The United States

The e-Advocate Legal Missions International Genesis 12:1-3 -or - Isaiah 1:4-7

The United States

“Helping Individuals, Organizations & Communities Achieve Their Full Potential” Vol. III, Issue XII – Q-4 October| November| December 2017

The Advocacy Foundation, Inc. Helping Individuals, Organizations & Communities Achieve Their Full Potential

The United States

“Helping Individuals, Organizations & Communities Achieve Their Full Potential

1735 Market Street, Suite 3750 Philadelphia, PA 19102

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www.TheAdvocacyFoundation.org

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Biblical Authority ______

Genesis 12:1-3 (KJV) 1

Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: 2

And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: 3

And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. or

Isaiah 1:4-7 (KJV) 4

Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.

5

Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

6

From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.

7

Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.

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Table of Contents The United States of America

Biblical Authority I.

Introduction

II.

Geography

III.

Demographics

IV.

Government & Politics

V.

Crime

VI.

The Economy (Income, Poverty & Wealth)

VII. Education VIII. Infrastructure IX.

Health Care

Attachment The United States Legal System

Copyright Š 2015 The Advocacy Foundation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Introduction The United States of America (USA), commonly referred to as the United States, U.S. or America, is a federal republic consisting of 50 states and a federal district. The 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., are in central North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is located in the northwestern part of North America and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also has five populated and nine unpopulated territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean. At 3.80 million square miles (9.85 million km2) and with over 320 million people, the United States is the world's fourth-largest country by total area and third-largest by population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The geography and climate of the United States are also extremely diverse, and the country is home to a wide variety of wildlife.

Paleo-Indians migrated from Eurasia to what is now the U.S. mainland around 15,000 years ago,[21] with European colonization beginning in the 16th century. The United States emerged from 13 British colonies located along the East Coast. Disputes between Great Britain and the colonies led to the American Revolution. On July 4, 1776, as the colonies were fighting Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, delegates from the 13 colonies unanimously issued the Declaration of Independence. The war ended in 1783 with the recognition of independence of the United States from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and was the first successful war of independence against a European colonial empire. The country's constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787 and ratified by the states in 1788. The first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil rights and freedoms.

Driven by the doctrine of manifest destiny, the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century. This involved displacing native tribes, acquiring new territories, and gradually admitting new states, until by 1848 the nation spanned the continent. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War ended legal slavery in the country. By the end of that century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean, and the economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power. The United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, and as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole superpower.

The United States is a developed country and has the world's largest national economy, benefiting from an abundance of natural resources and high worker productivity. While the U.S. economy is considered post-industrial, the country continues to be one of the world's largest Page 8 of 61

manufacturers. Accounting for 37% of global military spending, it is the world's foremost economic and military power, a prominent political and cultural force, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations.

Native Americans The first North American settlers migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge approximately 15,000 or more years ago. Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. After European explorers and traders made the first contacts, the native population declined for various reasons, including diseases, such as smallpox and measles, and violence.

In the early days of colonization many settlers were subject to food shortages, disease and attacks from Native Americans. Native Americans were also often at war with neighboring tribes and allied with Europeans in their colonial wars. At the same time, however, many natives and settlers came to depend on each other. Settlers traded for food and animal pelts, natives for guns, ammunition and other European wares. Natives taught many settlers where, when and how to cultivate corn, beans and squash. European missionaries and others felt it was important to "civilize" the Indians and urged them to concentrate on farming and ranching rather than depending on hunting and gathering.

Native Americans who live within the boundaries of the present-day United States (including the indigenous peoples of Alaska and Hawaii) are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, bands and ethnic groups, many of which survive as intact, sovereign nations. The terms Natives use to refer to themselves vary regionally and generationally, with many older Natives self-identifying as "Indians," while younger Natives often identify as "Indigenous." Which terms should be used by non-Natives has at times been controversial. The term "Native American" has been adopted by major newspapers and some academic groups, but does not traditionally include Native Hawaiians or certain Alaskan Natives, such as Aleut, Yup'ik, or Inuit peoples. Native peoples from Canada are known as First Nations.

Since the end of the 15th century, the migration of Europeans to the Americas has led to centuries of conflict and adjustment between Old and New World societies. Many Native Americans have historically lived as hunter-gatherer societies and preserved their histories by oral traditions and artwork. This resulted in the first written sources on the conflict being authored by Europeans.

At the time of first contact, the indigenous cultures were quite different from those of the protoindustrial and mostly Christian immigrants. Some of the Northeastern and Southwestern cultures in particular were matrilineal and operated on a more collective basis than the Europeans were familiar with. The majority of Indigenous American tribes maintained their hunting grounds and agricultural lands for use of the entire tribe. Europeans at that time had patriarchal cultures and had developed concepts of individual property rights with respect to land that were extremely Page 9 of 61

different. The differences in cultures between the established Native Americans and immigrant Europeans, as well as shifting alliances among different nations in times of war, caused extensive political tension, ethnic violence, and social disruption. Native Americans suffered high fatalities from contact with European diseases to which they had yet not acquired immunity. Smallpox epidemics are thought to have caused the greatest loss of life for indigenous populations, although estimates of the pre-Columbian population of what today constitutes the U.S. vary significantly, from 1 million to 18 million.

After the colonies revolted against Great Britain and established the United States of America, President George Washington and Henry Knox conceived of the idea of "civilizing" Native Americans in preparation for assimilation as U.S. citizens. Assimilation (whether voluntary, as with the Choctaw, or forced) became a consistent policy through American administrations.

During the 19th century, the ideology of manifest destiny became integral to the American nationalist movement.

Expansion of EuropeanAmerican populations to the west after the American Revolution resulted in increasing pressure on Native American lands, warfare between the groups, and rising tensions. In 1830, the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the government to relocate Native Americans from their homelands within established states to lands west of the Mississippi River, accommodating EuropeanAmerican expansion.

This resulted in the ethnic cleansing of many tribes, with the brutal, forced marches coming to be known as The Trail of Tears.

As American expansion reached into the West, settler and miner migrants came into increasing conflict with the Great Basin, Great Plains, and other Western tribes.

These were complex nomadic cultures based on (introduced) horse culture and seasonal bison hunting. They carried out resistance against United States incursion in the decades after the completion of the Civil War and the Transcontinental Railroad in a series of Indian Wars, which were frequent up until the 1890s but continued into the 20th century. Over time, the United States forced a series of treaties and land cessions by the tribes and established reservations for them in many western states. U.S. agents encouraged Native Americans to adopt European-style farming and similar pursuits, but European-American agricultural technology of the time was inadequate for often dry reservation lands, leading to mass starvation. In 1924, Native Americans who were not already U.S. citizens were granted citizenship by Congress.

Contemporary Native Americans have a unique relationship with the United States because they may be members of nations, tribes, or bands with sovereignty and treaty rights. Cultural activism since the late 1960s has increased political participation and led to an expansion of efforts to teach and preserve Indigenous languages for younger generations and to establish a greater cultural infrastructure: Native Americans have founded independent newspapers and online media, recently including FNX, the first Native American television channel; established Native Page 10 of 61

American studies programs, tribal schools and universities, and museums and language programs; and have increasingly been published as authors.

Settlements After Columbus' first voyage to the New World in 1492, other explorers followed with settlement into the Floridas and the American Southwest. There were also some French attempts to colonize the east coast, and later more successful settlements along the Mississippi River.

Successful English settlement on the eastern coast of North America began with the Virginia Colony in 1607 at Jamestown and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. Early experiments in communal living failed until the introduction of private farm holdings. Many settlers were dissenting Christian groups who came seeking religious freedom. The continent's first elected legislative assembly, Virginia's House of Burgesses created in 1619, and the Mayflower Compact, signed by the Pilgrims before disembarking, established precedents for the pattern of representative self-government and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies.

Most settlers in every colony were small farmers, but other industries developed within a few decades as varied as the settlements. Cash crops included tobacco, rice and wheat. Extraction industries grew up in furs, fishing and lumber. Manufacturers produced rum and ships, and by the late colonial period Americans were producing one-seventh of the world's iron supply. Cities eventually dotted the coast to support local economies and serve as trade hubs. English colonists were supplemented by waves of Scotch-Irish and other groups. As coastal land grew more expensive freed indentured servants pushed further west. Slave cultivation of cash crops began with the Spanish in the 1500s, and was adopted by the English, but life expectancy was much higher in North America because of less disease and better food and treatment, leading to a rapid increase in the numbers of slaves. Colonial society was largely divided over the religious and moral implications of slavery and colonies passed acts for and against the practice. But by the turn of the 18th century, African slaves were replacing indentured servants for cash crop labor, especially in southern regions.

With the colonization of Georgia in 1732, the 13 colonies that would become the United States of America were established. All had local governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self-government stimulating support for republicanism. With extremely high birth rates, low death rates, and steady settlement, the colonial population grew rapidly. Relatively small Native American populations were eclipsed. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty.

In the French and Indian War, British forces seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. Excluding the Native Americans, who were being conquered and displaced, those 13 colonies had a population of over 2.1 million in 1770, about one-third that of Britain. Despite continuing new arrivals, the rate of natural increase was such that by the 1770s only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas. The colonies' distance from Britain had allowed the development of self-government, but their success motivated monarchs to periodically seek to reassert royal authority.

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Independence

The American Revolutionary War was the first successful colonial war of independence against a European power. Americans had developed an ideology of "republicanism" asserting that government rested on the will of the people as expressed in their local legislatures. They demanded their rights as Englishmen, "no taxation without representation". The British insisted on administering the empire through Parliament, and the conflict escalated into war. Following the passage of the Lee Resolution, on July 2, 1776, which was the actual vote for independence, the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, on July 4, which proclaimed, in a long preamble, that humanity is created equal in their unalienable rights and that those rights were not being protected by Great Britain, and finally declared, in the words of the resolution, that the Thirteen Colonies were independent states and had no allegiance to the British crown in the United States. July fourth is celebrated annually as Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a weak government that operated until 1789.

Britain recognized the independence of the United States following their defeat at Yorktown. In the peace treaty of 1783, American sovereignty was recognized from the Atlantic coast west to the Mississippi River. Nationalists led the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in writing the United States Constitution, ratified in state conventions in 1788. The federal government was reorganized into three branches, on the principle of creating salutary checks and balances, in 1789. George Washington, who had led the revolutionary army to victory, was the first president elected under the new constitution. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.

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Although the federal government criminalized the international slave trade in 1808, after 1820 cultivation of the highly profitable cotton crop exploded in the Deep South, and along with it the slave population. The Second Great Awakening, beginning about 1800, converted millions to evangelical Protestantism. In the North it energized multiple social reform movements, including abolitionism; in the South, Methodists and Baptists proselytized among slave populations.

Americans' eagerness to expand westward prompted a long series of American Indian Wars. The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory in 1803 almost doubled the nation's size. The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S. nationalism. A series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819. Expansion was aided by steam power, when steamboats began traveling along America's large water systems, which were connected by new canals, such as the Erie and the I&M; then, even faster railroads began their stretch across the nation's land.

From 1820 to 1850, Jacksonian democracy began a set of reforms which included wider male suffrage; it led to the rise of the Second Party System of Democrats and Whigs as the dominant parties from 1828 to 1854. The Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that moved Indians into the west to their own reservations. The U.S. annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845 during a period of expansionist Manifest destiny. The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. Victory in the Mexican– American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest.

The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 spurred western migration and the creation of additional western states. After the American Civil War, new transcontinental railways made relocation easier for settlers, expanded internal trade and increased conflicts with Native Americans. Over a half-century, the loss of the buffalo was an existential blow to many Plains Indians cultures. In 1869, a new Peace Policy sought to protect Native-Americans from abuses, avoid further warfare, and secure their eventual U.S. citizenship.

Civil War & Reconstruction From the beginning of the United States, inherent divisions over slavery between the North and the South in American society ultimately led to the American Civil War. Initially, states entering the Union alternated between slave and free states, keeping a sectional balance in the Senate, while free states outstripped slave states in population and in the House of Representatives. But with additional western territory and more free-soil states, tensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments over federalism and disposition of the territories, whether and how to expand or restrict slavery.

With the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, the first president from the largely anti-slavery Republican Party, conventions in thirteen states ultimately declared secession and formed the Confederate States of America, while the U.S. federal government maintained that secession was illegal. The ensuing war was at first for Union, then after 1863 as casualties mounted and Lincoln delivered his Emancipation Proclamation, a second war aim became abolition of slavery.

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The war remains the deadliest military conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of approximately 618,000 soldiers as well as many civilians.

Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution brought about the prohibition of slavery, gave U.S. citizenship to the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves, and promised them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in federal power aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states while ensuring the rights of the newly freed slaves. But following the Reconstruction Era, throughout the South Jim Crow laws soon effectively disenfranchised most blacks and some poor whites. Over the subsequent decades, in both the North and the South blacks and some whites faced systemic discrimination, including racial segregation and occasional vigilante violence, sparking national movements against these abuses.

Industrialization In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe supplied a surplus of labor for the country's industrialization and transformed its culture. National infrastructure including telegraph and transcontinental railroads spurred economic growth and greater settlement and development of the American Old West. The later invention of electric light and the telephone would also impact communication and urban life.

The end of the Indian Wars further expanded acreage under mechanical cultivation, increasing surpluses for international markets. Mainland expansion was completed by the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. In 1898 the U.S. entered the world stage with important sugar production and strategic facilities acquired in Hawaii. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were ceded by Spain in the same year, following the Spanish–American War. Page 14 of 61

Rapid economic development at the end of the 19th century produced many prominent industrialists, and the U.S. economy became the world's largest. Dramatic changes were accompanied by social unrest and the rise of populist, socialist, and anarchist movements. This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which saw significant reforms in many societal areas, including women's suffrage, alcohol prohibition, regulation of consumer goods, greater antitrust measures to ensure competition and attention to worker conditions.

World War I, The Great Depression, and World War II The United States remained neutral at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, though by 1917, it joined the Allies, helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson took a leading diplomatic role at the Paris Peace Conference and advocated strongly for the U.S. to join the League of Nations. However, the Senate refused to approve this, and did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles that established the League of Nations.

In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage. The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of radio for mass communication and the invention of early television.

The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression.

After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, which included the establishment of the Social Security system. The Great Migration of millions of African Americans out of the American South began around WWI and extended through the 1960s; whereas the Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.

The United States was at first effectively neutral during World War II's early stages but began supplying material to the Allies in March 1941 through the Lend-Lease program. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to join the Allies against the Axis powers. Though the nation lost more than 400,000 soldiers, it emerged relatively undamaged from the war with even greater economic and military influence. Allied conferences at Bretton Woods and Yalta outlined a new system of international organizations that placed the United States and Soviet Union at the center of world affairs. As an Allied victory was won in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war. The United States developed the first nuclear weapons and used them on Japan; the Japanese surrendered on September 2, ending World War II.

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The Cold War and Civil Rights After World War II the United States and the Soviet Union jockeyed for power during what is known as the Cold War, driven by an ideological divide between capitalism and communism.

They dominated the military affairs of Europe, with the U.S. and its NATO allies on one side and the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies on the other. The U.S. developed a policy of "containment" toward Soviet bloc expansion. While they engaged in proxy wars and developed powerful nuclear arsenals, the two countries avoided direct military conflict. The U.S. often opposed Third World left-wing movements that it viewed as Soviet-sponsored. American troops fought communist Chinese and North Korean forces in the Korean War of 1950–53. The Soviet Union's 1957 launch of the first artificial satellite and its 1961 launch of the first manned spaceflight initiated a "Space Race" in which the United States became the first to land a man on the moon in 1969. A proxy war was expanded in Southeast Asia with the Vietnam War. At home, the U.S. experienced sustained economic expansion and a rapid growth of its population and middle class. Construction of an Interstate Highway System transformed the nation's infrastructure over the following decades. Millions moved from farms and inner cities to large suburban housing developments. A growing civil rights movement used nonviolence to confront segregation and discrimination, with Martin Luther King, Jr. becoming a prominent leader and figurehead. A combination of court decisions and legislation, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, sought to end racial discrimination. Meanwhile, a counterculture movement grew which was fueled by opposition to the Vietnam war, black nationalism, and the sexual revolution. The launch of a "War on Poverty" expanded entitlement and welfare spending.

The 1970s and early 1980s saw the onset of stagflation. After his election in 1980, President Ronald Reagan responded to economic stagnation with free-market oriented reforms. Following the collapse of détente, he abandoned "containment" and initiated the more aggressive "rollback" strategy towards the USSR. After a surge in female labor participation over the previous decade, by 1985 the majority of women aged 16 and over were employed. The late 1980s brought a "thaw" in relations with the USSR, and its collapse in 1991 finally ended the Cold War.

The Modern Era After the Cold War, the 1990s saw the longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history, ending in 2001. Originating in U.S. defense networks, the Internet spread to international academic networks, and then to the public in the 1990s, greatly impacting the global economy, society, and culture. On September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly 3,000 people. In response the United States launched the War on Terror, which includes the ongoing war in Afghanistan and the 2003–11 Iraq War. Page 16 of 61

Beginning in 1994, the U.S. participates in the world's largest trade bloc in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), linking 450 million people producing $17 trillion worth of goods and services. The goal of the agreement among the U.S., Canada and Mexico was met to eliminate trade and investment barriers among them by January 1, 2008; trade among the partners has soared since the agreement went into force.

Barack Obama, the first African American, and multiracial president, was elected in 2008 amid the Great Recession, which began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009.

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Geography The land area of the contiguous United States is 2,959,064 square miles (7,663,941 km2). Alaska, separated from the contiguous United States by Canada, is the largest state at 663,268 square miles (1,717,856 km2). Hawaii, occupying an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America, is 10,931 square miles (28,311 km2) in area.

The United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area (land and water), ranking behind Russia and Canada and just above or below China.

The ranking varies depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted and how the total size of the United States is measured: calculations range from 3,676,486 square miles (9,522,055 km2) to 3,717,813 square miles (9,629,091 km2) to 3,794,101 square miles (9,826,676 km2). to 3,805,927 square miles (9,857,306 km2). Measured by only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.

The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont. The Appalachian Mountains divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi–Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north–south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast.

The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Chihuahua and Mojave. The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast, both ranges reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m). The lowest and highest points in the continental United States are in the state of California, and only about 84 miles (135 km) apart. At 20,320 feet (6,194 m), Alaska's Mount McKinley is the tallest peak in the country and in North America. Active volcanoes are common throughout Alaska's Alexander and Aleutian Islands, and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic feature.

The United States, with its large size and geographic variety, includes most climate types. To the east of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south. The southern tip of Florida is tropical, as is Hawaii. The Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are semi-arid. Much of the Western mountains have an alpine climate. The climate is arid in the Great Basin, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon and Washington and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar. Extreme weather is not uncommon—the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur within the country, mainly in Tornado Alley areas in the Midwest.

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Wildlife The U.S. ecology is megadiverse: about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland.[172] The United States is home to 428 mammal species, 784 bird species, 311 reptile species, and 295 amphibian species. About 91,000 insect species have been described. The bald eagle is both the national bird and national animal of the United States, and is an enduring symbol of the country itself.

There are 58 national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas. Altogether, the government owns about 28% of the country's land area. Most of this is protected, though some is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching; about .86% is used for military purposes.

Environmental issues have been on the national agenda since 1970. Environmental controversies include debates on oil and nuclear energy, dealing with air and water pollution, the economic costs of protecting wildlife, logging and deforestation, and international responses to global warming. Many federal and state agencies are involved. The most prominent is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), created by presidential order in 1970. The idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since 1964, with the Wilderness Act. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is intended to protect threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

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Demographics The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the country's population now to be 320,455,000, The U.S. population almost quadrupled during the 20th century, from about 76 million in 1900. The third most populous nation in the world, after China and India, the United States is the only major industrialized nation in which large population increases are projected.

The United States has a very diverse population; 37 ancestry groups have more than one million members. German Americans are the largest ethnic group (more than 50 million) - followed by Irish Americans (circa 37 million), Mexican Americans (circa 31 million) and English Americans (circa 28 million).

White Americans are the largest racial group; Black Americans are the nation's largest racial minority and third largest ancestry group. Asian Americans are the country's second largest racial minority; the three largest Asian American ethnic groups are Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, and Indian Americans.

The United States has a birth rate of 13 per 1,000, which is 5 births below the world average. Its population growth rate is positive at 0.7%, higher than that of many developed nations. In fiscal year 2012, over one million immigrants (most of whom entered through family reunification) were granted legal residence. Mexico has been the leading source of new residents since the 1965 Immigration Act. China, India, and the Philippines have been in the top four sending countries every year since the 1990s. As of 2012, approximately 11.4 million residents are illegal immigrants.

According to a survey conducted by the Williams Institute, nine million Americans, or roughly 3.4% of the adult population identify themselves as homosexual, bisexual, or transgender. A 2012 Gallup poll also concluded that 3.5% of adult Americans identified as LGBT. The highest percentage came from the District of Columbia (10%), while the lowest state was North Dakota at 1.7%. In a 2013 survey, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 96.6% of Americans identify as straight, while 1.6% identify as gay or lesbian, and 0.7% identify as being bisexual.

In 2010, the U.S. population included an estimated 5.2 million people with some American Indian or Alaska Native ancestry (2.9 million exclusively of such ancestry) and 1.2 million with Page 22 of 61

some native Hawaiian or Pacific island ancestry (0.5 million exclusively). The census counted more than 19 million people of "Some Other Race" who were "unable to identify with any" of its five official race categories in 2010.

The population growth of Hispanic and Latino Americans (the terms are officially interchangeable) is a major demographic trend. The 50.5 million Americans of Hispanic descent are identified as sharing a distinct "ethnicity" by the Census Bureau; 64% of Hispanic Americans are of Mexican descent. Between 2000 and 2010, the country's Hispanic population increased 43% while the non-Hispanic population rose just 4.9%. Much of this growth is from immigration; in 2007, 12.6% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, with 54% of that figure born in Latin America.

Fertility is also a factor; in 2010 the average Hispanic (of any race) woman gave birth to 2.35 children in her lifetime, compared to 1.97 for non-Hispanic black women and 1.79 for nonHispanic white women (both below the replacement rate of 2.1). Minorities (as defined by the Census Bureau as all those beside non-Hispanic, non-multiracial whites) constituted 36.3% of the population in 2010, and over 50% of children under age one, and are projected to constitute the majority by 2042. This contradicts the report by the National Vital Statistics Reports, based on the U.S. census data, which concludes that 54% (2,162,406 out of 3,999,386 in 2010) of births were non-Hispanic white.

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About 82% of Americans live in urban areas (including suburbs); about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50,000. In 2008, 273 incorporated places had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than one million residents, and four global cities had over two million (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston). There are 52 metropolitan areas with populations greater than one million.[213] Of the 50 fastest-growing metro areas, 47 are in the West or South. The metro areas of Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Phoenix all grew by more than a million people between 2000 and 2008.

Language English (American English) is the de facto national language. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English. In 2010, about 230 million, or 80% of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. Spanish, spoken by 12% of the population at home, is the second most common language and the most widely taught second language. Some Americans advocate making English the country's official language, as it is in 28 states.

Both Hawaiian and English are official languages in Hawaii, by state law. Alaska recognizes many Native languages. While neither has an official language, New Mexico has laws providing for the use of both English and Spanish, as Louisiana does for English and French. Other states, such as California, mandate the publication of Spanish versions of certain government documents including court forms. Many jurisdictions with large numbers of non-English speakers produce government materials, especially voting information, in the most commonly spoken languages in those jurisdictions.

Several insular territories grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan and Chamorro are recognized by American Samoa and Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands; Cherokee is officially recognized by the Cherokee Nation within the Cherokee tribal jurisdiction area in eastern Oklahoma; Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico and is more widely spoken than English there.

Languages spoken at home by more than 1,000,000 persons in the U.S. as of 2010 Percent of Number of Language population speakers English (only) 80% 233,780,338 Combined total of all languages 20% 57,048,617 other than English Spanish 12% 35,437,985 (excluding Puerto Rico and Spanish Creole) Chinese 0.9% 2,567,779 (including Cantonese and Mandarin) Tagalog 0.5% 1,542,118 Vietnamese 0.4% 1,292,448 Page 24 of 61

Languages spoken at home by more than 1,000,000 persons in the U.S. as of 2010 Percent of Number of Language population speakers French 0.4% 1,288,833 Korean 0.4% 1,108,408 German 0.4% 1,107,869

Religion & Family Structure The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion and forbids Congress from passing laws respecting its establishment. Christianity is by far the most common religion practiced in the U.S., but other religions are followed, too. In a 2013 survey, 56% of Americans said that religion played a "very important role in their lives", a far higher figure than that of any other wealthy nation. In a 2009 Gallup poll 42% of Americans said that they attended church weekly or almost weekly; the figures ranged from a low of 23% in Vermont to a high of 63% in Mississippi. As with other Western countries, the U.S. is becoming less religious. Irreligion is growing rapidly among Americans under 30. Polls show that overall American confidence in organized religion is declining, and that younger Americans in particular are becoming increasingly irreligious.

According to a 2014 survey, 78.5% of adults identified themselves as Christian, Protestant denominations accounted for 51.3%, while Roman Catholicism, at 23.9%, was the largest individual denomination. The total reporting non-Christian religions in 2012 was 4.9%, up from 4% in 2007. Other religions include Judaism (1.7%), Buddhism (0.7%), Islam (0.6%), Hinduism (0.4%), and Unitarian Universalism (0.3%). The survey also reported that 16.1% of Americans described themselves as agnostic, atheist or simply having no religion, up from 8.2% in 1990.

There are also Baha'i, Sikh, Jain, Shinto, Confucian, Taoist, Druid, Native American, Wiccan, humanist and deist communities.

Protestantism is the largest Christian religious grouping in the United States. Baptists collectively form the largest branch of Protestantism, and the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest individual Protestant denomination. About 26 percent of Americans identify as Evangelical Protestants, while 18 percent are Mainline and 7 percent belong to a traditionally Black church. Roman Catholicism in the United States has its origin in the Spanish and French colonization of the Americas, and later grew due to Irish, Italian, Polish, German and Hispanic immigration. Rhode Island is the only state where a majority of the population is Catholic.

Lutheranism in the U.S. has its origin in immigration from Northern Europe. North and South Dakota are the only states in which a plurality of the population is Lutheran. Utah is the only state where Mormonism is the religion of the majority of the population. The Mormon Corridor also extends to parts of Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming.

The Bible Belt is an informal term for a region in the Southern United States in which socially conservative Evangelical Protestantism is a significant part of the culture and Christian church Page 25 of 61

attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's average. By contrast, religion plays the least important role in New England and in the Western United States.

Family structure In 2007, 58% of Americans age 18 and over were married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 25% had never been married. Women now work mostly outside the home and receive a majority of bachelor's degrees.

The U.S. teenage pregnancy rate, 79.8 per 1,000 women, is the highest among OECD nations.[241] Between 2007 and 2010, the highest teenage birth rate was in Mississippi, and the lowest in New Hampshire.[242] Abortion is legal throughout the U.S., owing to Roe v. Wade, a 1973 landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. While the abortion rate is falling, the abortion ratio of 241 per 1,000 live births and abortion rate of 15 per 1,000 women aged 15–44 remain higher than those of most Western nations. In 2011, the average age at first birth was 25.6 and 40.7% of births were to unmarried women. The total fertility rate (TFR) was estimated for 2013 at 1.86 births per woman. Adoption in the United States is common and relatively easy from a legal point of view (compared to other Western countries). In 2001, with over 127,000 adoptions, the U.S. accounted for nearly half of the total number of adoptions worldwide. The legal status of same-sex couples adopting varies by jurisdiction. Polygamy is illegal throughout the U.S.

Religious affiliation in the U.S. (2007) Affiliation % of U.S. population Christian 79 Evangelical Protestant 26 Catholic 24 Mainline Protestant 18 Black Protestant 7 Mormon 1.7 Other Christian 1.6 Judaism 1.7 Buddhism 0.7 Islam 0.6 Hinduism 0.4 Other faith 1.2 Unaffiliated 16 Don't know/refused answer 0.8 Total 100

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Government & Politics The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation. It is a constitutional republic and representative democracy, "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law". The government is regulated by a system of checks and balances defined by the U.S. Constitution, which serves as the country's supreme legal document. For 2013, the U.S. ranked 19th on the Democracy Index and 17th on the Corruption Perceptions Index.

In the American federalist system, citizens are usually subject to three levels of government: federal, state, and local. The local government's duties are commonly split between county and municipal governments. In almost all cases, executive and legislative officials are elected by a plurality vote of citizens by district. There is no proportional representation at the federal level, and it is very rare at lower levels.

The federal government is composed of three branches: 





Legislative: The bicameral Congress, made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives, makes federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse, and has the power of impeachment, by which it can remove sitting members of the government.

Executive: The President is the commander-in-chief of the military, can veto legislative bills before they become law (subject to Congressional override), and appoints the members of the Cabinet (subject to Senate approval) and other officers, who administer and enforce federal laws and policies.

Judicial: The Supreme Court and lower federal courts, whose judges are appointed by the President with Senate approval, interpret laws and overturn those they find unconstitutional.

The House of Representatives has 435 voting members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population every tenth year. At the 2010 census, seven states had the minimum of one representative, while California, the most populous state, had 53.

The Senate has 100 members with each state having two senators, elected at-large to six-year terms; one third of Senate seats are up for election every other year. The President serves a fourPage 28 of 61

year term and may be elected to the office no more than twice. The President is not elected by direct vote, but by an indirect electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned to the states and the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court, led by the Chief Justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.

The state governments are structured in roughly similar fashion; Nebraska uniquely has a unicameral legislature. The governor (chief executive) of each state is directly elected. Some state judges and cabinet officers are appointed by the governors of the respective states, while others are elected by popular vote.

The original text of the Constitution establishes the structure and responsibilities of the federal government and its relationship with the individual states. Article One protects the right to the "great writ" of habeas corpus. The Constitution has been amended 27 times; the first ten amendments, which make up the Bill of Rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of Americans' individual rights. All laws and governmental procedures are subject to judicial review and any law ruled by the courts to be in violation of the Constitution is voided.

The principle of judicial review, not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, was established by the Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803) in a decision handed down by Chief Justice John Marshall.

Political Divisions The United States is a federal union of 50 states. The original 13 states were the successors of the 13 colonies that rebelled against British rule. Early in the country's history, three new states were organized on territory separated from the claims of the existing states: Kentucky from Virginia; Tennessee from North Carolina; and Maine from Massachusetts. Most of the other states have been carved from territories obtained through war or purchase by the U.S. government.

One set of exceptions includes Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii: each was a well-established independent republic before joining the union. During the American Civil War, West Virginia broke away from Virginia. The most recent state—Hawaii—achieved statehood on August 21, 1959. The states do not have the right to unilaterally secede from the union.

The states compose the vast bulk of the U.S. land mass. The District of Columbia is a federal district which contains the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C. The United States also possesses five major overseas territories: Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands in the Caribbean; and American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific. Those born in the major territories are birthright U.S. citizens except Samoans. Samoans born in American Samoa are born U.S. nationals, and may become naturalized citizens. American citizens residing in the territories have fundamental constitutional protections and elective selfgovernment, with a territorial Member of Congress, but they do not vote for president as states.

Territories have personal and business tax regimes different from that of states.

The United States also observes tribal sovereignty of the Native Nations. Though reservations are within state borders, the reservation is a sovereign entity. While the United States recognizes this sovereignty, other countries may not.

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Parties and Elections The United States has operated under a two-party system for most of its history. For elective offices at most levels, stateadministered primary elections choose the major party nominees for subsequent general elections. Since the general election of 1856, the major parties have been the Democratic Party, founded in 1824, and the Republican Party, founded in 1854. Since the Civil War, only one third-party presidential candidate—former president Theodore Roosevelt, running as a Progressive in 1912—has won as much as 20% of the popular vote. The third-largest political party is the Libertarian Party. The President and Vice-president are elected through the Electoral College system.

Within American political culture, the Republican Party is considered center-right or conservative and the Democratic Party is considered center-left or liberal.[273] The states of the Northeast and West Coast and some of the Great Lakes states, known as "blue states", are relatively liberal. The "red states" of the South and parts of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains are relatively conservative.

The winner of the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, Democrat Barack Obama, is the 44th U.S. president.

In the 114th United States Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate are controlled by the Republican Party. The Senate currently consists of 54 Republicans, and 44 Democrats with two independents who caucus with the Democrats; the House consists of 246 Republicans and 188 Democrats, with one vacancy. In state governorships, there are 31 Republicans, 18 Democrats and one independent. Among the DC mayor and the 5 territorial governors, there are 2 Republicans, 2 Democrats (one is also in the PPD), and 2 Independents.

Since the founding of the United States until the 2000s, the country's governance has been primarily dominated by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs). However, the situation has changed recently and of the top 17 positions (four national candidates of the two major party in the 2012 presidential election, four leaders in 112th United States Congress, and nine Supreme Court Justices) there is only one WASP.

Foreign Relations The United States has an established structure of foreign relations. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and New York City is home to the United Nations Headquarters. It is a member of the G7,[280] G20, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Almost all countries have embassies in Washington, D.C., and many have consulates around the country. Likewise, nearly all nations host American diplomatic missions.

However, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) do not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States (although the U.S. still supplies Taiwan with military equipment).

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The United States has a "special relationship" with the United Kingdom and strong ties with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Israel, and several European Union countries, including France, Italy, Germany, and Spain. It works closely with fellow NATO members on military and security issues and with its neighbors through the Organization of American States and free trade agreements such as the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. In 2008, the United States spent a net $25.4 billion on official development assistance, the most in the world. As a share of America's large gross national income (GNI), however, the U.S. contribution of 0.18% ranked last among 22 donor states. By contrast, private overseas giving by Americans is relatively generous.

The U.S. exercises full international defense authority and responsibility for three sovereign nations through Compact of Free Association with Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau, all of which are Pacific island nations which were part of the U.S.-administered Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands beginning after World War II, and gained independence in subsequent years.

Government Finance Taxes are levied in the United States at the federal, state and local government level. These include taxes on income, payroll, property, sales, imports, estates and gifts, as well as various fees. In 2010 taxes collected by federal, state and municipal governments amounted to 24.8% of GDP. During FY2012, the federal government collected approximately $2.45 trillion in tax revenue, up $147 billion or 6% versus FY2011 revenues of $2.30 trillion. Primary receipt categories included individual income taxes ($1,132B or 47%), Social Security/Social Insurance taxes ($845B or 35%), and corporate taxes ($242B or 10%).

U.S. taxation is generally progressive, especially the federal income taxes, and is among the most progressive in the developed world, but the incidence of corporate income tax has been a matter of considerable ongoing controversy for decades. In 2009 the top 10% of earners, with 36% of the nation's income, paid 78.2% of the federal personal income tax burden, while the bottom 40% had a negative liability. However, payroll taxes for Social Security are a flat regressive tax, with no tax charged on income above $113,700 and no tax at all paid on unearned income from things such as stocks and capital gains. The historic reasoning for the regressive nature of the payroll tax is that entitlement programs have not been viewed as welfare transfers. The top 10% paid 51.8% of total federal taxes in 2009, and the top 1%, with 13.4% of pre-tax national income, paid 22.3% of federal taxes. In 2013 the Tax Policy Center projected total federal effective tax rates of 35.5% for the top 1%, 27.2% for the top quintile, 13.8% for the middle quintile, and −2.7% for the bottom quintile. State and local taxes vary widely, but are generally less progressive than federal taxes as they rely heavily on broadly borne regressive sales and property Page 31 of 61

taxes that yield less volatile revenue streams, though their consideration does not eliminate the progressive nature of overall taxation.

During FY 2012, the federal government spent $3.54 trillion on a budget or cash basis, down $60 billion or 1.7% vs. FY 2011 spending of $3.60 trillion. Major categories of FY 2012 spending included: Medicare & Medicaid ($802B or 23% of spending), Social Security ($768B or 22%), Defense Department ($670B or 19%), non-defense discretionary ($615B or 17%), other mandatory ($461B or 13%) and interest ($223B or 6%).

National Debt The total national debt in the United States was $18.527 trillion (106% of the GDP), according to an estimate for 2014 by the International Monetary Fund. In January 2015, U.S. federal government debt held by the public was approximately $13 trillion, or about 72% of U.S. GDP. Intra-governmental holdings stood at $5 trillion, giving a combined total debt of $18.080 trillion.

By 2012, total federal debt had surpassed 100% of U.S. GDP. The U.S. has a credit rating of AA+ from Standard & Poor's, AAA from Fitch, and Aaa from Moody's.

Historically, the U.S. public debt as a share of GDP increased during wars and recessions, and subsequently declined. For example, debt held by the public as a share of GDP peaked just after World War II (113% of GDP in 1945), but then fell over the following 30 years. In recent decades, large budget deficits and the resulting increases in debt have led to concern about the long-term sustainability of the federal government's fiscal policies. However, these concerns are not universally shared.

Military The President holds the title of commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces and appoints its leaders, the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The United States Department of Defense administers the armed forces, including the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force.

The Coast Guard is run by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and by the Department of the Navy during times of war. In 2008, the armed forces had 1.4 million personnel on active duty. The Reserves and National Guard brought the total number of troops to 2.3 million. The Department of Defense also employed about 700,000 civilians, not including contractors.

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Military service is voluntary, though conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System. American forces can be rapidly deployed by the Air Force's large fleet of transport aircraft, the Navy's 10 active aircraft carriers, and Marine expeditionary units at sea with the Navy's Atlantic and Pacific fleets. The military operates 865 bases and facilities abroad, and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries.

The military budget of the United States in 2011 was more than $700 billion, 41% of global military spending and equal to the next 14 largest national military expenditures combined. At 4.7% of GDP, the rate was the second-highest among the top 15 military spenders, after Saudi Arabia. U.S. defense spending as a percentage of GDP ranked 23rd globally in 2012 according to the CIA. Defense's share of U.S. spending has generally declined in recent decades, from Cold War peaks of 14.2% of GDP in 1953 and 69.5% of federal outlays in 1954 to 4.7% of GDP and 18.8% of federal outlays in 2011.

The proposed base Department of Defense budget for 2012, $553 billion, was a 4.2% increase over 2011; an additional $118 billion was proposed for the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. The last American troops serving in Iraq departed in December 2011; 4,484 service members were killed during the Iraq War. Approximately 90,000 U.S. troops were serving in Afghanistan in April 2012; by November 8, 2013 2,285 had been killed during the War in Afghanistan.

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Crime Law enforcement in the United States is primarily the responsibility of local police and sheriff's departments, with state police providing broader services. Federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have specialized duties, including protecting civil rights, national security and enforcing U.S. federal courts' rulings and federal laws. At the federal level and in almost every state, a legal system operates on a common law. State courts conduct most criminal trials; federal courts handle certain designated crimes as well as certain appeals from the state criminal courts. Plea bargaining in the United States is very common; the vast majority of criminal cases in the country are settled by plea bargain rather than jury trial.

In 2012 there were 4.7 murders per 100,000 persons in the United States, a 54% decline from the modern peak of 10.2 in 1980. Among developed nations, the United States has above-average levels of violent crime and particularly high levels of gun violence and homicide. A crosssectional analysis of the World Health Organization Mortality Database from 2003 showed that United States "homicide rates were 6.9 times higher than rates in the other high-income countries, driven by firearm homicide rates that were 19.5 times higher." Gun ownership rights continue to be the subject of contentious political debate. The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports estimates that there were 3,246 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents in 2012, for a total of over 9 million total crimes.

Capital punishment is sanctioned in the United States for certain federal and military crimes, and used in 32 states. No executions took place from 1967 to 1977, owing in part to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down arbitrary imposition of the death penalty. In 1976, that Court ruled that, under appropriate circumstances, capital punishment may constitutionally be imposed.

Since the decision there have been more than 1,300 executions, a majority of these taking place in three states: Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma. Meanwhile, several states have either abolished or struck down death penalty laws. In 2010, the country had the fifth highest number of executions in the world, following China, Iran, North Korea, and Yemen.

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate and total prison population in the world. At the start of 2008, more than 2.3 million people were incarcerated, more than one in every 100 adults. The prison population has quadrupled since 1980. African-American males are jailed at about six times the rate of white males and three times the rate of Hispanic males. The country's high rate of incarceration is largely due to changes in sentencing guidelines and drug policies. In 2008, Louisiana had the highest incarceration rate, and Maine the lowest. In 2012, Louisiana had the highest rate of murder and non-negligent manslaughter in the U.S., and New Hampshire the lowest.

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The Economy Income Poverty & Wealth The United States has a capitalist mixed economy which is fueled by abundant natural resources and high productivity. According to the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. GDP of $16.8 trillion constitutes 24% of the gross world product at market exchange rates and over 19% of the gross world product at purchasing power parity (PPP). Its national GDP was about 5% larger at PPP in 2014 than the European Union's, whose population is around 62% higher. However, the US's nominal GDP is estimated to be $17.528 trillion as of 2014, which is about 5% smaller than that of the European Union. From 1983 to 2008, U.S. real compounded annual GDP growth was 3.3%, compared to a 2.3% weighted average for the rest of the G7. The country ranks ninth in the world in nominal GDP per capita and sixth in GDP per capita at PPP. The U.S. dollar is the world's primary reserve currency.

The United States is the largest importer of goods and second largest exporter, though exports per capita are relatively low. In 2010, the total U.S. trade deficit was $635 billion.

Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, and Germany are its top trading partners. In 2010, oil was the largest import commodity, while transportation equipment was the country's largest export. China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. public debt. The largest holder of the U.S. debt are American entities, including federal government accounts and the Federal Reserve, who hold the majority of the debt.

In 2009, the private sector was estimated to constitute 86.4% of the economy, with federal government activity accounting for 4.3% and state and local government activity (including federal transfers) the remaining 9.3%. While its economy has reached a postindustrial level of development and its service sector constitutes 67.8% of GDP, the United States remains an industrial power. The leading business field by gross business receipts is wholesale and retail trade; by net income it is manufacturing. In the franchising business model, McDonald's and Subway are the two most recognized brands in the world. Coca-Cola is the most recognized soft drink company in the world.

Chemical products are the leading manufacturing field. The United States is the largest producer of oil in the world, as well as its second largest importer. It is the world's number one producer of electrical and nuclear energy, as well as liquid natural gas, sulfur, phosphates, and salt. The National Mining Association provides data pertaining to coal and minerals that include beryllium, copper, lead, magnesium, zinc, titanium and others.

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Agriculture accounts for just under 1% of GDP, the United States is the world's top producer of corn and soybeans. The National Agricultural Statistics Service maintains agricultural statistics for products that include peanuts, oats, rye, wheat, rice, cotton, corn, barley, hay, sunflowers, and oilseeds. In addition, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides livestock statistics regarding beef, poultry, pork, and dairy products. The country is the primary developer and grower of genetically modified food, representing half of the world's biotech crops.

Consumer spending comprises 71% of the U.S. economy in 2013. In August 2010, the American labor force consisted of 154.1 million people.

With 21.2 million people, government is the leading field of employment. The largest private employment sector is health care and social assistance, with 16.4 million people. About 12% of workers are unionized, compared to 30% in Western Europe. The World Bank ranks the United States first in the ease of hiring and firing workers. The United States is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation and is one of just a few countries in the world without paid family leave as a legal right, with the others being Papua New Guinea, Suriname and Liberia. In 2009, the United States had the third highest workforce productivity per person in the world, behind Luxembourg and Norway. It was fourth in productivity per hour, behind those two countries and the Netherlands.

The 2008-2012 global recession had a significant impact on the United States, with output still below potential according to the Congressional Budget Office. It brought high unemployment (which has been decreasing but remains above pre-recession levels), along with low consumer confidence, the continuing decline in home values and increase in foreclosures and personal bankruptcies, an escalating federal debt crisis, inflation, and rising petroleum and food prices.

There remains a record proportion of long-term unemployed, continued decreasing household income, and tax and federal budget increases.A 2011 poll found that more than half of all Americans think the U.S. is still in recession or even depression, despite official data that shows a historically modest recovery. In 2013 the Census Bureau defined poverty rate decreased to roughly 14.5% of the population.

Income, Poverty and Wealth Americans have the highest average household and employee income among OECD nations, and in 2007 had the second highest median household income. According to the Census Bureau real median household income was $50,502 in 2011, down from $51,144 in 2010. The Global Food Security Index ranked the U.S. number one for food affordability and overall food security in March 2013. Americans on average have over twice as much living space per dwelling and per person as European Union residents, and more than every EU nation. For 2013 the United Nations Development Programme ranked the United States 5th among 187 countries in its Human Development Index and 28th in its inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI).

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There has been a widening gap between productivity and median incomes since the 1970s. While inflation-adjusted ("real") household income had been increasing almost every year from 1947 to 1999, it has since been flat and even decreased recently. The rise in the share of total annual income received by the top 1 percent, which has more than doubled from 9 percent in 1976 to 20 percent in 2011, has had a significant impact on income inequality, leaving the United States with one of the widest income distributions among OECD nations. The post-recession income gains have been very uneven, with the top 1 percent capturing 95 percent of the income gains from 2009 to 2012.

Wealth, like income and taxes, is highly concentrated; the richest 10% of the adult population possess 72% of the country's household wealth, while the bottom half claim only 2%. Between June 2007 and November 2008 the global recession led to falling asset prices around the world.

Assets owned by Americans lost about a quarter of their value. Since peaking in the second quarter of 2007, household wealth is down $14 trillion. At the end of 2008, household debt amounted to $13.8 trillion.

There were about 643,000 sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons in the U.S. in January 2009, with almost two-thirds staying in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program. In 2011 16.7 million children lived in food-insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels, though only 1.1% of U.S. children, or 845,000, saw reduced food intake or disrupted eating patterns at some point during the year, and most cases were not chronic. According to a 2014 report by the Census Bureau, one in five young adults lives in poverty today, up from one in seven in 1980.

Economic indicators Nominal GDP Real GDP growth CPI inflation Employment-to-population ratio Unemployment Labor force participation rate Total public debt Household net worth

$17.555 trillion (Q3 2014) 5% (Q3 2014, annualized) 2.2% (2013) 2.1% (May 2014) 58.9% (May 2014) 5.6% (December 2014) 62.8% (October 2014) $17.5 trillion (Q2 2014) $81.8 trillion (Q1 2014)

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Education American

student in U.S. college

public education is operated by state and local governments, regulated by the United States Department of Education through restrictions on federal grants. In most states, children are required to attend school from the age of six or seven (generally, kindergarten or first grade) until they turn 18 (generally bringing them through twelfth grade, the end of high school); some states allow students to leave school at 16 or 17. About 12% of children are enrolled in parochial or nonsectarian private schools.

Just over 2% of children are homeschooled. The U.S. spends more on education per student than any nation in the world, spending more than $11,000 per elementary 2010 and more than $12,000 per high school student. Some 80% of students attend public universities.

The United States has many competitive private and public institutions of higher education.

According to prominent international rankings, 13 or 15 American colleges and universities are ranked among the top 20 in the world. There are also local community colleges with generally more open admission policies, shorter academic programs, and lower tuition. Of Americans 25 and older, 84.6% graduated from high school, 52.6% attended some college, 27.2% earned a bachelor's degree, and 9.6% earned graduate degrees. The basic literacy rate is approximately 99%. The United Nations assigns the United States an Education Index of 0.97, tying it for 12th in the world.

As for public expenditures on higher education, the U.S. trails some other OECD nations but spends more per student than the OECD average, and more than all nations in combined public and private spending. As of 2012, student loan debt exceeded one trillion dollars, more than Americans owe on credit cards.

Culture The United States is home to many cultures and a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values. Aside from the Native American, Native Hawaiian and Native Alaskan populations, nearly all Americans or their ancestors settled or immigrated within the past five centuries.

Mainstream American culture is a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of European immigrants with influences from many other sources, such as traditions brought by slaves from Africa. More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as both a homogenizing melting pot, and a heterogeneous salad bowl in which immigrants and their descendants retain distinctive cultural characteristics.

Core American culture was established by Protestant British colonists and shaped by the frontier settlement process, with the traits derived passed down to descendants and transmitted to Page 41 of 61

immigrants through assimilation. Americans have traditionally been characterized by a strong work ethic, competitiveness, and individualism, as well as a unifying belief in an "American creed" emphasizing liberty, equality, private property, democracy, rule of law, and a preference for limited government. Americans are extremely charitable by global standards. According to a 2006 British study, Americans gave 1.67% of GDP to charity, more than any other nation studied, more than twice the second place British figure of 0.73%, and around twelve times the French figure of 0.14%.

The American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants. Whether this perception is realistic has been a topic of debate.

While mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society, scholars identify significant differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values. Americans' self-images, social viewpoints, and cultural expectations are associated with their occupations to an unusually close degree. While Americans tend greatly to value socioeconomic achievement, being ordinary or average is generally seen as a positive attribute.

Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts In the 18th and early 19th centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe. Writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau Page 42 of 61

established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the 19th century. Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century's second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, is now recognized as an essential American poet. A work seen as capturing fundamental aspects of the national experience and character—such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925)—may be dubbed the "Great American Novel".

Eleven U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recently Toni Morrison in 1993. William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway are often named among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Popular literary genres such as the Western and hardboiled crime fiction developed in the United States. The Beat Generation writers opened up new literary approaches, as have postmodernist authors such as John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo.

The transcendentalists, led by Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, established the first major American philosophical movement. After the Civil War, Charles Sanders Peirce and then William James and John Dewey were leaders in the development of pragmatism. In the 20th century, the work of W. V. O. Quine and Richard Rorty, and later Noam Chomsky, brought analytic philosophy to the fore of American philosophical academia. John Rawls and Robert Nozick led a revival of political philosophy. Cornel West and Judith Butler have led a continental tradition in American philosophical academia. Globally influential Chicago school economists like Milton Friedman, James M. Buchanan, and Thomas Sowell have transcended discipline to impact various fields in social and political philosophy.

In the visual arts, the Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century movement in the tradition of European naturalism. The realist paintings of Thomas Eakins are now widely celebrated. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene. Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new, individualistic styles. Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein developed largely in the United States. The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has brought fame to American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry.

One of the first major promoters of American theater was impresario P. T. Barnum, who began operating a lower Manhattan entertainment complex in 1841. The team of Harrigan and Hart produced a series of popular musical comedies in New York starting in the late 1870s. In the 20th century, the modern musical form emerged on Broadway; the songs of musical theater composers such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Stephen Sondheim have become pop standards. Playwright Eugene O'Neill won the Nobel literature prize in 1936; other acclaimed U.S. dramatists include multiple Pulitzer Prize winners Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and August Wilson.

Though little known at the time, Charles Ives's work of the 1910s established him as the first major U.S. composer in the classical tradition, while experimentalists such as Henry Cowell and John Cage created a distinctive American approach to classical composition. Aaron Copland and Page 43 of 61

George Gershwin developed a new synthesis of popular and classical music. Choreographers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham helped create modern dance, while George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins were leaders in 20th-century ballet. Americans have long been important in the modern artistic medium of photography, with major photographers including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Ansel Adams.

Music The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African-American music have deeply influenced American music at large, distinguishing it from European traditions. Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and what is now known as oldtime music were adopted and transformed into popular genres with global audiences. Jazz was developed by innovators such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington early in the 20th century. Country music developed in the 1920s, and rhythm and blues in the 1940s.

Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry were among the mid-1950s pioneers of rock and roll. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan emerged from the folk revival to become one of America's most celebrated songwriters and James Brown led the development of funk. More recent American creations include hip hop and house music. American pop stars such as Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna have become global celebrities, as have contemporary musical artists such as Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Rihanna, and BeyoncĂŠ.

Cinema Hollywood, a northern district of Los Angeles, California, is one of the leaders in motion picture production. The world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City in 1894, using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope. The next year saw the first commercial screening of a projected film, also in New York, and the United States was in the forefront of sound film's development in the following decades. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, although in the 21st century an increasing number of films are not made there, and film companies have been subject to the forces of globalization.

Director D. W. Griffith, American's top filmmaker during the silent film period, was central to the development of film grammar, and producer/entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animated film and movie merchandising. Directors such as John Ford redefined the image of the American Old West and history, and, like others such as John Huston, broadened the possibilities of cinema with location shooting, with great influence on subsequent directors. The industry enjoyed its golden years, in what is commonly referred to as the "Golden Age of Hollywood", from the early sound period until the early 1960s, with screen actors such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe becoming iconic figures. In the 1970s, film directors such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Altman were a vital component in what became known as Page 44 of 61

"New Hollywood" or the "Hollywood Renaissance", grittier films influenced by French and Italian realist pictures of the post-war period. Since, directors such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and James Cameron have gained renown for their blockbuster films, often characterized by high production costs, and in return, high earnings at the box office, with Cameron's Avatar (2009) earning more than $2 billion. Notable films topping the American Film Institute's AFI 100 list include Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941), which is frequently cited as the greatest film of all time, Casablanca (1942), The Godfather (1972), Gone with the Wind (1939), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Graduate (1967), On the Waterfront (1954), Schindler's List (1993), Singin' in the Rain (1952), It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Sunset Boulevard (1950). The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, have been held annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1929, and the Golden Globe Awards have been held annually since January 1944.

Sports While most major U.S. sports have evolved out of European practices, basketball, volleyball, skateboarding, and snowboarding are American inventions, some of which have become popular in other countries. Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate Western contact. The Iroquois field their own separate national team, the Iroquois Nationals, in recognition of the confederacy's creation of lacrosse. Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the United States. The United States has won 2,400 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, more than any other country, and 281 in the Winter Olympic Games, the second most behind Norway.

The market for professional sports in the United States is roughly $69 billion, roughly 50% larger than that of all of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa combined. Baseball has been regarded as the national sport since the late 19th century, with Major League Baseball (MLB) being the top league, while American football is now by several measures the most popular spectator sport, with the National Football League (NFL) having the highest average attendance of any sports league in the world and a Super Bowl watched by millions globally. Basketball and ice hockey are the country's next two leading professional team sports, with the top leagues being the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Hockey League (NHL). These four major sports, when played professionally, each occupy a season at different, but overlapping, times of the year.

College football and basketball attract large audiences. Boxing and horse racing were once the most watched individual sports, but they have been eclipsed by golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR. In the 21st century, televised mixed martial arts has also gained a strong following of regular viewers. While soccer is less popular in the United States than in many other nations, the country hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup, the men's national soccer team has been to the past six World Cups and the women are first in the women's world rankings.

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Infrastructure Personal transportation is dominated by automobiles, which operate on a network of 4 million miles of public roads, including one of the world's longest highway systems. The world's second largest automobile market, the United States has the highest rate of per-capita vehicle ownership in the world, with 765 vehicles per 1,000 Americans. About 40% of personal vehicles are vans, SUVs, or light trucks. The average American adult (accounting for all drivers and nondrivers) spends 55 minutes driving every day, traveling 29 miles (47 km).

Mass transit accounts for 9% of total U.S. work trips. While transport of goods by rail is extensive, relatively few people use rail to travel, though ridership on Amtrak, the national intercity passenger rail system, grew by almost 37% between 2000 and 2010. Also, light rail development has increased in recent years. Bicycle usage for work commutes is minimal.

The civil airline industry is entirely privately owned and has been largely deregulated since 1978, while most major airports are publicly owned. The three largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are U.S.-based; American Airlines is number one after its 2013 acquisition by US Airways. Of the world's 30 busiest passenger airports, 12 are in the United States, including the busiest, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Energy The United States energy market is about 29,000 terawatt hours per year. Energy consumption per capita is 7.8 tons of oil equivalent per year, the 10th highest rate in the world. In 2005, 40% of this energy came from petroleum, 23% from coal, and 22% from natural gas. The remainder was supplied by nuclear power and renewable energy sources.

The United States is the world's largest consumer of petroleum.

For decades, nuclear power has played a limited role relative to many other developed countries, in part because of public perception in the wake of a 1979 accident. In 2007, several applications for new nuclear plants were filed. The United States has 27% of global coal reserves. It is the world's largest producer of natural gas and crude oil.

Science & Technology The United States has been a leader in scientific research and technological innovation since the late 19th century. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone. Thomas Edison's research laboratory, one of the first of its kind, developed the Page 47 of 61

phonograph, the first long-lasting light bulb, and the first viable movie camera. The latter lead to emergence of the worldwide entertainment industry. In the early 20th century, the automobile companies of Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford popularized the assembly line. The Wright brothers, in 1903, made the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight.

The rise of Nazism in the 1930s led many European scientists, including Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and John von Neumann, to immigrate to the United States. During World War II, the Manhattan Project developed nuclear weapons, ushering in the Atomic Age, while the Space Race produced rapid advances in rocketry, materials science, and aeronautics.

The invention of the transistor in the 1950s, a key active component in practically all modern electronics, lead to many technological developments and a significant expansion of the U.S. technology industry. This in turn lead to the establishment of many new technology companies and regions around the county such as Silicon Valley in California. Advancements by American microprocessor companies such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Intel along with both computer software and hardware companies that include Adobe Systems, Apple Computer, IBM, GNU-Linux, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems created and popularized the personal computer. The ARPANET was developed in the 1960s to meet Defense Department requirements, and became the first of a series of networks which evolved into the Internet.

These advancements then lead to greater personalization of technology for individual use. As of April 2010, 77% of American households owned at least one computer, and 68% had broadband Internet service. 85% of Americans also own a mobile phone as of 2011.

In the 21st century, 64% of research and development funding comes from the private sector.

The United States leads the world in scientific research papers and impact factor.

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Health Care The United States has a life expectancy of 79.8 years at birth, up from 75.2 years in 1990.

Increasing obesity in the United States and health improvements elsewhere have contributed to lowering the country's rank in life expectancy from 1987, when it was 11th in the world. Obesity rates in the United States are among the highest in the world. Approximately one-third of the adult population is obese and an additional third is overweight; the obesity rate, the highest in the industrialized world, has more than doubled in the last quarter-century.

Obesity-related type 2 diabetes is considered epidemic by health care professionals. The infant mortality rate of 6.17 per thousand places the United States 169th highest out of 224 countries.

In 2010, coronary artery disease, lung cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, and traffic accidents caused the most years of life lost in the U.S. Low back pain, depression, musculoskeletal disorders, neck pain, and anxiety caused the most years lost to disability. The most deleterious risk factors were poor diet, tobacco smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, physical inactivity, and alcohol use. Alzheimer's disease, drug abuse, kidney disease and cancer, and falls caused the most additional years of life lost over their age-adjusted 1990 per-capita rates. U.S. teenage pregnancy and abortion rates are substantially higher than in other Western nations, especially among blacks and Hispanics. U.S. underage drinking among teenagers is among the lowest in industrialized nations.

The U.S. is a global leader in medical innovation. America solely developed or contributed significantly to 9 of the top 10 most important medical innovations since 1975 as ranked by a 2001 poll of physicians, while the EU and Switzerland together contributed to five. Since 1966, more Americans have received the Nobel Prize in Medicine than the rest of the world combined.

From 1989 to 2002, four times more money was invested in private biotechnology companies in America than in Europe. The U.S. health-care system far outspends any other nation, measured in both per capita spending and percentage of GDP. Health-care coverage in the United States is a combination of public and private efforts and is not universal. In 2014, 13.4% of the population did not carry health insurance. The subject of uninsured and underinsured Americans is a major political issue. In 2006, Massachusetts became the first state to mandate universal health insurance. Federal legislation passed in early 2010 would ostensibly create a near-universal health insurance system around the country by 2014, though the bill and its ultimate impact are issues of controversy.

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The Affordable Care Act The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), codified as amended at scattered sections of the Internal Revenue Code and in 42 U.S.C. commonly called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or "ObamaCare", is a United States federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. Together with the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act signed 7 days later, which amended it, it represents the most significant regulatory overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.

The ACA was enacted to increase the quality and affordability of health insurance, lower the uninsured rate by expanding public and private insurance coverage, and reduce the costs of healthcare for individuals and the government. It introduced mechanisms like mandates, subsidies, and insurance exchanges. The law requires insurance companies to cover all applicants within new minimum standards and offer the same rates regardless of pre-existing conditions or sex. Additional reforms were increased competition, regulation, and incentives to streamline the delivery of healthcare. In 2011 the Congressional Budget Office projected that the ACA would lower both future deficits and Medicare spending.

On June 28, 2012, the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the ACA's individual mandate as an exercise of Congress's taxing power in the case National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. However, the Court held that states cannot be forced to participate in the ACA's Medicaid expansion under penalty of losing their current Medicaid funding. Since the ruling, the law and its implementation have continued to face challenges in Congress and federal courts, and from some state governments, conservative advocacy groups, labor unions, and small business organizations.

As of May 2014, about 20 million Americans had gained health insurance coverage under the ACA, and the percentage of uninsured Americans dropped from 18% in 2013 to 13.4%.

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Attachment A The United States Legal System

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US Court Structure

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Civil Case Flowchart

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Adult Criminal Case Flowchart

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Juvenile Case Flowchart

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GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Faculty Scholarship

2006

An Introduction to the United States Legal System: Cases and Comments Alberto M. BenĂ­tez George Washington University Law School, abenitez@law.gwu.edu

Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/faculty_publications Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Alberto Benitez, An Introduction to the United States Legal System: Cases and Comments (2006).

This Book Part is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact spagel@law.gwu.edu.

An Introduction to the United States Legal System Carolina Academic Press Law Casebook Series

Advisory Board Gary J. Simson, Chairman Cornell Law School

Raj K. Bhala University of Kansas School of Law

John C. Coffee, Jr. Columbia University Law School

Randall Coyne University of Oklahoma College of Law

John S. Dzienkowski University of Texas School of Law

Paul Finkelman University of Tulsa College of Law

Robert M. Jarvis Shepard Broad Law Center Nova Southeastern University

Vincent R. Johnson St. Mary's University School of Law

Michael A. Olivas University of Houston Law Center

Kenneth Port William Mitchell College of Law

Michael P. Scharf Case Western Reserve University School of Law

Peter M. Shane Michael E. Moritz College of Law The Ohio State University

Emily L. Sherwin Cornell Law School

John F. Sutton, Jr. Emeritus, University of Texas School of Law

David B. Wexler John E. Rogers College of Law University of Arizona

An Introduction to the United States Legal System Cases and Comments

Alberto Manuel Benítez George Washington University School of Law

Carolina Academic Press Durham, North Carolina Copyright © 2006 Alberto Manuel Benítez All Rights Reserved

ISBN 0-89089-428-0 LCCN 2005937559

Carolina Academic Press 700 Kent Street Durham, North Carolina 27701 Telephone (919) 489-7486 Fax (919) 493-5668 www.cap-press.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Principal Cases Brown v. Board of Education Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth Flynt v. Falwell Gregg v. Georgia Grutter v. Bollinger Lawrence v. Texas Miranda v. State of Arizona Pelman v. McDonald's Corporation Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey Plessy v. Ferguson Regents of the University of California v. Bakke Roe v. Wade Spires v. Spires United States v. Alvarez-Machain United States v. Jose Manuel-Gonzales United States v. Montoya de Hernandez

70 380 232 320 347 281 309 365 269 56 334 239 17 41 333 298

Preface In this casebook, I introduce non-US trained lawyers and law students to the intricacies and nuances of our legal system. The world is becoming a smaller place and as a consequence of this globalization the need for lawyers who are international in perspective and competence is increasing. Whatever one's opinion about globalization there is no doubt that the US legal system is at the forefront of these changes.

The idea for this casebook arose after I taught the course "Introduction to the US Legal System" at the law school of the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City during the summer of 2000. I was impressed by the knowledge my Mexican law students had of the US legal system, and by how eager they were to learn more about it. Because I believe that people are people regardless of their citizenship I assumed that some lawyers and law students in other countries might be similarly interested. I like to flatter myself by thinking that I've compressed three years of US legal education into this one casebook. The reader will decide if I've succeeded.

I thank the many law students who assisted me in the preparation of this casebook, especially April Joy Mears, Shephali Agrawal, Connie Chan, María Alejandra Negrón, Emily Purcell, and Gening Liao. Also many thanks to Professor José Roldán Xopa, from the ITAM law school, and David López, formerly of St. Mary's law school in San Antonio, for their friendship and support.

Finally, but most importantly, my deepest love, thanks, respect, and admiration to my wife, Janice A. Salas.

Alberto Manuel Benítez The George Washington University Law School July, 2005

Contents Contents Table of Contents Preface

ix xi

Chapter 1: Legal Culture in the United States

3

Introduction The Socratic Method Socratic Method Still Debated; It forces Legal Thought but May Intimidate Women, Minorities California Court Structure The Federal Courts Comparing & Contrasting the U.S. Legal System with Foreign Systems Disparate Justice Imprisons Mexico’s Poor, as Police Focus on Petty Crime Major Offenders Often Go Unpunished A Matter of Degree: How a Jury Decided That a Coffee Spill is Worth $2.9 Million Examples of the U.S. Legal System in Action Man Tied to Pole Wins Suit; Pr. George’s, Police Ordered to Pay $647,000 in Rights Case Judge Slashes Handcuffed Man’s Award Spires v. Spires Notes & Questions Basic Principles of the Comparative Method

Chapter 2: Briefing and Reading a Case Introduction How Do We Brief?

Reading the Case Analyzing the Case Components of the Brief Facts Procedural History Issue Rules Application and Analysis Holding Final Thoughts Introduction to Legal Writing and Oral Advocacy How to Brief Practice Case Brief United States v. Alvarez-Machain Chapter 3: Common Law

Introduction Introduction to Common Law The Power of Precedent Plessy v. Ferguson Overturning Precedent Brown v. Board of Education

3 3 3 7 8 9 9 12 15 15 17 18 25 26 33

33 33 33 34 34 34 34 34 34 35 35 35 35 39 41 41 53

53 53 56 56 70 70

Notes & Questions Chapter 4: The Legal Profession

Introduction George W. Bush; The Record in Texas; Attorney’s Ineptitude Doesn’t Halt Execution The American Legal Profession Information Relating to the Admission of Attorneys in Massachusetts Court Accepts Clinton Resignation

Chapter 5: Civil Procedure: Pretrial Activities Introduction Complaint & Answer How to Start a Lawsuit Discovery Fundamentals of American Law Motions Summary Judgment President Clinton’s Motion for Summary Judgment

75 83

83 83 86 105 114

175 117 117 117 143 143 163 163 164

Chapter 6: Civil Procedure: Trial

175

Introduction Opening Statements Fundamentals of American Law Trial Techniques Direct Examination Trial Techniques Cross Examination and Objections Trial Techniques Closing Statements Trial Techniques Moot Court Problem

175 175 175 178 187 187 201 210 214 214 225

Chapter 7: Constitutional Law: Freedom of Speech & Privacy

231

Introduction Freedom of Speech Introduction to the First Amendment Flynt v. Falwell Notes & Questions Privacy Introduction Roe v. Wade Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey Notes & Questions Lawrence v.Texas

Chapter 8: Constitutional Law: Criminal Rights

297

Introduction Constitutional Criminal Rights and the Death Penalty The Death Penalty: A Summary Search & Seizure

297 297 298 298

U.S. v. Montoya de Hernandez Self-Incrimination Miranda v. State of Arizona Capital Punishment Gregg v. Georgia

298 309 309 320 320

Chapter 9: Constitutional Law: Affirmative Action

333

Introduction United States v. Jose Manuel-Gonzales Regents of the University of California v. Bakke UT Professor Blasts Efforts for Diversity on Campus Grutter v. Bollinger Notes & Questions

333 333 334 345 347 357

Chapter 10: Torts

365

Introduction Big Food Litigation Pelman v. McDonald’s Corporation Notes & Questions Sexual Harassment Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth Notes & Questions

365 365 365 375 380 380 392

Index

397

Introduction to the U.S. Legal System Professor Alberto M. Benitez ABSTRACT This casebook introduces non-U.S trained lawyers, law students, and college undergraduates to the intricacies and nuances of our legal system. The world is becoming a smaller place and as a consequence of this globalization, the need for lawyers who are international in perspective and competence is increasing. Whatever one’s opinion about globalization, there is no doubt that the U.S. legal system is at the forefront of these changes. This book attempts to compress three years of U.S. legal education into one casebook.

The following materials in this chapter, and throughout this book, will help nonUnited States law students and pre-law students gain a better understanding of the legal system and the overall legal culture at work in the United States. Particularly, within this chapter is information on the infamous Socratic Method employed, to some extent, at most law schools throughout the country. Also, within this chapter is information that draws specific contrasts between the United States legal system and others. As the reader continues through the text, he will begin to understand that in the United States legal culture, the way one arrives at the answer is just as important as answering the question.

Given its intended audience, this book is an introduction to comparative legal studies, under the theory that, in establishing what the law is in each jurisdiction under study, comparative law (and for that matter, studies of foreign law, as well) should (a) be concerned to describe the normal conceptual world of the lawyer, (b) take into consideration all the sources upon which a lawyer in that legal system might base her opinion as to what the law is, and (c) take into consideration the gap between the law on the books and law in action, as well as (d) important gaps in available knowledge about either the law on the books or the law in [action].

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE UNITED STATES LEGAL SYSTEM Chapter 1: Legal Culture in the United States Introduction The following materials in this chapter and throughout this book will help you gain a better understanding of the legal system and the overall legal culture at work in the United States. Particularly within this chapter is information on the infamous Socratic Method employed, to some extent, at most law schools throughout the country. Also within this chapter is information that draws specific contrasts between the United States legal system and others.

As you continue through the text, you will begin to understand that in the United States legal culture, the way you arrive at the answer is just as important as answering the question.

The Socratic Method Socratic Method Still Debated; It Forces Legal Thought but May Intimidate Women, Minorities

By David Folkenflik, The Baltimore Sun

For asking students questions rather than giving them answers, Socrates was offered exile or death. He chose death. Now, 24 centuries later, adversaries are still trying to kill off his teaching method.

This time, the dispute arises at American law schools, where a caustic version of the Socratic method, once the standard, is on the wane. Disliked by students who are put on the spot, condemned as hostile to women and minorities, the teaching style again is at risk of exile. The teaching practice evolved from Harvard Law School, where students were questioned on legal arcana in what often felt like an interrogation.

In the 1973 film "The Paper Chase," based on the Harvard experience, the tart-tongued Professor Kingsfield (actor John Houseman) tormented one wary student after another, each fearing abject humiliation. For many professors, Kingsfield reminds them of what they liked least about law school.

"It wasn't something that I remember nicely about my law school days," says Pamela Gann, dean of Duke University's School of Law. "I do not think being intimidated in class added to my learning capabilities.�

"Having said that," she adds, "I think some of the goals of the Socratic method are laudatory."

First, the brief for the prosecution: Many law students find it a terrifying experience.

Some scholars, including Lani Guinier, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, argue that it keeps women and minorities off balance.

Several black and women law students at the University of Maryland say they are ambivalent about the issue: Unless professors are scrupulously even-handed, the exchanges allow generally white, male students to bond with their generally white, male instructors through glib rejoinders.

1

And the Socratic method fosters competition rather than collaboration, several female professors and students say.

Anxiety can be motivating, says Susan Leviton, a University of Maryland law professor.

But the Socratic method often turns law students off, she says.

"It sort of measures the students who are articulate, witty, quick thinkers. Law is a lot more than that," she says.

Now, the defense: By being grilled on the intricate implications of court decisions, students learn to think on their feet—just as they would if they were arguing motions before skeptical judges.

"If it involves the students knowing they may be called on, they both prepare better and follow what's happening in class better," says Maryland law Professor William Reynolds, who graduated from Harvard Law in 1970. "The Socratic method also, by asking questions, gets more deeply into policy and practice-type issues than a mere lecture." During a recent 50-minute class, Reynolds singled out six students for intense questioning.

"You're under constant anxiety that you're going to be called on," says Susie Ahn, a firstyear law student. When Reynolds called on her first in the class on civil procedures, she says, "My heart just dropped."

Ahn fenced with Reynolds neatly, fending off his initial questions until she felt confident of her reply, and he soon left her for another target. Eight minutes later, he returned to Ahn, as he did throughout the class.

Reynolds teased, vexed, prodded and provoked her classmates, occasionally interrupting his queries with short bursts of background information he considers to be "mini-lectures."

He paced before the front of the long rows seating 100 students in the class, his voice soaring with each question or aside. In short succession, Reynolds mocked the law school's dean, the Supreme Court, the Navy, Baltimore accents and the legal profession itself. He needled and then praised, in feigned astonishment, a student who wrote a paper on getting thrown out of a court proceeding during voir dire (jury selection).

"I like it because it livens up the mood," Ahn says.

Yet for law students, some of whom graduate tens of thousands of dollars in debt, the concept of paying to be harangued can be a little startling.

Yolanda Douglas, a first-year Maryland student from Upper Marlboro, says she enjoyed Reynolds' course, in part because he seems to pick on everyone equally. But, she says, "as a student, I prefer lectures—you get the law from the professor's mouth." "It's kind of sad to admit, but the ultimate goal is to do well on the exam," she says.

It's unclear how many law schools rely heavily on the Socratic method, according to the American Bar Association. The practice is most often used during the first year of instruction, say professors at several law schools.

Younger faculty members have been innovative in attempts to shake off tradition. Some professors tell students who's going to be called on—last names beginning with "A" through "H," or the back three rows, for example. Some simply lecture and call on volunteers to answer questions.

Others, like Maryland's Leviton, have found new means. Her courses are structured to give hands-on experience with cases at a law clinic for children. Students often work in teams and tend to be far more collegial than in courses taught through the Socratic method.

"They investigate facts, develop a theory of a case, deal with witnesses who aren't helpful," Leviton says. "I think that's what lawyering is all about," Leviton says.

2

In a new book, Guinier argues that the Socratic method is sometimes used to establish the dominance of the instructor over the class in a particularly male role. "It is perceived as a fight to prevail, not a method of inquiry," Guinier writes. "To the extent this occurs, the technique of Socratic teaching looks to many women like ritualized combat."

Even those who defend the Socratic method say it has softened from its harshest form at Harvard, where the instructor demands responses from students but volunteers no information himself.

"Anybody at Maryland or at Harvard or at Penn who tried to teach exactly that way in 1997 would meet significant student resistance," says Donald Gifford, dean of Maryland's law school. "There is an expectation the person at the front of the room is going to provide the answers."

Reynolds' students, at least, remain fans. "He makes a lot of jokes," says Wayne Cooper, a black student. "If you're a minority in a law school, you may have a problem with the Socratic method. They badger you with questions. I think it prepares you more to be an attorney." ______ Introduction to Legal Writing and Oral Advocacy, N. Schultz, 1993. with notation "Reprinted with the permission of Lexis Nexis."

LEARNING ABOUT THE LEGAL SYSTEM ยง 201 The Legal System and Legal Writing Much of the legal writing you will do in your career will involve analyzing legal problems. To analyze a legal problem you must understand the sources of our law and their relationships to each other. You must also understand the workings of our legal system. This chapter provides a broad introduction to our court system, the common law and statutory law and interpretation. Once you understand these as aspects of the legal process you will be able to evaluate a legal problem properly and prepare an accurate and well-reasoned legal analysis. ยง 202 Sources of Law and Their Hierarchy There are three primary categories of law: constitutions, statutes and common law. The Constitution of the United States and the 50 state constitutions set out the structure and powers of government, protect individual liberties and govern a host of areas ranging from crime to social security benefit levels. The common law is the law judges make when they rule on cases. When a case is decided it becomes a precedent for future similar legal conflicts in the same jurisdiction.

An applicable constitutional provision statute or common law rule always governs the outcome of a legal problem. The existing case law will assist you in interpreting the statute or constitutional provision in the context of your particular case. When there is no relevant constitutional provision or statute, as there often is not, the existing body of case law, called the common law, is the sole source of authority for evaluating and resolving your case. ยง 203 The Court System Two court systems operate simultaneously in the United States: the state court system and the federal court system. In both the state and federal court systems there are two types of courts: trial courts and appellate courts. The following is an overview of each system.

(1) The State Courts 3

Each of the 50 states has a court system. Although the structure of that system differs from state to state it is always hierarchical. There are trial courts often an intermediate appellate court and a court of last resort, the tribunal at the top tier of the court system. In addition, there also may be numerous other courts that perform specialized roles such as small claims courts, juvenile courts and housing courts.

A trial court is presided over by one judge and may or may not include a jury. The function of a trial court is to determine the facts by evaluating the evidence in a case and to arrive at a decision by applying the law to the facts. Trial courts at the state level may be divided into courts of limited jurisdiction and courts of general jurisdiction. Pursuant to the provision of the state constitution and state laws, courts of limited jurisdiction rule on certain specific matters such as violations of criminal law. Courts of general jurisdiction are empowered to hear a broader range of civil and criminal matters and often also review appeals of courts of limited jurisdiction.

From the decision of a trial court the losing party may appeal to the next level, the appellate court. The appeal is heard by a panel of three to five judges of whom a majority must agree on a particular result. The result forms the basis of the court's opinion deciding the case.

The appellate court evaluates the lower court's decision and determines whether it committed any legal error that would warrant reversing or modifying the decision or ordering a new trial. The decision of the appellate court may be appealed to the state's higher court, which has the discretion to choose most cases it will hear. The decisions of the courts of last resort are final and there is no further appeal of state law issues.

This diagram of the California courts illustrates a typical state court system.

The Federal Courts The Constitution and certain federal statutes establish the federal courts and empower them to hear certain kinds of cases. Federal courts hear all cases that arise under federal law, such as those involving the United States Constitution or federal statutes, disputes between two states or cases in which the United States is a party.

Like the state systems, the federal court system is divided into trial courts, appellate courts and a court of last resort. The trial courts are called district courts. Each state has at least one district court and that court's jurisdiction is limited to the territory of its district. In a district court case, a judge sits with or without a jury depending on the nature of the case and the wishes of the parties.

The intermediate appellate courts in the federal system are called the United States Courts of Appeals. The Courts of Appeals hear appeals from the district courts located in the same circuit. A circuit is a designated geographical area usually encompassing several states.

The United States is divided geographically into 13 circuits. Eleven of these circuits are identified by number, for example, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

There is also the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which hears appeals in patent cases, certain international trade cases and some cases involving damage claims against the United States.

Usually, three judges sit on a panel to decide a particular case and at least two must agree for a decision to be reached.

The Supreme Court of the United States, consisting of the Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices, is the highest court in the federal system. The Court hears a limited number of 4

cases from the Courts of Appeals and on certain issues from the district courts and the highest state courts. The Court must accept review of certain types of cases but has the discretion to select others. Cases heard by the Supreme Court generally involve new or unresolved questions of federal law affecting people throughout the country and interpretation of federal statutes or the United States Constitution.

The diagram below illustrates the federal court hierarchy.

Comparing and Contrasting the U.S. Legal System with Foreign Systems Disparate Justice Imprisons Mexico's Poor; As Police Focus on Petty Crime, Major Offenders Often Go Unpunished

By Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan, The Washington Post.

Giovanni Hurtado Aviles was hurrying to his engineering class when he realized he didn't have the two pesos — about 20 cents — for the subway. When he tried to use somebody else's pass to get on, he was caught and hauled to jail. "I made a mistake. I am really sorry. I won't do it again," Hurtado, 20, said he told the guard who nabbed him that January morning.

But the Mexican justice system, which often fails to punish serious criminals, zealously prosecutes the most minor of offenders. So the college student with no criminal record was denied bail and forced to mop floors for 12 hours a day for two months while he awaited trial.

"Our justice system is not just," said the Rev. Jose Luis Tellez, a Roman Catholic priest and lawyer who tries to get such prisoners freed. "The real criminals are at home in their houses while these people are in jail."

Mexico's courts and jails are clogged with people like Hurtado, people who stole a bicycle, bread, shampoo, subway fare. More than half of the 22,000 prisoners in Mexico City's jails are there for offenses so slight that human rights advocates — and increasingly, city officials — say they never should have been jailed in the first place.

According to recent testimony to the Mexican Congress by top law enforcement officials, well over 90 percent of serious crime goes unpunished. In a nation with one of the world's highest kidnapping rates, much drug-related bloodshed and a chilling level of violence on the streets of the capital, the prisons are choked with people who stole to eat. Tellez said a man who stole a Gansito, similar to a Twinkie, was released in November after spending three years in jail.

He said another man who stole bread worth about $4 was sentenced to six years.

Public opinion polls show that Mexicans are fed up with their justice system. One of the key complaints is that it thunders down so hard on petty criminals. At every turn, the system is consumed with the smallest crimes: Poorly trained police focus on the easiest crimes to solve; corrupt officers, often paid to look the other way when there is more serious crime, have no such incentive to let small-time offenders go. Legislators under political pressure to combat rising crime rates have set tough minimum sentences for the smallest of robberies.

The result is that in many cases, as with Hurtado, the subway cheater, judges are forced by the law to hand down sentences they believe are unfair. Judges in Mexico have almost no discretionary authority. The Mexican legal system, based in 19th century Napoleonic Code, deliberately limits the role of judges. The theory is that legislators should craft penalties and judges should simply impose them.

The judge in Hurtado's case wanted to be lenient but said the law would not let him. He convicted Hurtado of "using a false document" — showing a subway worker's pass that Hurtado 5

said he had found on the floor. That is the equivalent of a felony, a crime considered too grave to warrant bail, punishable by a minimum of four years in prison. Behind bars, Hurtado vomited from nervousness. He fell far behind on his class work and lost wages from an after-school job.

"What my son did wasn't a crime; it was a mistake," said his mother, Laura Aviles Rodriguez. "Who would call this justice?"

Behind the high brick walls of a Mexico City development called Poinsettia, amid gardens of purple bougainvillea and expensive SUVs parked in a row on the cobblestones, Oscar Espinosa Villareal lives the life of an accused embezzler with means.

Espinosa, Mexico City's mayor from 1994 to 1997, is accused of illegally diverting $45 million that was never accounted for during his term. When a judge issued a warrant for his arrest in August 2000, he did what many wealthy Mexicans do in the same situation: He bought a plane ticket and fled the country. His top aide is still a fugitive.

Espinosa flew to Canada and then Nicaragua, where he was caught. He maintains he has done nothing illegal and that he is the victim of a revenge campaign by his political enemies. He fought extradition on grounds that the case against him amounted to political persecution, but the Nicaraguans sent him home.

Espinosa is part of the well-connected old guard of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ran Mexico from 1929 to 2000. He served as campaign finance manager for his old friend, Ernesto Zedillo, who became president and rewarded Espinosa with the mayor's job, a presidentially appointed position until 1997. When Espinosa's term expired, Zedillo appointed him to serve as national tourism minister from 1997 to 2000.

When Espinosa arrived back in Mexico on a federal police jet from Nicaragua, his wealth and connections kicked in. He hired one of Mexico's leading lawyers, who persuaded a federal judge to issue an order forbidding his arrest and detention, allowing him to remain free pending trial. Espinosa was ordered to post bail of about $400,000. He paid about $12,000 in cash, put up his house to cover the balance, and then went home.

Based on Mexico's long history of elites beating criminal charges, few here believe Espinosa will ever be convicted. It is a story Mexicans know well: Accused of stealing $45 million, Espinosa sleeps in his own bed at night, while Hurtado, who sneaked a 20-cent subway ride, was forced to sleep on a jailhouse cot for months awaiting trial.

Francisco Garduno, the former head of prisons for Mexico City, has given speeches to inmates citing Espinosa as an example of how those accused of major crimes get better treatment than minor offenders, who are invariably poor. "The road to justice opens up wide for them," Garduno said. "But for the poor it is very narrow."

Far from Espinosa's hillside retreat, in a rough neighborhood in the southeast side of the city, Tellez, the Catholic priest, runs a church program to get minor offenders out of jail.

Frustrated with the government's approach to petty criminals, the church has quietly begun its own effort to help. The church pays fines and bail for thousands of nonviolent petty criminals, most of them first offenders. People convicted of a crime are often allowed to choose jail time or a fine. Tellez said he has handled cases of many who could have avoided jail or served less time by paying a fine of as little as $25.

"It absolutely is unfair that money determines freedom," Tellez said.

Church lawyers last year reviewed the files of 11,000 prisoners in Mexico City jails, half the city's inmates. They concluded that at least 4,000 were minor offenders stuck behind bars because they could not afford to pay fines or bail. In all, the church has arranged for the release of 4,100 people.

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A private foundation, supported by Telefonos de Mexico, or Telmex, the country's largest telephone company, has paid for the release of 20,000 minor offenders in the last five years.

The foundation spokesman, Mario Cobo Trujillo, said cases have included a man, charged with injuring another man in a fight, who spent eight months in jail awaiting trial until the foundation paid his $25 bail. Cobo said another man spent more than 18 months awaiting trial for want of $100 for bail.

Mexico's culture of official secrecy has kept the extent of the problem hidden. Until recently all prison records in Mexico were considered confidential, and they are still difficult to obtain. That has made it hard to document how the system has been primarily focused on the least significant crimes.

But now that church lawyers and human rights workers are being given access, members of the public are getting their first glimpses at the make-up of the prison population. What they are finding has sparked a drive to substitute restitution and community service for prison time for minor offenders.

Hurtado's case was handled by Judge Eduardo Mata, a chain-smoking former prosecutor.

"Ever since I got this case, I thought it was a shame," Mata said in an interview in his glasswalled courthouse office. "He just did something stupid. But there was nothing I could do."

Mata, who has been a judge for nine years, said the case was a frustrating reminder of the strict limits on his authority and how minor offenders end up behind bars.

"I think we need reforms that give judges more freedom," he said. "We don't have the flexibility we need."

A Mexican judge's main task is to read files and issue a sentence that falls between the minimum and maximum penalty established in the criminal codes. In Mexico there are no jury trials. And in many cases, the judge never even sees the defendant, issuing his decision based on the written record. Limiting the judge's authority is meant to limit bribery and other corruption on the bench.

"Our hands are tied by the law," Mata said. "We can't do anything if we think the minimum sentence is unfair."

Mata recalled a case in which a young man stole a bag of bread from a woman in a Mexico City market. Police grabbed him immediately, and they and the thief discovered that the woman had also stuffed 40,000 pesos — about $4,500 — into the bag after a trip to the bank.

Mata said he wanted to sentence the man based on his intention, which he said was to steal a loaf of bread. But because the man had committed a major robbery, even unwittingly, Mata said, the law required him to sentence him to several years in prison.

In Hurtado's case, Mata said the best he could do was issue the minimum sentence for his crime: four years in prison and a fine of about $950. Mata said he then used the only wiggle room the law allowed him, letting Hurtado substitute an additional fine of about $560 for his prison time.

"He didn't damage society in any way," Mata said. "I didn't like the sentence I had to give him. Our laws aren't that fair."

Gaunt and defeated, Hurtado walked out of jail on March 13 after 63 days behind bars.

A former employer lent him more than $1,500 to pay his fines, allowing him to avoid a prison sentence that would have kept him locked up until 2006. That makes him luckier than most. But it will take every peso of his earnings — and his mother's — for more than a year to pay back his debt.

7

Former prison chief Garduno, who now runs the city's transportation department, is outraged at how the system treated Hurtado and how it punishes the wrong people. So he gave him a city job to help him pay off his debts.

"I am trying to repair the damage done to our society," Garduno said. "I am trying to rectify something that has happened to thousands of people in Mexico."

This story is one of a series examining Mexico's justice system. For previous stories see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/issues/mexicojustice/. Researcher Laurie Freeman in Mexico City contributed to this report. ______ A Matter of Degree: How a Jury Decided That a Coffee Spill Is Worth $2.9 Million McDonald's Callousness Was Real Issue, Jurors Say, In Case of Burned Woman How Hot Do You Like It?

By Andrea Gerlin, The Wall Street Journal

Albuquerque, N.M.—When a law firm here found itself defending McDonald's Corp. in a suit last year that claimed the company served dangerously hot coffee, it hired a law student to take temperatures at other local restaurants for comparison.

After dutifully slipping a thermometer into steaming cups and mugs all over the city, Danny Jarrett found that none came closer than about 20 degrees to the temperature at which McDonald's coffee is poured, about 180 degrees.

It should have been a warning.

But McDonald's lawyers went on to dismiss several opportunities to settle out of court, apparently convinced that no jury would punish a company for serving coffee the way customers like it. After all, its coffee's temperatures helps explain why McDonald's sells a billion cups a year.

But now—days after a jury here awarded $2.9 million to an 81-year-old woman scalded

by McDonald's coffee—some observers say the defense was na!ve. "I drink McDonald's coffee because it's hot, the hottest coffee around," says Robert Gregg, a Dallas defense attorney who consumes it during morning drives to the office. "But I've predicted for years that someone's going to win a suit, because I've spilled it on myself. And unlike the coffee I make at home, it's really hot. I mean, man, it hurts."

McDonald's, known for its fastidious control over franchises, requires that its coffee be prepared at very high temperatures, based on recommendations of coffee consultants and industry groups that say hot temperatures are necessary to fully extract the flavor during brewing. Before trial, McDonald's gave the opposing lawyer its operations and training manual, which says its coffee must be brewed at 195 to 205 degrees and held at 180 to 190 degrees for optimal taste. Since the verdict, McDonald's has declined to offer any comment, as have their attorneys. It is unclear if the company, whose coffee cups warn drinkers that the contents are hot, plans to change its preparation procedures.

Coffee temperature is suddenly a hot topic in the industry. The Specialty Coffee Association of America has put coffee safety on the agenda of its quarterly board meeting this month. And a spokesman for Dunkin' Donuts Inc., which sells about 500 million cups of coffee a year, says the company is looking at the verdict to see if it needs to make any change to the way it makes coffee.

8

Others call it a tempest in a coffeepot. A spokesman for the National Coffee Association says McDonald's coffee conforms to industry temperature standards. And a spokesman for Mr. Coffee Inc., the coffee-machine maker, says that if customer complaints are any indication, industry settings may be too low—some customers like it hotter. A spokeswoman for Starbucks Coffee Co. adds, "Coffee is traditionally a hot beverage and is served hot and I would hope that this is an isolated incident."

Coffee connoisseur William McAlpin, an importer and wholesaler in Bar Harbor, Maine, who owns a coffee plantation in Costa Rica, says 175 degrees is "probably the optimum temperature, because that's when aromatics are being released. Once the aromas get in your palate, that is a large part of what makes the coffee a pleasure to drink."

Public opinion is squarely on the side of McDonald's. Polls have shown a large majority of Americans—including many who typically support the little guy—to be outraged at the verdict. And radio talk-show hosts around the country have lambasted the plaintiff, her attorneys and the jurors on the air. Declining to be interviewed for this story, one juror explained that he already had received angry calls from citizens around the country.

It's a reaction that many of the jurors could have understood—before they heard the evidence. At the beginning of the trial, jury foreman Jerry Goens says he "wasn't convinced as to why I needed to be there to settle a coffee spill."

At that point, Mr. Goens and the other jurors knew only the basic facts: that two years earlier, Stella Liebeck had bought a 49-cent cup of coffee at the drive-in window of an Albuquerque McDonald's, and while removing the lid to add cream and sugar had spilled it, causing third-degree burns of the groin, inner thighs and buttocks. Her suit, filed in state court in Albuquerque, claimed the coffee was "defective" because it was so hot.

What the jury didn't realize initially was the severity of her burns. Told during the trial of Mrs. Liebeck's seven days in the hospital and of her skin grafts, and shown gruesome photographs, jurors began taking the matter more seriously. "It made me come home and tell my wife and daughters don't drink coffee in the car, at least not hot," says juror Jack Elliott.

Even more eye-opening was the revelation that McDonald's had seen such injuries many times before. Company documents showed that in the past decade McDonald's had received at least 700 reports of coffee burns ranging from mild to third degree, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000.

Some observers wonder why McDonald's, after years of settling coffee-burn cases, chose to take this one to trial. After all, the plaintiff was a sympathetic figure—an articulate, 81-yearold former department store clerk who said under oath that she had never filed suit before. In fact, she said, she never would have filed this one if McDonald's hadn't dismissed her request for compensation for pain and medical bills with an offer of $800.

Then there was the matter of Mrs. Liebeck's attorney. While recuperating from her injuries in the Santa Fe home of her daughter, Mrs. Liebeck happened to meet a pair of Texas transplants familiar with a Houston attorney who had handled a 1986 hot-coffee lawsuit against McDonald's. His name was Reed Morgan, and ever since he had deeply believed that McDonald's coffee is too hot.

For that case, involving a Houston woman with third-degree burns, Mr. Morgan had the temperatures of coffee taken at 18 restaurants such as Dairy Queen, Wendy's, and Dunkin' Donuts, and at 20 McDonald's restaurants. McDonald's, his investigator found, accounted for nine of the 12 hottest readings. Also for that case, Mr. Morgan deposed Christopher Appleton, a 9

McDonald's quality assurance manager, who said "he was aware of this risk...and had no plans to turn down the heat," according to Mr. Morgan. McDonald's settled that case for $27,500.

Now, plotting Mrs. Liebeck's case, Mr. Morgan planned to introduce photographs of his previous client's injuries and those of a California woman who suffered second-and third-degree burns after a McDonald's employee spilled hot coffee into her vehicle in 1990, a case that was settled out of court for $230,000.

Tracy McGee of Rodney Dickason, Sloan, Akin & Robb, the lawyers for McDonald's, strenuously objected. "First-person accounts by sundry women whose nether regions have been scorched by McDonald's coffee might well be worthy of Oprah," she wrote in a motion to the state court Judge Robert Scott. "But they have no place in a court of law." Judge Scott did not allow the photographs nor the women's testimony into evidence, but said Mr. Morgan could mention the cases.

As the trial date approached, McDonald's declined to settle. At one point, Mr. Morgan says he offered to drop the case for $300,000, and was willing to accept half that amount. But McDonald's didn't bite.

Only days before the trial, Judge Scott ordered both sides to attend a mediation session.

The mediator, a retired judge, recommended that McDonald's settle for $225,000, saying a jury would be likely to award that amount. The company didn't follow his recommendation.

Instead, McDonald's continued denying any liability for Mrs. Liebeck's burns. The company suggested that she may have contributed to her injuries by holding the cup between her legs and not removing her clothing immediately. And it also argued that "Mrs. Liebeck's age may have caused her injuries to have been worse than they might have been in a younger individual, "since older skin is thinner and more vulnerable to injury."

The trial lasted seven sometimes mind-numbing days. Experts dueled over the temperature at which coffee causes burns. A scientist testifying for McDonald's argues that any coffee hotter than 130 degrees could produce third-degree burns, so it didn't matter whether McDonald's coffee was hotter. But a doctor testifying on behalf of Mrs. Liebeck argued that lowering the serving temperature to about 160 degrees could make a big difference, because it takes less than three seconds to produce a third at 190 degrees, about 12 to 15 seconds at 180 degrees and about 20 seconds at 160 degrees.

The testimony of Mr. Appleton, the McDonald's executive, didn't help the company, jurors said later. He testified that McDonald's knew its coffee sometimes caused serious burns, but hadn't consulted burn experts about it. He also testified that McDonald's had decided not to warn customers about the possibility of severe burns, even though most people wouldn't think it possible. Finally, he testified that McDonald's didn't intend to change any of its coffee policies or procedures, saying, "There are more serious dangers in restaurants."

Mr. Elliott, the juror, says he began to realize that the case was about "callous disregard for the safety of the people."

Next for the defense came P. Robert Knaff, a human-factors engineer who earned $15,000 in fees from the case and who, several jurors said later, didn't help McDonald's either.

Dr. Knaff told the jury that hot-coffee burns were statistically insignificant when compared to the billion cups of coffee McDonald's sells annually.

To jurors, Dr. Knafff seemed to be saying that the graphic photos they had seen of Mrs. Liebeck's burns didn't matter because they were rare. "There was a person behind every number and I don't think the corporation was attaching enough importance to that," says juror Betty Farnham.

10

When the panel reached the jury room, it swiftly arrived at the conclusion that McDonald's was liable. "The facts were so overwhelmingly against the company," says Ms. Farnham. "They were not taking care of their consumers."

Then the six men and six women decided on compensatory damages of $200,000, which they reduced to $160,000 after determining that 20% of the fault belonged to Mrs. Liebeck for spilling the coffee.

The jury then found that McDonald's had engaged in willful, reckless, malicious or wanton conduct, the basis for punitive damage. Mr. Morgan had suggested penalizing McDonald's the equivalent of one to two days of companywide coffee sales, which he estimated at $1.35 million a day. During the four-hour deliberation, a few jurors unsuccessfully argued for as much as $9.6 million in punitive damage. But in the end, the jury settled on $2.7 million.

McDonald's has since asked the judge for a new trial. Judge Scott has asked both sides to meet with a mediator to discuss settling the case before he rules on McDonald's request. The judge also has the authority to disregard the jury's finding or decrease the amount of damages.

One day after the verdict, a local reporter tested the coffee at the McDonald's that had served Mrs. Liebeck and found it to be a comparatively cool 158 degrees. But industry officials say they doubt that this signals any companywide change. After all, in a series of focus groups last year, customers who buy McDonald's coffee at least weekly say that "morning coffee has minimal taste requirements, but must be hot," to the point of steaming.

Examples of the U.S. Legal System in Action Man Tied to Pole Wins Suit; Pr. George's, Police Ordered to Pay $647,000 in Rights Case

By Ruben Castaneda, Washington Post A federal civil jury in Greenbelt found yesterday that Prince George's County police violated the civil rights of a Salvadoran immigrant who in 1996 was left handcuffed to a post in the dark. The jury ordered the county and the officers to pay the man $647,000.

The award for Nelson Omar Robles, 26, is believed to be the highest civil jury judgment against county police in about a decade.

"The act of being tied to a pole—they treated him like a dog," said juror Robert Sehgal, 71, a retired scientist from Chevy Chase.

The jury, which deliberated about 13 hours over three days, found for Robles on two of his four claims of civil rights violations and awarded him $150,000 in compensatory damages for his suffering.

The rest of the award is in punitive damages—so called because they are designed to punish the defendants for their actions. The jury awarded Robles punitive damages of $350,000 against the county, $119,000 against former county police lieutenant James Rozar and $28,000 against county police officer Antonio DeBarros.

The county indemnifies officers in lawsuits stemming from their actions while on duty and pays any damages assessed against them.

Jury foreman Edward Stewart, of Burtonsville, said jurors arrived at those awards by proposing amounts they believed were fair and reaching a consensus.

The jury found that the officers and the county were not liable for violations of the state constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. But they found that both officers acted with malice when they used strong plastic flex cuffs to tie Robles to a pole about 5 a.m. Aug. 17, 1996.

11

"I'm happy," Robles, a Hyattsville construction worker, said after the verdict. "I think the decision is just. I don't want what happened to me to happen to anyone else."

"Simple justice was served here," said Robles' Riverdale attorney, Terrell N. Roberts III. Deputy County Attorney John Bielec, who defended the county and both officers, said, "We're disappointed in the verdict." He said he plans to appeal aspects of the verdict but declined to comment further.

The incident began about 3 a.m. on that warm August night. According to court testimony and court records, DeBarros went to a Langley Park apartment complex to investigate a report of people making too much noise.

Robles and three friends were outside the apartments, drinking beer and talking, according to court testimony. DeBarros called a police dispatcher to check the names of each of the friends for warrants and learned that Robles was wanted in Montgomery County on a warrant for five traffic violations. The violations stemmed from a non-injury accident, and Robles testified he was not aware the warrant existed.

DeBarros arrested Robles. A short time later, Rozar, the ranking officer for that patrol area, arrived, according to court testimony.

Rozar testified that he was frustrated when Montgomery County police refused his request to meet him at the county line so Robles could be handed over. A Montgomery police sergeant testified that his officers were busy responding to a house burglary.

At the direction of Rozar, DeBarros drove Robles to a parking lot just inside Montgomery County, according to court testimony. There, Rozar directed DeBarros to take Robles to a metal pole supporting a staircase, and the lieutenant took a pair of plastic flex cuffs out of his unmarked car and tied Robles to the pole, according to court testimony.

Then they left, and Rozar placed an anonymous phone call to Montgomery police, reporting that a man was tied to a pole, according to court testimony.

A police trial board found that Rozar violated the department's general orders by tying Robles to a pole and leaving him. He retired with full benefits in 1997. The police trial board found no wrongdoing by DeBarros, ruling that he was following Rozar's orders.

Rozar insisted in his testimony that he drove to a nearby spot and watched Robles until Montgomery officers arrived, even though Montgomery officers testified they did not see him.

Jury foreman Stewart said the jury did not believe that Rozar stayed to watch Robles. ______ Judge Slashes Handcuffed Man's Award

By Ruben Castaneda, The Washington Post

Four months after a federal civil jury awarded $647,000 to a Salvadoran immigrant who was left handcuffed to a post by Prince George's County police, a U.S. District Court judge in Greenbelt has reduced the amount by more than $400,000.

U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte ruled that while county police definitely humiliated Nelson Omar Robles, he was not physically harmed and the jury award was excessive.

In April, a federal civil jury awarded the larger amount to Nelson Omar Robles, 26, after finding that Prince George's police violated his civil rights. Two county police officers used strong plastic cuffs to tie Robles to a pole in the early-morning hours of Aug. 17, 1996, according to testimony.

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Prince George's police had detained Robles because he was wanted in Montgomery County for five traffic violations. Officers testified that they cuffed Robles to a pole near the county line and left him there because Montgomery County police said they were too busy to pick him up. Robles was left alone for about 15 minutes before Montgomery police arrived.

Messitte also denied a motion by Robles that the county be ordered to pay Robles $84,000 in attorneys' fees.

Robles can accept the reduced amount or opt for a new trial. Terrell N. Roberts III, Robles' attorney, said Robles will probably accept the smaller amount of nearly $245,000. ______ Spires v. Spires 743, A.2d, 186, (D.C. App. 1999)

TERRY, Appellant Myles Spires, Jr., appeals from an order awarding appellee Yvonne Spires custody of their three minor children. Mr. Spires maintains that the trial court abused its discretion in failing to enforce provisions of marital and separation agreements which provided that he be awarded sole custody of the children and have complete power to determine Mrs. Spires' visitation rights. We hold that because those portions of the agreements are unenforceable in the District of Columbia, the trial court correctly disregarded them and based its decisions on custody and visitation solely on the best interests of the children. We also reject appellant's contention that the trial court erred in failing to give adequate consideration to the relationship between the children and their halfbrother. Finding no error in the record before us, we affirm.

Myles and Yvonne Spires were married on October 27, 1984. The marriage produced three children: Myles III, born August 1, 1985; Lorenzo, born October 16, 1986; and Paul, born August 22, 1989. Delanta Spires, Mr. Spires' son from a previous relationship, also lived in the marital home. Sometime around 1990 the marital relationship began to deteriorate because of financial disputes and mutual suspicions of infidelity. On September 23, 1991, following a threeday separation, the parties signed a document described as a "marital agreement," in which Mr. Spires promised to remain married to Mrs. Spires as long as she complied with thirteen "Articles of Continuance." In the event of a divorce, seven "Articles of Dissolution" would control. These articles provided, in part, that neither party would pay any child support or alimony, and that Mr. Spires would have sole custody of the children with absolute power to determine Mrs. Spires' visitation rights.

On March 22, 1994, Mrs. Spires left the marital home. That same day, she drafted a handwritten letter declaring her intent to dissolve the marriage, granting Mr. Spires "sole proprietorship" of all real property, retaining to herself only selected articles of clothing "and other miscellaneous items," and relinquishing "all custody and parental rights and authority ...."

The letter concluded with a statement that it was "mastered [sic] devoid of undue duress" and that Mrs. Spires "only desired to pursue a new and different life alone."

Several months later, Mr. Spires filed a complaint seeking a divorce and permanent custody of the children. Mrs. Spires filed an answer and counterclaim, also seeking a decree of divorce, custody of the children, child support, equitable distribution of personal property, and an equitable interest in a Maryland home which Mr. Spires co-owned with his alleged mistress. A few days later, Mr. Spires filed a motion to enforce the marital and separation agreements. Mrs. Spires filed an opposition, claiming that the agreements were signed without full disclosure of Mr. Spires' interest in the Maryland property.

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The case went to trial before a judge of the Superior Court, and upon its conclusion the judge awarded interim custody of the children to Mrs. Spires. The judge ruled that a final determination would be made after the completion of a home study by the Family Branch of the court's Social Services Division and psychological testing conducted by Washington Assessment and Therapy Services ("WATS").

Joyce Bradford, a court probation officer, performed the home study. In her evaluative summary, Ms. Bradford recommended that custody of the three children be awarded to Mrs. Spires. Although Mr. Spires presented the reports of two other therapists which contained claims of child abuse made against Mrs. Spires by Delanta, Ms. Bradford found the allegations unfounded, malicious, motivated by a desire to defame Mrs. Spires, and deliberately concocted to influence the court proceedings. In her testimony at a hearing on November 15, 1995, Ms. Bradford stated that the child abuse allegations were not supported by her interviews with the children and their teachers at Gibbs Elementary School. She found it highly unlikely, given Delanta's prior history of abuse (by his biological mother), that he would be able to mask the abuse described in the therapists' reports. Ms. Bradford further stated that Delanta's "overall demeanor" indicated to her that he was merely "reciting information that had been given to him" by someone else. None of the other children mentioned any incidents of abuse involving Mrs. Spires. On the basis of her investigation, Ms. Bradford opined that "the children [were] being given negative information in order to legitimize Mr. Spires' individual claims."

The wishes of the children were inconclusive. Myles III said that he wanted to live with his father, Paul preferred living with his mother, and Lorenzo did not state a preference. Ms. Bradford testified that the children were "bonded" and had a very close relationship with their half-brother Delanta. According to Ms. Bradford, the best solution to the custody issue would be a joint custody arrangement, but the relationship between the parents made such an arrangement unfeasible.

The court in due course entered findings of fact, conclusions of law, and a judgment of absolute divorce. With respect to custody, the court found that Mrs. Spires had been the primary caretaker for most of the children's lives; that she had left the family home in March 1994 because she believed that was the only way to free herself from Mr. Spires' control and domination; that Mrs. Spires never intended to abandon the children, and in fact attempted to have them join her as quickly as possible; that Mrs. Spires had steady employment and had maintained a stable and appropriate home for the children, attending to their physical, educational, and emotional needs; and that the children were comfortable with Mrs. Spires in the home she had created. In contrast, the court found that Mr. Spires "has not been completely candid with the court regarding his living situation, his relationship with [his alleged mistress], and several other matters," including his sources of income, and that Mr. Spires had spoken negatively about Mrs. Spires to the children in an attempt to undermine her, a factor which the court considered "of great significance in making a custody determination in this case."

The court's findings were based on its own interviews with the children, the psychological assessment by WATS, the home study evaluation, and Ms. Bradford's testimony at the hearing, which the court found "very credible and insightful." The court concluded that the children's best interests would be served by awarding Mrs. Spires permanent custody while granting liberal visitation privileges to Mr. Spires, consistent with Ms. Bradford's recommendation. Additionally, Delanta was permitted to visit the other children at Mrs. Spires' home.

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II As a general rule, separation agreements determining property rights are to be encouraged, and their provisions are enforceable in court. Lanahan v. Nevius, 317 A.2d 521, 524 (D.C. 1974); Doerfler v. Doerfler, 196 A.2d 90, 91 (D.C. 1963). "In the absence of fraud, duress, concealment, or overreaching, a husband and wife may enter into a valid separation agreement which finally settles all property rights and claims between them, and constitutes a bar to further claims by the wife." Davis v. Davis, 268 A.2d 515, 517 (D.C. 1970) (citations omitted).

Agreements regarding the custody of children, however, are another matter entirely.

In the District of Columbia, parents "may use a separation agreement to establish child custody and visitation rights ...." Portlock v. Portlock, 518 A.2d 116, 118 (D.C. 1986). Generally, such agreements are enforceable, like property settlements, "in the absence of fraud, duress, concealment or overreaching." Id. (citing Cooper v. Cooper, 472 A.2d 878, 880 (D.C. 1984)); see also Rice v. Rice, 415 A.2d 1378, 1382 (D.C. 1980). However, the court has the authority to modify custody arrangements agreed upon by the parties if it is in the best interests of the children to do so. Owen v. Owen, 427 A.2d 933, 938 (D.C. 1981); Rice, 415 A.2d at 1383. The determination of the children's best interests, which is always "the controlling consideration," is "entrusted to the sound discretion of the trial court." Owen, 427 A.2d at 938; accord, e.g., Utley v. Utley, 364 A.2d 1167, 1170 (D.C. 1976); Willcher v. Willcher, 294 A.2d 486, 487 (D.C. 1972) (expressly recognizing that "the best interest of a child takes precedence over any agreement executed by its parents"). To the same effect is Emrich v. McNeil, 75 U.S. App. D.C. 307, 310, 126 F.2d 841, 844 (1942): "After submitting themselves to the jurisdiction of the court, the parents cannot by their agreement deprive it of power to control the custody and maintenance of the child. Such a child is in a very real sense the ward of the court. It has power to change the custody of the child ..."

In light of Owen and other controlling case law, we hold that the provisions in the marital and separation agreements upon which Mr. Spires relies could not deprive the court of the power to determine whether the parties' custody arrangement was in the best interests of the children.

The trial court thus properly considered whether the custody provisions in the agreements were consistent with those interests. On the record before us, we conclude that the court did not err in ruling that those provisions were contrary to the children's best interests and in deciding to award custody to Mrs. Spires.

III Mr. Spires also contends that the trial court abused its discretion in awarding custody of the three children to Mrs. Spires without giving adequate consideration to the relationship between the children and their half-brother, Delanta, as required by statute. This contention is not supported by the record.

Mr. Spires correctly notes that, despite the court's instructions, the home study did not address the relationship between the children and Delanta. At the November 15 hearing, however, Ms. Bradford testified that the children were "bonded" and had a very close relationship with Delanta. Furthermore, the court's final order included a provision for Delanta to visit the children at Mrs. Spires' home, reflecting the court's concern for maintaining and nurturing this relationship. Mr. Spires' claim that the trial court did not consider this factor is thus without merit.

In any dispute between parents over the custody of minor children, the primary consideration is the best interests of the children. Bazemore v. Davis, 394 A.2d 1377 (D.C. 1978) (en banc). Because of the "intensely individual nature of custody determinations," we accord 15

those decisions "great deference" and will reverse only upon a showing of a clear abuse of discretion. Prost v. Greene, 652 A.2d 621, 626 (D.C. 1995); accord, e.g., Fitzgerald v. Fitzgerald, 566 A.2d 719, 721 (D.C. 1989); Dorsett v. Dorsett, 281 A.2d 290, 292 (D.C. 1971).

As required by Super. Ct. Dom. Rel. R. 52 (a), the trial court supported its custody determination with detailed findings of fact and conclusions of law. See, e.g., Utley v. Utley, 364 A.2d at 1169; D.C. Code ยง 16-911 (a-2)(6)(C). The court based these findings on its own interviews with the children, the psychological assessment conducted by WATS, the home study evaluation by Joyce Bradford, and Ms. Bradford's testimony at the November 15 hearing. In particular, the court found that Mrs. Spires had been the primary caretaker for most of the children's lives and that she never had any intention to abandon them. The court also found that Mrs. Spires had steady employment; that she maintained a stable and appropriate home for the children, attending to their physical, educational, and emotional needs; and that the children were comfortable with Mrs. Spires in the home she had created. The court gave due consideration to the expressed wishes of the children, but found them to be inconclusive and therefore worthy of little weight.

The court faulted Mr. Spires for not being "completely candid with the Court regarding his living situation, his relationship with [his alleged mistress], and several other matters," including his sources of income. Noting that Mr. Spires has spoken negatively about Mrs. Spires to the children in an attempt to undermine her, the court said that it considered this factor to be "of great significance in making a custody determination in this case." One of the reasons why we accord such a high level of deference to trial judges in child custody cases is that "in addition to [her] evaluation of the credibility of witnesses ... only the trial judge has an opportunity to appraise at first hand the character of the parties." Dorsett v. Dorsett, 281 A.2d at 292. It was therefore entirely appropriate for this trial judge to base her ruling, at least in part, on an assessment of Mr. Spires' character and its effect on the children's relationship with their mother.

Both in his brief and at oral argument, Mr. Spires contends that the trial court erroneously denied him the opportunity to present witnesses relevant to the custody determination. We cannot consider these claims, however, because Mr. Spires has failed to include in the record on appeal a transcript of the proceeding at which the trial court allegedly made these rulings. A party noting an appeal from a judgment of the trial court has an affirmative duty "to present this court with a record sufficient to show affirmatively that error occurred." Cobb v. Standard Drug Co., 453 A.2d 110, 111 (D.C. 1982) (citations omitted). "We cannot base our review of errors upon statements of counsel [or, in this case, statements of a party] which are unsupported by [the] record." D.C. Transit System, Inc. v. Milton, 250 A.2d 549, 550 (D.C. 1969) (cited with approval in Cobb, 453 A.2d at 112). Thus we reject Mr. Spires' argument for lack of record support.

The record which we do have shows that "the trial judge has considered all relevant factors and no improper ones, and [that] her decision is ... supported by substantial reasoning drawn from a firm factual foundation in the record." Prost v. Greene, 652 A.2d at 626 (citations omitted). The order from which this appeal is taken is therefore Affirmed.

CONCUR: SCHWELB, concurring: I agree that the judgment should be affirmed, and I am pleased to join the opinion of the court. I add this brief concurrence because the contents of the purported agreement of the parties summarized in footnote 2 of the court's opinion and in the associated text are sufficiently 16

remarkable to warrant the reproduction of the document in full. I have therefore appended a copy of the "Marital Agreement" to my separate opinion. I commend the entire agreement to the reader's attention, for the full impact of its depravity is difficult to capture even in the most accurate summary.

Although, unfortunately, some men abuse, oppress and humiliate their wives, it is surely rare for a husband not only to reduce to writing an instrument requiring total subordination by the wife to the husband's caprice, but also to require his unfortunate spouse to sign it. I find it even more remarkable that a husband who has contrived to secure his wife's formal written assent to the husband's assertion of supremacy would then have the temerity to ask a court to enforce such an oppressive document according to its terms.

In my opinion, a "contract" such as the one between these parties, which formalizes and seeks to legitimize absolute male domination and female subordination within the marital relationship, is against the public policy of this jurisdiction. It may not be enforced in our courts, nor can it be permitted to affect adversely the rights of the oppressed wife or her children. To me, the appendix to this opinion is worth preserving as a striking example of the lengths to which some men would go to formalize the absurd and to exalt to contractual status their petty domestic tyranny.

One would hope that the document before us will be regarded by the reader as a curious but deeply offensive relic of a bygone era. It reflects a view of the relationship between the sexes that should have been consigned long ago to well-deserved oblivion. Under the law, the parties' now-defunct marriage made Mrs. Spires her former husband's partner, not his slave.

MARITAL AGREEMENT This document drawn on this 23rd day of September 1991 with the below affixed signatures of Yvonne Angenette Spires. Myles Spires, Jr. and a notary public, shall henceforth serve as the governing document for the continuance and, if applicable, the dissolution (including distribution of assets and placement of children) of the abovementioned parties' marriage, which began October 27, 1984, as per the husband's, Myles Spires, Jr., discretion.

The husband, Myles Spires, Jr., hereby agrees to continue in this marriage provided that the wife, Yvonne Angenette Spires, complies with the following articles of continuance and any addendums added bearing the notarized signature of the husband.

ARTICLES OF CONTINUANCE 1. Wife shall in no case obtain money from the joint bank accounts, individual accounts, or house emergency funds without express permission of the husband.

2. Wife shall in no case divulge information of any kind which concerns domestic relationships, i.e., marital difficulties, particulars concerning children, job status(es), and financial information to anyone outside of the marriage without the express permission of the husband. Anyone includes the wife's family, acquaintances, and friends and the husband's family, acquaintances and friends.

3. Wife shall in no way attempt to influence the status/intensity of the relationships that husband has with other individuals outside of the marriage unless the husband verbally requests input from the wife. Moreover, the wife shall, at all times, treat the husband's family, friends, and acquaintances with the utmost respect.

4. Wife shall immediately divulge to the husband any input concerning the marriage or matters concerning the marriage given by outside parties.

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5. In public, wife shall in no way dispute husband on any matters; rather, shall present herself in full accordance with him at all times. Matters of dispute should be handled in private and with due respect, i.e., no yelling, profanity, or badgering.

6. Wife shall conduct herself in accordance with all scriptures in the Holy Bible applicable to marital relationships germane to wives and in accordance with husband's specific requests. Wife shall consult husband as to the applicability of scriptures.

7. Wife's sexual relationships shall remain spontaneous and solely with the husband.

8. Wife shall carry out requests of the husband in strict accordance, i.e., timeliness, sequence, scheduling, etc.

9. Wife shall govern the affairs of the children at her discretion. However, wife shall always inform the husband of any particular dealings with the children, i.e., disciplining, illness, etc. and any input by the husband concerning the children shall be considered a request; handled according to Article 8 of this document.

10. Wife must receive express permission from the husband before removing or lending property jointly owned and/or valued in excess of $100.00 (individually or jointly owned).

11. Wife shall not receive any loan, and/or a monetary or other gift(s) without first obtaining permission from husband. Should it be impossible to contact husband to obtain such permission, wife may receive the loan or gift(s); however, upon next contact with the husband, wife shall inform the husband of all details concerning the loan and/or gift(s), i.e., giver's name, amount, nature, lender's name. Should the wife find anything of value, it shall be treated as receiving a gift or loan.

12. Wife shall participate and interact in the husband's ministry and business affairs according to the husband's direction only. Moreover, she shall in no way administer funds, interact with supporters, participants or parishioners, or interface with clients without the express direction of the husband.

13. It is agreed that violation of any of these articles by the wife shall be considered mental cruelty and abandonment of the marriage and a request for legal separation and divorce, and may result in legal separation and divorce proceedings.

ARTICLES OF DISSOLUTION Should the wife violate any of the abovementioned articles for continuance, and the legal separation and divorce proceedings are instituted, the following articles of dissolution shall serve as a settlement agreement for the legal separation and divorce.

ARTICLES OF DISSOLUTION 1. The present dwelling where the husband, wife and children now reside, 333 17th Street, N.E., Washington, D.C., shall become the sole possession of the husband. Myles Spires, Jr., with all furnishings, appliances, lighting fixtures and any other articles desired by the husband, Myles Spires, Jr. 2. The children, Delanta A. Spires, Myles Spires III, Lorenzo J. Spires, and Paul Seqouyah Spires shall be in the custody of the husband, Myles Spires, Jr. Visitation shall be determined by the husband.

3. The automobiles shall be divided equally; the red 1987 Ford Taurus shall be the sole possession of the husband, Myles Spires, Jr., and the blue 1988 Ford Escort shall be the sole possession of the wife, Yvonne Angenette Spires.

4. All monies in individual and joint banking accounts shall be the sole possession of the husband, Myles Spires, Jr. 5. Neither party shall be required to pay one another child support or alimony.

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6. All unpaid joint debts shall remain joint debts and shall be divided and paid equally by the husband and wife.

7. All individual debts shall remain individual debts and be paid by the individual in whose name the debt is at the time of legal separation and remain the same upon divorce.

Yvonne Angenette Spires 9/23/91 Date Myles Spires, Jr. 9/23/91 Date I hereby certify that Yvonne Spires and Myles Spires appeared before me this 23rd day of September 1991.

Sharee Tawnya Brent Notary Public Notes and Questions In continuing with this text, read and consider the following excerpt. It proposes one method for understanding, evaluating and studying comparative law: Basic Principles of the Comparative Method 1. Comparative law involves drawing explicit comparisons, and most non-comparative foreign law writing could be strengthened by being made explicitly comparative.

The first clause of this principle may seem to verge on tautology, but it is amazing how much writing about foreign law is not explicitly comparative and yet is thought of as part of comparative law. I wish to insist that the comparative method involve explicit comparison of aspects of two or more legal systems. Some may object that any description of foreign law is implicitly comparative because all descriptions of foreign law are at a minimum trying to make the law of one system comprehensible for those trained in a different system. But I reject that argument on the grounds that the step of actually drawing the comparison is crucial to realizing the intellectual benefits of comparison. Actually framing the comparison makes one think hard about each legal system being compared and about the precise ways in which they are similar or different. If one wishes to claim the benefits of the comparative method, one cannot leave the act of comparison to the reader.

Much "pure" (that is, non-comparative) foreign law scholarship could be made stronger by incorporating explicit comparison. The first argument has to do with strengthening the effectiveness of foreign law writing. Whatever other purposes a study of foreign law may be intended to serve, at a minimum it is no doubt intended to communicate to a domestic audience some aspects of the foreign law. The domestic audience will inevitably compare what the author tells it about foreign law with what they know about their own legal system. The communication will therefore be much more effective if the author draws the comparisons for them by summarizing the most important similarities and differences. In so doing, the foreign law scholar can also prevent the reader from making miscomparisons based on ignorance of her own legal system. This danger is all the more likely if the audience includes people who are not educated as lawyers, as it often does in the case of foreign law studies.

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The second reason concerns the question of the audience for foreign law, an even more acute problem for foreign law than most other legal writing. Without explicit comparison to the home country explaining the relevance of the foreign law for the domestic legal system, most domestic lawyers will have little interest in reading a piece about foreign law. There are, no doubt, exceptions. Perhaps some areas of foreign law are of such general interest and obvious importance that a non-comparative, foreign law article on those subjects will interest a general legal audience. Moreover, there will always be groups of country specialists and general comparatists for whom specialized treatment of foreign law will be interesting. Indeed, foreign law articles, even if not comparative, are crucial for comparative law scholars because they permit them to expand the number of jurisdictions with which they work beyond those that use languages with which they are comfortable and to whose legal materials they have access. But beyond these small circles, there are not likely to be very many people who will be interested in a foreign law topic unless the writer explains its relevance for contemporary, domestic issues, and such an explanation necessarily requires some explicit comparison.

Finally, [in view of the ways] in which explicit comparison is especially likely to contribute to our understanding of law, it is a shame for someone to have made the effort to master the details of certain aspects of one or more foreign legal systems and yet not take advantage of that knowledge, which is a prerequisite for comparison, to try to get the benefits of the comparative method....Foreign law scholars could thus help comparative law "bring home the bacon" by employing explicit comparison.

2. The comparative method consists in focusing careful attention on the similarities and differences among the legal systems being compared, but in assessing the significance of differences the comparatist needs to take account of the possibility of functional equivalence.

Comparison starts by identifying the similarities and differences between legal systems or parts of legal systems under comparison. However, in performing the basic comparative job of identifying similarities and differences, one has to consider the scope of comparison: What is going to be compared with what? Here the comparatist comes face to face with the enigma of translation. In one sense every term can be translated because there are things in each legal system that are roughly the functional equivalent of things in the other legal system. In another sense nothing can be translated because the equivalents are different in ways that matter at least for some purposes. At a minimum, generally equivalent terms in each language often have different fields of associated meaning, like, for example, "fairness" and "loyaute."

[Thus] a good comparative law study should normally devote substantial effort to exploring the degree to which there are or are not functional equivalents of the aspect under study in one legal system in the other system or systems under comparison. This inquiry forces the comparatist to consider how each legal system works together as a whole. By asking how one legal system may achieve more or less the same result as another legal system without using the same terminology or even the same rule or procedure, the comparatist is pushed to appreciate the interrelationships between various areas of law, including especially the relationships between substantive law and procedure.

As in all fields of intellectual endeavor, a healthy skepticism about the received wisdom concerning differences and similarities and a strongly self-critical approach toward one's own conclusions are useful tools. Do civil law countries really refuse in all cases to treat court decisions as a source of law or are there civil law analogues to stare decisis? Does the U.S. constitutional limitation of federal court power to "cases" and "controversies" really prevent all abstract review of the kind permitted in continental European systems? How similar are the 20

offices of judge in different legal systems? Or the role of private attorneys in litigation or in counseling? In the end, few rules or legal institutions—maybe none—have precise equivalents in other legal systems, and yet there are many rules and institutions which are broadly similar or similar in some very important ways.

Comparative analysis proceeds in the tension between these two extremes. Good scholarship should normally try to figure out the extent to which the differences identified in law or legal systems are significant because they affect the outcome or the nature of the process and the extent to which they do not.

In using ideals as a common point of departure for comparison, one must be on guard against the natural human tendency to use without reflection the ideals of one's own system as the normative measure for systems that may not accept the ideal. For example, the rule of law is an ideal that developed first in Western Europe and the United States. Some would argue today that it enjoys nearly universal acceptance; others would dispute that it does not, pointing out how its development is tied to the development of society, law, and forms of government in the West.

Thus, if one wishes to argue that one legal system is better or more highly developed than another because it better or more fully institutes the rule of law, one should not only consider carefully the question of functional equivalence, but also confront directly the question why it is appropriate to apply the rule of law as a normative measure. Of course, ideals by their nature are meant to carry normative force, so the use of an ideal as a tertium comparationis will naturally be understood as a normative argument. Therefore, if the comparatist means the comparison with the ideal solely as an analytic exercise, he had better make his non-normative stance especially clear. If he means it as a normative argument, he had better consider whether it is justifiable to apply the ideal to the societies in question.

3. The process of comparison is particularly suited to lead to conclusions about (a) distinctive characteristics of each individual legal system and/or (b) commonalities concerning how law deals with the particular subject under study.

What should the point of the comparison be? Comparative study of law can be undertaken simply to inform the reader about foreign law, perhaps for the practical purpose of facilitating an international transaction or resolving a conflict of laws problem. It may be part of a campaign of law reform. It may be part of a comparative study of human culture or part of a critical project aimed at exposing the way law masks the exercise of power. It can even be used to spoof legal scholarship. There is no reason why comparative studies should be limited to any particular set of purposes. The comparative method is just a tool.

From the nature of comparative studies, as outlined in the foregoing section, however, it can be seen that comparative law naturally and primarily leads in two directions at once. Because comparison focuses on both differences and similarities, comparative law studies cast light on (1) the special or unique natures of the legal systems being compared and (2) their commonalities with respect to the issue in question. The first direction leads toward defining the distinctive features of each legal system. The second direction leads toward appreciation of commonalities, maybe even universal aspects, of legal systems and insight into fundamental aspects of the particular legal issue in question. Thus a comparative study of contract enforcement in France and the United States should lead to both (a) an appreciation of distinctive aspects of French and U.S. law, respectively, and (b) an appreciation of some of the fundamental problems of enforcement of private agreements in an economy with significant market activity.

Thus comparative studies may uncover interesting ideas for domestic law reform, but in the end the case for adoption of a foreign model cannot rest on the fact that many other countries 21

have the rule or legal institution. The argument for domestic law reform has to be made in terms of normative claims acceptable within the domestic legal system, and probably the foreign transplant will have to be modified in significant ways precisely because each legal system reflects an at least partially unique legal system.

The simple educative function of helping lawyers from one system understand and communicate effectively with lawyers from another system seems to grow more important every day as human transactions become ever more "globalized." For the same reason, there is renewed interest in efforts to harmonize law, in part by finding the "common core" of different legal systems' rules governing particular areas, like contracts, property, and torts. The spread of human rights discourse drives a similar interest in the "common core" of public law in order to help define, in the weakly normative way discussed above, what the ideal of the "rule of law" should mean. In all of these activities, the basic comparative method leads us to commonalities, simultaneously relativizing differences and correcting overhasty generalizations by revealing distinctive differences, as well.

4. One of the benefits of comparative analysis is its tendency to push the analysis to broader levels of abstraction through its investigation into functional equivalence.

The fact that after careful analysis the aspects to be compared in each legal system remain in some important senses apples and oranges is not bad. The real power of comparative analysis arises precisely from the fact that the process of comparing "apples" and "oranges" forces the comparatist to develop constructs like "fruit." It forces the comparatist to articulate broader categories to accommodate terms that are at least in some significant way functional equivalents and to search on broader levels for functional similarities and differences. For example, consider pretrial discovery in the United States, which permits non-criminal litigants to search widely even in the hands of the opponents for evidence to support their cases. German civil procedure does not recognize a similar general right of one party to look for evidence in the other party's files and among its witnesses outside of the courtroom, but there are some more limited rights to require divulgence of specific information or documents in court.

One might have thought that in looking for analogues to pretrial discovery, there was no need to consider in-court interrogation since U.S. law also provides for that method of eliciting information from the other party and non-party witnesses, but further reflection leads one to see that discovery is but one method of permitting one side to extract information from the other side or from third party witnesses. In-court examination is, of course, another method, and in looking for functional equivalence, one might even want to consider the question of the degree to which both systems shift the burden of proof (or impose strict liability in tort cases) to account for grossly unequal access by the parties to relevant information. Thus the search for functional equivalence with U.S. civil discovery procedures leads to the broader question of how different legal systems handle the inequality between the parties with respect to access to information.

5. The comparative method has the potential to lead to even more interesting analysis by inviting the comparatist to give reasons for the similarities and differences among legal systems or to analyze their significance for the cultures under study.

Comparative study could end with a delineation of relevant similarities and differences.

This would satisfy the minimum goal of comparative study, and as the previous sections have indicated, that goal alone requires significant legal analysis if the problems of functional equivalence are investigated thoroughly. However, once one has carefully determined similarities and differences between the legal systems under study, a broader field of inquiry presents itself, one that poses fascinating questions of great general interest. One may ask what 22

the reasons are for the similarities and differences among the legal systems under study.

Alternatively, to avoid simplistic notions of causality in human society, one may ask what the significance of the identified similarities and differences is for an understanding of the respective legal systems and the broader cultures of which they are a part. In either case, the point of the inquiry is to pay attention to the connections (or lack of connections) between the specific differences and similarities under study and broader, more systemic contrasts among legal systems, and most particularly, broader contrasts among societies and cultures.

Seeking answers to these questions will cause the comparatist to consider not only global comparison of legal systems, but also similarities and differences in the respective political, economic, and social systems and historical traditions of which they are a part. This is the aspect of comparative law that leads the student beyond law to the rest of the humanities and social sciences, maybe even to the natural sciences. This is where the various "law ands" become relevant: law and history, law and economics, law and society, even law and literature. Since law is but a part of the seamless whole of human culture, there is in principle scarcely any field of study that might not shed some light on the reasons for or significance of similarities and differences among legal systems. Really good comparative writing should be informed by at least some of these allied fields and will be to the extent it seeks to explain why there are given similarities or differences among legal systems or seeks to assess the significance of such similarities or differences.

6. In establishing what the law is in each jurisdiction under study, comparative law (and, for that matter, studies of foreign law, as well) should (a) be concerned to describe the normal conceptual world of the lawyer, (b) take into consideration all the sources upon which a lawyer in that legal system might base her opinion as to what the law is, and (c) take into consideration the gap between the law on the books and law in action, as well as (d) important gaps in available knowledge about either the law on the books or the law in [action]. (a) Focus on the Normal Conceptual World of the Lawyers This focus on the conceptual world of the lawyer suggests first and foremost a focus on formal legal reasoning. What counts as a source of law in each system under study? Using the law stated in the formal sources of law, what arguments can be made in each system with respect to the legal question under study and how would they be evaluated by well-trained lawyers in each system respectively? In some systems, like that of the United States with its common law heritage and explicitly political ways of selecting judges, lawyers tend to include a consideration of broader questions of policy in their formal legal reasoning and may also take into consideration the political dimensions of a legal problem in analyzing how a court will likely decide a given issue.

These kinds of policy considerations and political calculations should also be included as part of the mental world of the well-trained lawyer in such a system. Furthermore [appreciating] what does and does not count as a good argument in a foreign legal system requires an understanding of the general philosophical traditions of that culture, at least to the extent that they may have influenced the jurists.

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(b) Taking Account of All Sources of Information About the Law The focus on lawyers' argumentation will counteract the tendency to focus on statutory materials only and will force the comparatist to consult cases and the commentary of scholars, as well. In Sacco's terms, the comparatist will have to deal with the variety of "legal formants"— that is, all the authorities a lawyer working in a given system might consult to find the law, from formal sources of law like constitutions and statutes to authorities that are not recognized as formal sources of law but which are nevertheless influential, such as the writings of jurists. The point of Sacco's formulation is that these legal formants may or may not be in harmony. Indeed, on many important questions, there are likely to be in any legal system that has any substantial degree of autonomy from other political institutions a number of conflicting opinions about what the legal rule is.

By paying attention to all the relevant legal formants, the comparatist will be saved from taking a more simplistic view of the law than does the foreign legal culture the comparatist is studying. (c) The Gap Between Law on the Books and Law in Action The discussion of legal formants shows that one cannot confine one's search for foreign law to the statute books. Other legal formants, such as court opinions or the writings of scholars, may show that what is regarded as the law in that society is quite different from what one might have thought it to be if one looked only at the statutes. There thus may be, and probably are in most legal systems, important gaps between the law in the statute books and the law actually applied by the courts. Comparative law should be interested in both, and especially in the explanations and rationales given by participants in the legal system to explain the gap because these explanations may reveal a great deal about legal reasoning in that system.

There are also in all countries gaps between the law applied by courts and the law under which people live who for some reason—poverty, ignorance, attachment to traditional lifestyles, prejudice, corruption, or fear of political persecution—are unable or unwilling to invoke the protection of the formal legal rule. Because lawyers are interested not just in formal legal argumentation, but also in the actual impact of law in the world, the comparatist should be interested in this gap as well. Perceptions of the gap may influence legal reasoning. In Brazil, for example, the gap between the law on the books and law in action has been so evident to Brazilians that it has a special name, the "jeito", and it has, at least in some forms, become a highly prized legal or social institution for obtaining fairness amid the chaos of the formal legal system. It may be especially easy to see this kind of gap in foreign legal systems, but the comparatist should also be on the lookout for it in his own legal system because no legal system is entirely immune to this phenomenon.

Finally, there are also in all countries situations in which the impact of a particular legal rule is affected by practices which are not part of the formal law. For example, the effect that the consideration doctrine could have to hinder the commercial use of options in U.S. law is greatly mitigated by the practice of granting them in return for nominal payment. Medieval Islamic law even developed a rich literature on the subject of legal devices which were forthrightly intended to permit parties to circumvent certain legal proscriptions, like that against payment of interest.

In trying to assess the functional equivalence of two systems of rules, it is important to have 24

information about contracting and other practices which may either attenuate or magnify the impact of the rules. (d) Gaps in Information About Foreign Law But comparative law studies are dogged by enormous gaps in the information available.

First, libraries' collections of foreign law are hardly ever as complete as the best libraries in the foreign country itself. Second, countries of the civil law tradition do not publish the decisions of appellate courts with the thoroughness and persistence of common law countries. Third, despite the growth of fields like legal sociology, it is often difficult to find empirical studies of the aspects of U.S. law in which a scholar is interested; it is even more difficult to find relevant empirical studies for many other countries, especially third-world countries.

In short, good comparatists should be sensitive to the ever present limitations on information available about foreign legal systems and should qualify their conclusions if they are unable to have access to sufficient information or if they have reason to suspect that they are missing important information. If the gaps are too large, the study should not be undertaken at all because its conclusions about foreign law will be too uncertain to be useful.

7. Comparative studies should be undertaken in a spirit of respect for the other The last point concerns the attitude a comparatist should have. So much in foreign legal systems seems so bizarre that it shocks us. Why do the Germans and French disdain the U.S. practice of intrusive party-led discovery in civil cases? To the U.S. lawyer, it almost seems as if the Germans and French must not be that interested in finding the truth. To the German and French lawyers, it seems as if the U.S. system fails to protect individual privacy. Neither system is contemptible simply because it is different from the other. In analyzing a foreign legal system, the comparative scholar has to make extraordinary efforts to discern the sense of foreign rules and arrangements.

Indeed, constructive criticism is a sincere form of respect. Moreover, at the end of the day, criticism should be judged, not by the critic's attitude, but by the reasonableness of her premises and the force of her logic. However, before the comparatist criticizes, she must make all possible efforts to avoid a narrowly chauvinistic view. She must try to see the sense of the foreign arrangements even if they are strangely different from her own and seem to represent values directly contrary to her own.

Nevertheless, sometimes a foreign legal system's disregard for certain values compels one to criticize even in the absence of support from the target legal system, especially in situations involving authoritarian governments, in which only the foreigners may have the possibility of publishing their criticism. John C. Reitz, "How To Do Comparative Law," 46 Am. J. Comp. L. 617, 618-635 (1998). courts of limited jurisdiction court of general jurisdiction intermediate appellate court court of last resort 25

* This diagram is adapted from that contained in State Court Caseload Statistics: Annual Report 1988, published by the National Center for State Courts.

SUPERIOR COURT(58 counties) 725 judges, 113 commissioners and referees Jury trials Tort, contract, real property rights ($250,000/mo. maximum), miscellaneous civil.

Exclusive domestic relations, estate, mental health, civil appeals jurisdiction.

DWI/DUI. Exclusive triable felony, criminal appeals jurisdiction.

Exclusive juvenile jurisdiction.

COURTS OF APPEAL(6 courts/districts) 88 judges sit in panels Mandatory jurisdiction in civil noncapital criminal, administrative agency, juvenile cases.

Discretionary jurisdiction in administrative agency, original proceeding, interlocutory decision cases.

SUPREME COURT 7 justices sit en banc Mandatory jurisdiction in criminal, disciplinary cases.

Discretionary jurisdiction in civil, noncapital criminal, administrative agency, juvenile, original proceeding, interlocutory decision cases.

California Court Structure MUNICIPAL COURT(88 courts) 566 judges, 134 referees and commissioners Jury trials except in small claims and infraction cases Tort, contract, real property rights ($0/–25,000),small claims ($2000), miscellaneous civil.

Limited felony, misdemeanor, DWI/DUI. Traffic/other violations.

JUSTICE COURT(76 counties) 76 judges Jury trials except in small claims and infraction cases Tort, contract, real property rights ($0/–25,000),small claims ($2000), miscellaneous civil.

Limited felony, misdemeanor, DWI/DUI. Traffic/other violations.

United States Court of Appeals (for 11 circuits & D.C.) Tax Court Administrative Agencies U.S. District Court U.S. Court of International Trade U.S. Court of Federal Claims Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Supreme Court of the United States 26

Nelson Robles 1. The Articles of Continuance state, among other things, that Mrs. Spires may not withdraw any money from the bank without Mr. Spires' express permission; may not "attempt to influence the status/intensity" of any relationship that Mr. Spires may have "with other individuals outside of the marriage unless the husband verbally requests input from the wife;" may not "dispute" Mr. Spires in public "on any matter;" must "conduct herself in accordance with all scriptures in the Holy Bible applicable to marital relationships germane to wives and in accordance with the husband's specific requests;" must maintain a sexual relationship that "remains spontaneous and solely with the husband;" must "carry out requests of the husband in strict accordance, i.e., timeliness, sequence, scheduling, etc.;" and may not receive any loan or gift without first obtaining Mr. Spires' permission. According to the agreement, violation of any of these articles would be considered mental cruelty, abandonment of the marriage, and a request for legal separation and divorce.

2. The trial court ultimately found that this property had not been purchased or maintained with Mr. Spires' funds and therefore was not marital property. That finding was not challenged on appeal.

3. Mrs. Spires asks this court to modify the provisions of the trial court's order granting liberal visitation privileges to Mr. Spires. She does not claim that the trial court abused its discretion, but rather asserts that "new evidence" warrants a modification of the order. Whatever the merits of this claim, it must be presented initially to the trial court, which retains continuing jurisdiction over such matters. See D.C. Code § § 16-911 (a-2)(4)(A) and 16-914 (a)(2) (1997).

4. This appeal involves only those provisions of the marital and separation agreements relating to custody and visitation rights. In her findings of fact, the trial judge noted that "the parties have resolved for themselves any issues regarding personal property acquired during the marriage," and observed that the question of support was the subject of a pending proceeding in Maryland.

5. D.C. Code § § 16-911 (a)(5)(C) and 16-914 (a)(3)(C) both provide that when making a custody determination, the court shall consider "the interaction and interrelationship of the child with his or her parent or parents, his or her siblings, and any other person who may emotionally or psychologically affect the child's best interest ...."

6. See D.C. Code § § 16-911 (a)(5)(H) and 16-914 (a)(3)(I).

7. See D.C. Code § § 16-911 (a)(5)(B) and 16-914 (a)(3)(B).

8. See D.C. Code § § 16-911 (a)(5)(D), (E), (I), (K) and (N), and 16-914 (a)(3)(D), (E), (J), and (O).

9. See D.C. Code § § 16-911 (a)(5)(A) and 16-914 (A).

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