American Legal Systems: A Resource and Reference Guide [Paperback]

Toni M. Fine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1997 | ISBN-10: 0870842668 | ISBN-13: 978-0870842665

This book provides an overview of American legal institutions and sources of law, and presents a guide to the interrelationships between and among those institutions and legal authorities. It discusses the defining role of the doctrine of stare decisis in the American common law system and the critical judicial review function. In addition, American Legal Systems shows the reader how to determine and apply the relative priorities of sources of law, all in the context of the legislative process, agency action, and principles of constitutional and legislative supremacy. American Legal Systems ties many of these concepts to the realities of law practice. Portions of the book demonstrate how to locate specific resources, use legal terms, and prepare commonplace legal documents. Among the main virtues of the book is its "reader-friendliness." It introduces readers to some extremely complicated issues of American jurisprudence in a clear and straightforward way.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 121 pages
• Publisher: Anderson Pub Co (May 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870842668
• ISBN-13: 978-0870842665
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #371,419 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #52 in Books > Law > Law Practice > Research

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An invaluable tool without frills for any foreign lawyer, June 13, 2000

By 

Daniel Biene - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Legal Systems: A Resource and Reference Guide (Paperback)

This book is by far the most concise yet informative and enlightening book on U.S. law I have seen so far.

While most other book require the reader to work through numerous cases, huge loads of legislative materials, or just endless prose, Professor Fine succinctly outlines the most relevant basic principles, legal institutions, and practical aspects of U.S. law. Whenever possible (which is almost always the case), she summarizes the information in charts, making it easy to understand and memorize without going through the ordeal of filtering little pertinent knowledge out of a vast continuous text. The books also takes account of the needs of everyday legal practice by focusing in large parts on procedural law.

I wish I knew about this book earlier. It would have saved me countless hours and would have made access to the U.S. legal system and to its practical application considerably easier.

For the purposes of foreign students, particularly those trained in a civil law jurisdiction and interested in gaining a first understanding or in filling their knowledge gaps of U.S. law, Professor Fine's book is truly unmatched by all other books I know.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The perfect intro and reference work for the law student, July 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: American Legal Systems: A Resource and Reference Guide (Paperback)

If not for my enormous gratitude, I might be angry at Toni Fine for writing American Legal Systems. She has written a book anyone who has taught during law school orientation could and would -- given an enormous amount of time, patience, and intelligence - write. I wish I had. But at least now I can exploit Professor Fine's efforts.

Before each school year's orientation, I have a plan. I start digging through the previous year's notebooks and files, hoping to bring some order to the photocopies and notes I use to introduce new law students to American court systems, common law analysis, the roles of the lawyer, and basic legal skills. As anyone who teaches first-year knows, all this information is essential to the effective assimilation of the first-year curriculum. Yet we provide our students with, at best, a few lectures brushing on these topics before dropping them into the depths of case analysis. At least, however, we give them these few lectures and the handouts we have spent our careers cobbling together. The problem is that there is so much, and anyone who has spent years studying and practicing law knows that all this doctrine is so fundamental to thinking like a lawyer that describing it is almost as difficult as describing how we walk or breathe.

Professor Fine has done exactly that: she has put together in slightly more than one hundred pages a thorough, clear, and intelligent account of the fundamentals of the way we lawyers walk and breathe. Nothing in this book is unfamiliar - it sets forth exactly what I want and expect every new law student to know as soon as possible about American legal institutions and the interrelationships between those institutions and legal authorities. Moreover, it covers these basics without degenerating into cliché or cant. Professor Fine has spent the time and effort to give a thorough and honest account of what novices to the American legal system need to know.

The truly impressive quality of the book, however, is that it gives this! account in a manner both readable enough to serve as an introduction during orientation and also thorough enough to be a reliable resource through the early years of a lawyer's practice. Certainly I know I would have wanted something like this book to turn to when I was struggling during my first weeks of law school with the basics of stare decisis, statutory analysis, and what all this stuff had to do with being a lawyer. Or when, as a first-year associate, I was sent off to "draft a motion," not having the faintest idea what a "motion" was, much less that what I was actually supposed to do was draft a memorandum of law in support of a motion.

Most importantly for my purposes, since I began teaching I have wanted a book like American Legal Systems to give to my first-year and international students. I always thought I would have to write it. Now all I have to do is have the university's book store order it. While I will not enjoy the benefits of having produced this invaluable resource, I will have the benefit of a few more free days every August.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Concise, readible, & comprehensive intro to Am Legal System, October 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: American Legal Systems: A Resource and Reference Guide (Paperback)

This book is a must-read for anyone desiring a quick, painless, yet comprehensive discussion of the American Legal System. It is ideal both for the entering law school student, and also for the general reader who is looking to learn about how the system really works. The fact that it was so easy to understand and to read -- when most law texts read like mud -- made it a perfect companion for me through law school.