The US is is a rule-OF-law country, China is rule-BY-law. The difference is that in rule-OF-law, the government is subject to the law. In rule-BY-law, the law is the tool the government uses to rule (dominate), that is, rule by means of law. It may sound nitpicky, but it’s a rather big difference.
Can you elaborate on the notion of US case law, before the US existed? I don't mean this to be snarky, I assume this was intentional. Is this referring to cases prior to the US's founding, that the US then adopted as relevant legal precedent?
The unique part of Chinese law is the lack of judicial supremacy or "rule of law". The party has supremacy over legal system interpretation as part of the '3 Supremes' order of precedence, with workers also coming ahead of the law.
In the US system, there are still miscarriages of Justice, but there is judicial supremacy and separation of powers.
The powers aren't as separated as say the French justice system, but most would say the US judicial system is mostly independent of the other branches of government.
I think that’s not quite right. Precedents have a lesser role but are definitely relevant. My law classes in the Netherlands extensively covered important rulings as a way to interpret laws.
Just a note, precedent has little impact on law outside of countries that don't practice common law. Common law originates from the UK and Germany and France don't practice it, therefore precedence has little to no impact.
Note that China does not use Common law. Civil law is much more rule based; similarities in cases can not be used to explain each other. Having case XYZ the rule for XY may be disabled by a rule for Z (being defined in a completely different law book).
In the UK, precedents are set by the decisions of the High Court (civil) or Crown Court (criminal), and by higher courts. Lower courts don't set precendents I believe - IANAL.
Precendent rulings and legislations are separate things in civil law countries. Not separating them is how the U.S. got the Roe v. Wade fiasco.
No two court cases are completely identical. Precedents are an important reference but they themselves do not automatically decide the outcome in civil law jurisdictions
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