorrect or that technological or social changes have rendered the precedent