Charlie Kirk’s assassination a year ago reminds of us why the Renaissance people value freedom of speech to the extent that “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Because that is how a society cultivate exchange of idea, trust, collaboration, and foster creativity. In that environment, there is no need for spy to steal other people’s invention, because true genius come from cosmos, and everyone of us is part of the cosmos. We all have some kind of sparks within each of us. Charlie Kirk is a life cut short, but had ignited so many for searching of truth, as there in great need for inquisition of the mind, in a time of rampant flaws and irrelevant everywhere. And for me, for some time this past year, I almost forget about Charlie Kirk as my mind is overloaded with shocks and got numb in all the bombshell.
Why use a bullet if we have a fair legal system to turn to? Thomas Paine wrote of Law as King: “So far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king.”
The rule of law: fairness, accountability, and impartiality is an essential component in worthy legal systems. Edmund Burke, the 18th‑century Irish statesman and philosopher, is often credited with the aphorism “Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny”. We are living in a time space of bad laws everywhere. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch spoke about Over Rule – the Human Toll of Too Much Law in his 2024 book, that laws in this nation have exploded in number and getting increasingly complex trapping American in all sort of unexpectedly legal maze. Some of these laws come from our elected representatives, but many now come from agency officials largely insulated from democratic accountability. These much law undermine respect for law itself, and often those who feel the cost most acutely are those without wealth, power and status. What happens to those people and their foundational freedoms like – the right to speak, pray, and gather freely – when our laws increasingly restrict what we may say, monitor what we do, and tell us how we may live? At its founding, this country did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. Grant Gilmore(1910-1982), an noted American law professor of early generation used to say, “The worse the society, the more law there will be. In Hell there will be nothing but law.”
The American legal system is rotting is obviously noticed by many. In the book Nonsense Factory – the Making and Breaking of American Legal System, author Bruce Gibney examed the development of American legal system, noting it is confused quantity with quality and might with legitimacy, bloats into chaos, staggers on only by excusing itself from the very commands it insists that we obey, leaving Americans victim to arbitrary, unconstitutional power. By analyzing the system as a whole, Gibney shows that the tragedies often portrayed as isolated mistakes or the work of a few bad actors – police misconduct, prosecutorial overreach, and the outrages of imperial presidencies – are really the inevitable consequences of law’s descent into lawlessness. Even more absurd is the American legal training does not provide jurisprudence education. This is bizarre, because to understand the basic principles of law – including what law is – requires philosophical grounding. to the minimum, it is hardly irrelevant to judges, or the lawyer-legislators who constitute half the Senate and a plurality of the House. An intuitive theory of jurisprudence helps us parse questions, suggesting what the answers should be, and in many cases, telling us what the answers are, without too many trips to the law library.
A similar situation existed during French Revolution. The upheavals had left the French legal system in chaos. Disjointed decrees tore up what had come before without leaving a coherent alternative. Napoleon set up a committee to untangle this mess, having the laws of post-revolutionary France brought together into a coherent whole. In 1804, the Napoleonic Code was published after three year period of 87 sessions. A complete new set of legal frame work was gradually brought together with the publication of Code of Civil Procedure (1806), the Code of Criminal Procedure (1808), and the Penal Code (1810). Over the time, this single legal document became one of history’s most consequential instruments of institutional transformation, and to this day stays as reminiscence one of Napoleon’s greatest achievement.
The Napoleonic legal system was based upon three innovative principles whose influence would transcend the codes’ actual legal application: clarity, so that all citizens could understand their rights if they could read, without needing recourse to jurists steeped in customary law, with its hundreds of exemptions and eccentricities; secularism, which insisted on separating religion from the affairs of the state, recognized marriage as a secular civil contract , and permitted divorce, hereby paved the way for an entirely new form of individual and civil existence; and, finally, the right to individual ownership of property, which was declared absolute and inviolable. The Civil Code retained the main legal Victories of the Revolution – equality before the law, freedom of religion, the rights of citizens, abolition of feudalism manorial privileges – but it also marked a retreat to patriarchy in the realm of family life. The sanctity of private property, which the code upheld to the great benefit of the property-owning middle class, bedeviled French labor for much of the 19th century.
Napoleon Code is a systematic top down written legal framework — replaced the feudal patchwork of customary laws that had governed French society for centuries. This code became a model for more than 20 countries’ modern legal systems. Many countries retained parts of the Code long after the Empire dissolved. The Civil Code brought in many liberal reforms. However, it also had retrograde elements, such as making it harder for women to leave abusive marriages. Within a decade, versions of the Code had been imposed across occupied Europe. Within a century, its principles had shaped legal systems from Latin America to Japan, from Quebec to Louisiana.
There are numerous benefits of Civil Law over Common Law. A civil law system is generally more prescriptive than a common law system. However, a government will still need to consider whether specific legislation is required to either limit the scope of a certain restriction to allow a successful infrastructure project, or may require specific legislation for a sector. Civil law is about conflict resolution, ensuring disputes between individuals do not escalate into a violent confrontation. It encourages cooperation between members of society, deterring exploitative behaviors, and unethical business practices. Additionally, the codification of civil law allows for easier amendment and updating of laws. Legislators can introduce new laws or modify existing ones by drafting and writing them into the legal code. This enables the legal system to adapt to changing social, economic, and technological landscapes, ensuring that the laws remain relevant and effective. In common law systems, changing judicial interpretations of precedents can occur over time, but the process may be slower and more incremental.
Moreover, the comprehensive nature of civil law provides a more structured framework for legal education and training. With the laws clearly codified, law students and aspiring legal professionals can more easily study and understand the intricacies of the legal system. This can lead to a more consistent and standardized approach to legal education, fostering a deeper understanding of the law and promoting legal expertise.
The Common Flaw – Needless Complexity in the Courts and 50 Ways to Reduce It 2023, written by Thomas G. Moukawsher, sustaining life fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a member of the Madison Council at the Library of Congress, one of the country’s leading litigators in pension fraud cases in federal court, who has spent nearly forty years studying, making, and administering law, made the compelling argument that we should simplify lawsuits to create a more humane and accessible legal system because Americans are losing faith in their courts. After long delays, judges often get rid of cases for technical reasons, or force litigants to settle rather than issue a decision. When they do decide cases, we can’t understand why.
“The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.” said Oliver Wendell holmes, Jr., one of the most widely cited and influential Supreme Court justices in American history. Myths and Reality about Common Law and Civic law points out a major difference in the appointment of judges: Under common law, judges are usually appointed after successful legal careers, while civil law jurisdictions tend to appoint graduates straight out of university. This, he said, can affect a judge’s worldview. If you’re an English judge who’s been a barrister, you are likely also a homeowner or an employer. But a young French judge may only have been a tenant and an employee. “I can’t help thinking that has an impact on how you relate to consumer, landlord/tenant, and employment law disputes.”
Alexis de Tocqueville once famously said, “It is through good order that all peoples have arrived at tyranny. It surely does not follow that peoples ought to scorn public peace; but they must not let it suffice for them.” Ann English doctor once described his practice this way: “Among my patients are some refugees …. They have no doubts about the benefits of the rule of law, having experienced the opposite in their own flesh and blood. They know what a relief it is not to fear the nocturnal knock at the door and to pass a man in uniform without trembling with anxiety. they know also that the rule of law is an historical achievement, not the natural state of man…. Because of their experience, they do not take it for granted. They know that it arose from a long philosophical and political development, one unique in world history. They know that it is a fragile achievement and easily destroyed.” America reflects that doctors practice. United States is a nation of immigrants, one built y men and women who fled oppression in pursuit of freedom and the rule of law. Our Constitution has done a better jobs meditating those twin ambitions than any other system of government yet devised. Its adoption was a miracle, and if the job of manifesting a miracle fell to our founders, the job of ensuring that it endures falls to each new generation.