Читать книгу Intellectual Property Law for Engineers, Scientists, and Entrepreneurs - Howard B. Rockman - Страница 40

One of the hallmarks of the beginning of civilized behavior was creating a system for best determining the truth of an accusation. Court trials with a judge, jury, and attorneys representing the plaintiff and defendant have not always been used. We have seen enough movies and television shows that indicate that the earliest form of trial was usually by battle. The accused and accuser, or their representatives, faced each other in battle, with the outcome determining the justice of the accusation. The shortcomings of justice and equity being based on such a system are obvious.

In many early civilizations, trial by battle was replaced by trial by ordeal or trial by jury. The Code of Hammurabi required trial by ordeal, such as throwing the accused into the divine river. If the river held the defendant, for example, if he could not swim, the guilty verdict and punishment were delivered simultaneously. However, more realistically, trial by a jury of your peers in one form or another existed in many ancient civilizations. Our present jury trial system developed with the common law, and is now guaranteed in the Sixth and Seventh Amendments of the U.S. Constitution in both criminal and civil cases.

Keep in mind that a jury must usually determine the facts of a particular occurrence after that occurrence has happened. The jury bases its decision upon the evidence that the court allows it to hear, and on the instructions in the law given to the jury by the judge. Keep in mind that, once an event has happened, and all witnesses to that event are unavailable, there is no way of knowing exactly what happened, and the facts may never truly be known. The jury system, although possibly flawed, is still the best system known for determining the truth. As Churchill once remarked about democracy, it is a bad form of government—however, it is better than all the rest. In my judgment, the same principle can be applied to the jury system.

In the United States, a court system exists for each state, as well as a system of federal courts. Both the federal and state systems provide an ultimate tribunal, the federal Supreme Court and the state’s highest courts, respectively. Beneath the supreme court and highest state court in each system are the appellate courts. The appellate courts handle appeals from the lower courts. The lower courts are designated as district courts in the federal system, and usually as county courts in the state systems. One anomaly is that the lowest court in the State of New York is designated the Supreme Court, the highest court is the New York Court of Appeals.