Rolled-up newspapers

In America, the legislature plays a unique role: It writes the laws. This is especially true in criminal law, where city, state and federal legislatures pen statutes delineating what is criminal and what is not.

Parts of Europe use common law principles to establish new crimes. For instance, if there are laws on the books establishing the criminality of selling paraphernalia for doing drugs, and an Evildoer decides to sell children paraphernalia for sniffing glue, then courts may find the Evildoer guilty of committing a crime that had not yet existed!

In the Kingdom, that's cool. Here in the Colonies, that's a violation of Due Process.

But this is all neither here nor there. I just wanted to offer a brief description so that the layman could appreciate this lovely snippet out of our criminal law text. In it, a commentator is describing the wonder that is the U.K.'s common law criminal system:

"When your dog does anything you want to break him of you wait til he does it, and then beat him for it. This is the way you make laws for your dog; and this is the way judges made law for you and me." (The Works of Jeremy Bentham)

Ah, whimsy. :-)