What is a Kangaroo Court? What is a Kangaroo Court? A kangaroo court is a judicial tribunal or assembly that blatantly disregards recognized standards of law or justice, and often carries little or no official standing in the territory within which it resides. Merriam-Webster defines it as "a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted". The term may also apply to a court held by a legitimate judicial authority who intentionally disregards the court's legal or ethical obligations. A kangaroo court is often held to give the appearance of a fair and just trial, even though the verdict has in reality already been decided before the trial has begun. Such courts are typically run by authoritarian governments, and can also be found in rural areas where legitimate law enforcement may be limited. I took that quote from Wikipedia that helps to define the term but characteristics help identify a Kangaroo court as opposed to a legitimate court system? By this definition there are quite a few courts that I am sure do not belong as the categorization of this as such but based on this definition would seem to apply. Most notably the Supreme Court of the United states at times has made rulings that were completely contrary to the existing laws and the constitution. Similarly the US Federal Circuits have also had several rulings that even though superior courts agreed the court stepped outside the law in its decision have chosen not to overturn the decisions or have written decisions that have become defacto laws. Why would these not be considered Kangaroo courts. What is it that I am missing from this definition that would make the courts of Saddam Hussien or Edi Amine Kangaroo courts?
The answer is in the quote. When people talk about a kangaroo court, what they mean is that the legal process is for show; the actual decision is made on non-legal principles. A kangaroo court may look just like any other court; the only exception might be that before the trial, the government meets with the judge or the jury and informs them that their verdict will be "guilty." Of course, some kangaroo courts tip the scales in more obvious ways, but all that's necessary is that it not follow the law in a way that prejudices the defendant.
The legal term for what you're talking about is "prejudice." When a lawsuit (or a claim, or a party) is dismissed by a court "with prejudice," that means that the same cause of action cannot be brought again by the same plaintiff against the same defendant. It is also possible to dismiss a claim "without prejudice," meaning the same claim can be brought at a later date. When, exactly, a civil case can be dismissed with or without prejudice will depend on the jurisdiction where you're litigating. However, the general rule is that once the suit is underway, most dismissals are with prejudice. For example, in U.S. federal court, the plaintiff has the right to dismiss the suit without prejudice only up until the defendant responds to the complaint (see Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)), unless all of the defendants agree to be sued again later (this does happen, sometimes, but normally only as part of a broader settlement). So, yes; you can lose your substantive legal rights if you refuse to follow the court's procedural rules. Most courts, especially in federal court, where there is a fairly permissive standard of pleading, will give plenty of leeway to pro se litigants, but in the end they have to follow the rules. In my own experience, when pro se claims are dismissed, it's generally on the merits. If cases are dismissed for procedural reasons, it's almost always a case of a pro se litigant refusing to listen to the judge's clear instructions for what they need to do (or, more often, not do).
It's happened before in real life. Here is a 1994 article describing an Illinois criminal trial where defense counsel pulled the old switcheroo and sat a different person with him at the defense table instead of the defendant. The defendant, instead, sat somewhere else in the courtroom. After a witness misidentified the perp as the person at the defense table (not the defendant), the judge directed a not-guilty verdict to settle the case but sanctioned the defense attorney instead. The appellate and state supreme courts upheld the sanction (by a one-vote margin in both cases) but dissenting opinions noted counsel and defendant technically broke no rules. From the article: The dissent said Mr. Sotomayor's intent was only to show the unreliability of the prosecution's witness. Moreover, seating a client at counsel's table is customary but not required. Nor is a lawyer obliged [...] to help a witness make an identification. Also, here is a similar but not duplicate question.
Contempt This is not contempt of court, which happens only in the physical presence of a judge, or in relation to a court order known by the person to be held in contempt to exist and related to that person in some way. Potential Criminal Liability Criminal liability is an offense which can only be brought by the prosecutor's office in Arizona, for which the punishment is incarceration and/or a fine payable to the state and/or restitution for narrowly defined strictly economic losses to victims of a crime and court costs. It appears from your reference to A.R.S. that you are referring to the Arizona Revised Statutes, although it could conceivably be another state whose name starts with an "A". It would generally only be perjury if it was made "under penalty of perjury" or under an oath, or following an affirmation to tell the truth administered by someone who can administer oaths. The best way to determine if this was perjury would be to look at the fine print near the signature line of any form completed by them. The perjury statute in Arizona states: 13-2702. Perjury; classification A. A person commits perjury by making either: A false sworn statement in regard to a material issue, believing it to be false. A false unsworn declaration, certificate, verification or statement in regard to a material issue that the person subscribes as true under penalty of perjury, believing it to be false. B. Perjury is a class 4 felony. It might be a fraudulent scheme: 13-2311. Fraudulent schemes and practices; wilful concealment; classification A. Notwithstanding any provision of the law to the contrary, in any matter related to the business conducted by any department or agency of this state or any political subdivision thereof, any person who, pursuant to a scheme or artifice to defraud or deceive, knowingly falsifies, conceals or covers up a material fact by any trick, scheme or device or makes or uses any false writing or document knowing such writing or document contains any false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or entry is guilty of a class 5 felony. B. For the purposes of this section, "agency" includes a public agency as defined by section 38-502, paragraph 6. A different kind of fraudulent scheme is less likely to apply: 13-2310. Fraudulent schemes and artifices; classification; definition A. Any person who, pursuant to a scheme or artifice to defraud, knowingly obtains any benefit by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, promises or material omissions is guilty of a class 2 felony. B. Reliance on the part of any person shall not be a necessary element of the offense described in subsection A of this section. C. A person who is convicted of a violation of this section that involved a benefit with a value of one hundred thousand dollars or more or the manufacture, sale or marketing of opioids is not eligible for suspension of sentence, probation, pardon or release from confinement on any basis except pursuant to section 31-233, subsection A or B until the sentence imposed by the court has been served, the person is eligible for release pursuant to section 41-1604.07 or the sentence is commuted. D. This state shall apply the aggregation prescribed by section 13-1801, subsection B to violations of this section in determining the applicable punishment. E. For the purposes of this section, "scheme or artifice to defraud" includes a scheme or artifice to deprive a person of the intangible right of honest services. It is a crime in almost every U.S. state to provide a false report to a government medical examiner, although most likely a misdemeanor rather than a more serious felony offense like perjury, and the exact name of that offense would vary quite a bit. One possible offense in Arizona might be "Tampering With a Public Record" 13-2407. Tampering with a public record; classification A. A person commits tampering with a public record if, with the intent to defraud or deceive, such person knowingly: Makes or completes a written instrument, knowing that it has been falsely made, which purports to be a public record or true copy thereof or alters or makes a false entry in a written instrument which is a public record or a true copy of a public record; or Presents or uses a written instrument which is or purports to be a public record or a copy of such public record, knowing that it has been falsely made, completed or altered or that a false entry has been made, with intent that it be taken as genuine; or Records, registers or files or offers for recordation, registration or filing in a governmental office or agency a written statement which has been falsely made, completed or altered or in which a false entry has been made or which contains a false statement or false information; or Destroys, mutilates, conceals, removes or otherwise impairs the availability of any public record; or Refuses to deliver a public record in such person's possession upon proper request of a public servant entitled to receive such record for examination or other purposes. B. In this section "public record" means all official books, papers, written instruments or records created, issued, received or kept by any governmental office or agency or required by law to be kept by others for the information of the government. C. Tampering with a public record is a class 6 felony. It might also constitute making a false unsworn statement: 13-2704. Unsworn falsification; classification A. A person commits unsworn falsification by knowingly: Making any statement that he believes to be false, in regard to a material issue, to a public servant in connection with an application for any benefit, privilege or license. Making any statement that he believes to be false in regard to a material issue to a public servant in connection with any official proceeding as defined in section 13-2801. B. Unsworn falsification pursuant to paragraph 1, subsection A, is a class 2 misdemeanor. Unsworn falsification pursuant to subsection A, paragraph 2 is a class 1 misdemeanor. An official proceeding is defined as: 13-2801. Definitions In this chapter, unless the context otherwise requires: "Juror" means any person who is a member of any impaneled jury or grand jury, and includes any person who has been drawn or summoned to attend as a prospective juror. "Official proceeding" means a proceeding heard before any legislative, judicial, administrative or other governmental agency or official authorized to hear evidence under oath. "Physical evidence" means any article, object, document, record or other thing of physical substance. "Testimony" means oral or written statements, documents or any other material that may be offered by a witness in an official proceeding. "Threat" means a threat proscribed by section 13-1804, subsection A. Medical examiners are capable of conducting official proceedings (called "inquests"), but it isn't clear if the report made to the medical examiner was testimony in an official proceeding or not. Whether or not there was any criminal liability for making a false report to the funeral director would depend mostly upon whether funeral directors have some official duties to the state to report information to one or more government offices, in which case, this might be a misdemeanor offense of providing a false report. But, if the funeral director is just a privately owned business and the information is provided to the funeral director solely to allow the funeral director to provide a private sector service, it would probably not be a crime to lie to the funeral director. While it isn't entirely inconceivable that their conduct could constitute desecration of a corpse under a broadly worded statute (usually a misdemeanor or very minor felony), it is much more likely that it would not. Arizona does not have an offense of this type. Civil Liability Civil liability is something that one person can sue another person for with the end result being that the defendants is ordered to pay a prevailing plaintiff money damages in an amount determined by a judge or jury. Collection of these money damages is at the expense of the person suing through means like garnishments, liens on real property, and seizures of personal property. Awards for unintentional wrongs can usually be discharged in bankruptcy. Awards for intentional wrongs usually cannot be discharged in bankruptcy if a timely objection to discharge is made in a bankruptcy court. They concealed he committed suicide, had him cremated and a private service for him and would not allow any publication[.] These acts, that far, would probably not be actionable or criminal, because the motive to protect his reputation by not disclosing the suicide would ordinarily be deemed an acceptable one. So would not informing you directly. But, hiding this information from the children and excluding them from having a say in the disposition of their father's body through fraud would be problematic and would be the acts that might give rise to civil liability. The Funeral Director/Funeral Home In the absence of something that really should have tipped off the funeral director, the funeral director normally wouldn't have civil liability to anyone for anything that happened before the funeral director had any reason to know what happened, but might have civil liability to the children for negligence if the funeral director mishandled the situation after discovering it (probably a close call legally). Damages would probably be limited to emotional distress damages and nominal damages. Even a colorable claim against the funeral director expressed in a demand letter would probably produce a swift settlement if the demand was not outrageous in exchange for confidentiality regarding the situation and non-disparagement of the funeral home, because this kind of thing could be devastating to the reputation of the funeral home. This is not a claim for which the children could have their attorneys' fees awarded to them. None of the misrepresentations to the funeral director harmed the funeral director, so their acts wouldn't be simple fraud (either criminal or civil). The Late Husband's Other Relatives Their civil liability for a misrepresentation to the medical examiner would be pretty much limited to economic harm to the children arising from that misrepresentation, possibly including the value of time and legal fees incurred to correct the false information provided. And, even then, it might be hard to find a suitable cause of action to enforce that liability. It would not be simple fraud because the misrepresentation wasn't made directly to them. The strongest civil claim of the children would probably be to have a civil claim against them for "outrageous conduct"/"intentional infliction of emotional distress" for which emotional distress damages and punitive damages could be awarded. These are not claims for which the children could have their attorneys' fees awarded to them. Conclusion It is not possible to narrow down this laundry list of possibilities without much more precise and detailed information. But, if that information was provided in this forum, it would probably push this question into one asking for specific legal advice which is off topic. So, you need to evaluate the detailed facts in light of this information and come to your own conclusion over whether further action in the form of making a report to the police or a district attorney, or contacting a private lawyer makes sense in this case.
All precedents are made in court judgements Courts exist in a hierarchy which means there are two kinds of precedent: binding and persuasive. A binding precedent is one set in the same hierarchy by a higher level court. A persuasive precedent is one set at the same or lower level in the hierarchy or in a completely different hierarchy. For example, a precedent set in the Supreme Court of New South Wales sitting as the Court of Appeal is binding on the Supreme Court of NSW in general session, the District Court and the Magistrates Court (lower courts), persuasive on the Supreme Court of New South Wales sitting as the Court of Appeal and all courts in Victoria and Queensland (different hierarchies) and is not a precedent for the High Court of Australia (higher up). In general, while a lower level court can, in theory, set a precedent, such cases are rarely reported so nobody knows about them and, in any event, they would only have limited applicability. Therefore most precedents come from higher level courts which means, they are usually set in appeals rather than trials of first instance. In addition it is only the ratio decidendi that sets binding precedent. Anything in the judgement that is obiter dicta is merely persuasive. Bear in mind that the overwhelming majority of cases do not create precedent - they follow it. Or, if they don’t follow it, the judge was wrong. It is also a legal fiction (i.e. something pretending to be true that everyone knows isn’t) that judges do not create law by precedent - they merely find the law that was already there. Since the role of judges in common law jurisdictions is to only decide cases, they cannot and do not offer opinions on what the law is outside of that. This is a long-standing tradition in English law and the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court confirmed that the Constitution did not change this. Therefore, the only way to test the validity of a new law is to have a trial that uses it. That said, governments have lawyers review legislation and regulations before they are promulgated to check for things like legality and workability but these are only professional opinions and are not binding. Furthermore, sometimes legislation is drafted quickly for political reasons. One hopes that legislatures take proper care when drafting legislation that it is legal, is workable and actually makes sense: one is often disappointed in that hope.
The Constitution does not state your opinion of SCOTUS's job, instead it just says that there shall be one supreme court with judicial power, and it says what kind of cases are within the jurisdiction of that court. Thus The Constitution does not mandate whether rulings will adhere to the doctrine of stare decisis, will be based only on a narrowly literal interpretation of The Constitution, or will be based on a general sense of justice. The Constitution also does not say anything about the rules of that Supreme Court, therefore the court is free to set its own rules, and to allow or to not allow amicus briefs. Many points raised in amicus briefs fall on deaf ears, sometimes because they are based on non-shared legal assumptions. You can read a very brief summary of the over 140 amicus briefs in this case here. If you read various SCOTUS opinions over the past 225+ years, you will see that the court does make reference to fact, not just statements of the law and constitution. This brings it well within the scope of &quot;potentially relevant&quot; to determine some fact. The lawyers get to argue how facts relate to legal conclusions, but the basic fodder for any legal decision is some set of facts. The specific briefs you mentioned are: Pro-Life Obstetricians and College of Obstetricians. The latter's argument is self-summarized as Amici’s position is that laws regulating abortion should be evidence-based, supported by a valid medical or scientific justification, and designed to improve—not harm—women’s health Pro-Life Obsetricians' position is self-summarized as support for a law that rationally furthers Mississippi’s interest in protecting women’s health from risks posed by later- term abortions, which are now well established in the literature These statements refer to interpretive doctrines previously established by SCOTUS, but not literally expressed in The Constitution. In US v. Carolene Products Company, 304 U.S. 144 introduced concepts of constitutionality (not literally stated in The Constitution) whereby cases could be reviewed either with &quot;strict scrutiny&quot; for protection of Constitutional rights or else discernment of a &quot;rational interest&quot; in government taking a certain action. Either of these kinds of judicial review require a comparison of law to &quot;the facts&quot;. Hence &quot;the facts&quot; can be legally relevant.
This determination is largely a facts and circumstances specific test to be evaluated with little additional legal guidance by the judge or jury faced with evaluating the question (usually a judge in the way that the issue usually presents itself). Like many fairly vague legal standards, it leaves open the possibility that there will be inconsistent rulings on this question in circumstances presenting similar facts.
So my understanding is that the phrase "common law" can refer to either the concept of laws established by court precedent or it can refer to a specific body of laws that have been established that way. Yes. Should I just be inferring that from context? Yes. Is there a single body of "common law"? No. Are there distinct bodies of "U.K. common law" and "U.S. common law" for example? Yes, furthermore there is different common law in England/Wales, Northern Ireland &amp; Scotland and each state of the US. Further, Scotland and Louisiana are not straightforward common law jurisdictions but rather a blend of common and civil law. If so, how are they related? They are related in that they all: have a common source, middle English common law evolve in the same way - judges interpreting the current common law and the statutes of the legislature follow an appeals system through higher levels of courts. They do not all go in the same direction though. Do judges in common law countries cite court decisions in other common law countries? Sometimes; it depends on the "distance" of the other jurisdiction. A judge in New South Wales is quite likely to consider how judges in Queensland and Victoria have considered similar laws, less likely to look at the UK and Canada and extremely unlikely to look at the USA. This has a lot to do with how far back it is since the "last common ancestor" of the law; the longer the corpus of law has been separated the more likely that the principles have diverged, partly this is cultural drift but mostly this is differences in statutes that actively modify the common law. Usually, jurisdictions within the same country are quite close to each other; partly due to common culture but often because of a genuine effort to "harmonise" laws across borders. There are occasions, however, where legislatures "steal" laws from other jurisdictions, in which case they often look to each other for early development of common law on those laws. For example, the Alberta (Canada) Builder's Lien Act 2000 and the NSW (Australia) Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 both address the same "wrong" and both had a common and parallel genesis pre-enactment; early cases in each jurisdiction were watched by the other.