United States, State Legislatures and the Courts (National Institute)

State Legislature And The Court
In the United States, with the exception of Louisiana, the common law system is used. This system of law is based on the customs of society “and recognized and enforced by the judgments and decrees of the courts.” ; which means that prior case law is used to resolve disputes. In Louisiana, the civil law system (which comes from France) is used. This system is based on written codes to delineate the law.

There are two major components of ‘the law’—rulings by statutes (including constitutions) and rulings by courts.

State Statutes and Legislative Acts
The state has autonomy over her courts. State statutes (acts of the state legislature) dictate the jurisdiction of state and local courts. The state code is a collection of the state laws or regulations which typically address the concerns of the society and, on occasion, the relief or benefit of private individuals (private laws). The statutes, or acts, passed with annual legislative sessions are typically published annually. The annual volumes may be called session laws and are frequently arranged by subjects in codes.

Private Laws
State legislative bodies created, and continue to create, laws for the benefit or relief of private citizens or corporations. The private laws encompass a wide variety of subject matter including relief acts, divorces (early), name changes, and citizenship. Many of our ancestors who are involved in legislative acts will fall into this category.

Sometimes the private laws did not become part of state code since they were of strict individual nature. Consequently, we cannot expect to find private laws as part of the state codes; however, they are part of session laws.

The following private act enacted by the Georgia legislature (and several similar private acts) provided Georgia Citizenship to selected Cherokee Indians.

Similar private acts were also passed by the Georgia House and Senate in 1838-1845, granting citizenship to a few other families in the Cherokee and Creek tribes.

On 15 August 1904 Georgia’s state legislature passed a resolution to pay pension of John S. Flynt, of Monroe county, Georgia, to Lucy Flynt, his daughter.

It is hoped that the samples cited above will serve as motivation to all to take the time to search for our ancestors within the acts and resolutions of the state legislature.

Session Laws
The statutes (laws) enacted by state legislatures are kept chronologically as session laws. As researchers, we will frequently need to use the state code or session laws in order to understand the jurisdiction of the court and the meaning of various legal terms. Frequently, this source is evaded since the session laws must be checked year-by-year and may not include a complete name index.

The laws passed fall into various categories:

Substantive Laws - “The part of the law that creates, defines, and regulates rights, including, for example, the law of contracts, torts, wills, and real property; the essential substance of rights under law.”

Procedural Laws -these laws are used to enforce the substantive laws. In other words, they provide the procedures that must be followed to bring suit or may provide for which courts must be used.

Criminal Laws - these laws are used to punish individuals for crimes against society.

Civil Laws - above we learned that there is a civil law system. There is also, in a different context, civil laws; that is, laws that define the rights between two or more private parties.

Municipal Ordinances/Laws
Local areas of government can also pass laws, as long as they do not go against state and federal laws and do not go against statutory or constitutional provisions. These laws are made by towns, cities or municipalities and are used to govern their areas of responsibility. Usually the charter that created the town, etc., governs what laws can be created. These laws can govern zoning restrictions, collection of sales/local taxes, etc.