Classification and Sources of Laws in English Legal System

This report explains the classifications and sources of laws in the English legal system with examples and case studies. It also covers the process of making legislation and delegated legislation. Additionally, it provides insights into the UK law making process for employment law.

Business Management
BMP4002 Business Law
Assessment 1
Legal System for Business
Law
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Contents
Table of content
1

Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Part 1: Classifications of Law....................................................................................................3
Define laws and identify the respective legal systems in the UK..........................................3
Explanation with examples the following as means of classification of laws in the English
Legal system...........................................................................................................................4
Explanation of the role of the following Courts in the English Legal system.......................5
Part 2: Source of law..................................................................................................................6
Explanation of Case Law as a source of laws........................................................................6
Explanation of the process of making Legislation.................................................................6
The meaning and examples of Delegated Legislation...........................................................7
Part 3: UK law making process: Employment Law...................................................................7
Statutory Duties of Employers to their employees................................................................7
Wrongful Dismissal and Unfair Dismissal Actions...............................................................8
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES...........................................................................................................................9
2

Introduction
Business Law also known as commercial law is a branch of legal system, that regulate
the activities of the companies in various commercial matters and also governs the trading
activities(Rodrigues, 2018). Legal system is a set of rules and procedure followed by the
country for enforcing the laws and legal system followed in UK is common law. This report
will illustrate classification and sources of laws in English legal system with the help of some
examples and case studies.
Part 1: Classifications of Law
Define laws and identify the respective legal systems in the UK
Law is defined as a set of rules and regulation that country applies in order to deal with
the crimes and also in administration of justice. These rules are framed by the government
that says that people are bound to follow them and violation of any laws will result in
punishments and penalties. As UK follows Common Law, it is classified into Private and
Public law. Public Law is set of rules and procedures and defines the relation between the
private individual and the local authorities which includes criminal and administration
law(Venturelli, et.al, 2019). Private Law applies to such situation which relates to the relation
between individuals in a legal system and regulates the relation between the individuals and
governments.
The legal system of UK is categorized into three jurisdictions: England and Wales,
Northern island and Scotland and constitute of their own legal system of rules. The legal
system of UK consists of criminal and civil courts which are responsible for the regulation of
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justice. In the legal system of United Kingdom, the Supreme Court is the apex court and is
the final court in England and Wales. The order made by the Supreme Court is final and is
binding on the parties to the dispute(Bryson, Diamantis, and Grant, 2017). Senior courts are
classified into Court of appeal, High Court and Crown Court and subordinate courts into
Magistrates Courts. Family proceeding Courts, Youth courts and Country courts and consists
of different special and other courts.
Explanation with examples the following as means of classification of laws in the English
Legal system
a) Civil Law:
Civil Law are the set of laws which is connected with the affairs of an individual,
when a person commits an offence which causes damage to other person's property and rights
and an individual committed an offence is liable to pay compensation to the victim party. It
consists of variety of issues such as Tort, injury, damage to the property, negligence
etc(Assaad, and Abdul-Malak, 2020). In England and Wales, the cases of civil nature are
under the jurisdiction of Country courts and High courts. High court handles the cases which
are severe and substantive in nature and other cases related to family proceedings and
domestic violence are solved by Country courts. Many disputes do not go to the courts and
are settled through the process of arbitration and negotiation between the parties to dispute.
Civil Law deals with the disputes between the organizations and the parties to dispute are
generally the private parties. The main purpose of the law is to settle the dispute between the
parties and provide justice by paying the compensation to the damaged person.
Examples of Civil law includes:
1. Family disputes which includes divorce and dissolution of partnership,
2. Personal injury cases includes negligence, injury to body, accidents etc.
3. Breach of contract.
b) Criminal Law:
Criminal law refers to the acts which is offensive in nature injurious to health and can
harm person. When an individual commits a criminal offence under the law or breaches any
part which is offensive in nature is liable to criminal prosecution under court of law. Crimes
are those acts in which the rules and laws created by the government are violated, and legal
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action taken against the offender is imprisonment, penalties or both(Bosworth, et.al, 2018).
The criminal law in UK is regulated by common law and aims at maintaining a balance in the
society by reducing the crime rates and punishing the offender for the act committed by
them.
According to the UK law criminal offence is divided into three broader categories
which are dealt depending upon the severability of the case such as summary offences which
are least severe in nature such as minor injury, common assault etc (O’Rourke and et.al.,
2018). and most of the cases are dealt by Magistrate court. Some other examples which fall
under the criminal law are:theft, supply of offensive weapons etc.
Explanation of the role of the following Courts in the English Legal system
a) High Court;
The courts are mainly concerned with the law and focuses on rights and violation of laws
and its outcomes and plays an important part in decision-making. High court of justice is
categorized into three divisions :The Chancery Division, The Family Division and The
Queen's Bench Division.
b) Supreme Court:
Supreme Court is considered as a apex court and final court of appeal and
plays a very vital role in the development of the law and all the cases such as civil
and criminal cases are dealt in supreme court(Partington, 2021). It also hears the
appeals related to the public importance and also give relevance to the matters which
is related to and constitutional importance.
Part 2: Source of law
Explanation of Case Law as a source of laws
Sources of law are represented as an origin of laws, in which rule are formed to govern
specific territory. The source of law refers to seat of power from that law drives its validity.
Case law is based on the doctrine which associated with jurisdictions (English common law).
Further, it can be defined as common law which is main sources of law. Case law is created
by courts although major laws are made by parliament in the form of legislation. This will
publish in the law reports and the judgments are recorded in several reports of law. The main
and primary source of cases are the law reports, official transcripts and digests. Precedent is
defined as the accumulated principles of law which drives from the centuries of decisions.
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Judgments are to be passed by judge in the important cases are to be recorded and become
significant source of law (Westerveld and Olivier, 2019). When there is no law applicable at
a particular point then it arises in changing conditions. Moreover, judge decides the right and
wrong (dispute) on the basis of first principle. Making a law is totally depends on the
production of reliable reports which has a fact, decision, issue and the legal principles on
which judgment is made.
Explanation of the process of making Legislation
For making legislation in UK, it needs to pass from several stages.
First reading: at this stage, bill arrives in the lords. This stage is just for formalities where
name of the bill read in the chamber.
Second reading: here, the main debate take place on the purpose and area of the bill. At this
stage, member conduct discussion on the specific area which is required to change.
Committee stage: At this stage, there is line by line detailed review of text and amendments.
The member of parliament starts from the front and till the end. Voting may take place in
order to decide whether to make any changes.
Report stage: at this stage, examine the bill and make the necessary changes (Morrison, K.,
2019.). Further, amendments are debatable and make changes by taking votes.
Third reading: at this stage, member is aiming to close all the loopholes. It is the final call
for amendment and votes.
Consideration and amendments: it any changes takes place than the draft sent to the
commons to get their consent. The commons may agree or disagree to the changes, make it
their own changes at its place.
Royal assent: when all the houses agreed to accept the changes than the bill is approved to
pass and become the law.
The meaning and examples of Delegated Legislation
Delegated Legislation is a law which is enacted not by the act of parliament but by the
ministers of government or any person to whom the authority is delegated. The powers of
delegated legislation are included in the Bills which are presented to the parliament by the
government. As per the constitution of United Kingdom parliament has the authority to
delegate the powers of making laws (Guerrina and Masselot, 2018). Delegated Legislation
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gives powers to the respective authorities to make necessary changes related to the law and
allows the law to be created by those having knowledge in various fields of law. It also plays
an important role in emergency situation to resolve the problem which arises before the
parliament. For example, making laws as public utility authority for light.
Part 3: UK law making process: Employment Law
Statutory Duties of Employers to their employees
Under this law, employer is responsible for the health and safety management (Sánchez-
Monedero, Dencik and Edwards, 2020). It is employer duty to protect the health, welfare and
safety of the employees and other people such as stakeholders who might get affected from
the business.
 Employer required to pay at least the national minimum wages.
 Employer need to provide safe and clean working environment to their employees
which include first aid equipment, clean water, protective clothes etc.
 if the work is for the longer than 6 hr than it is required to offer daily rest period at
least for 20 minutes.
 Employer requires to provide a certain amount of holidays each year which include
full or half day (as per the company's policy).
 Moreover, employer need to offer statutory sick pay, redundancy pay, paternity,
adoption etc. to the eligible workers.
 Provide at least one-week notice (dismissal) to the person who has been with the
company for longer than one month but less than two years.
 Employer need to provide pay slip which emphasis on the detail calculation of
deductions and payments.
Wrongful Dismissal and Unfair Dismissal Actions
The key difference between wrongful and unfair dismissal is that which stated the breach of
contract by the employer, not due to statutory law.
Wrongful dismissal
Wrongful dismissal can be stated that where a person gets dismissed from its
employment in the breach of contract. It is different from unfair dismissal as it is based on the
7

contract law. In any organization, if someone gets dismissed wrongly then that person can
claim for the compensation in monetary and other terms. In the wrongful dismissal employer
is liable to pay damages to get back on the same position as before (Freedland and
Dhorajiwala, 2019). The maximum amount of damages is £25000 which is capped at
statutory. Therefore, if the employee’s claims are more than 25000 then it is required to
pursue that claim from civil court.
Unfair dismissal action
Under the section 94 of employment act, all the employees have the ability to seek the
claims or damages for the unfair dismissal. If any claim for damages for unfair dismissal is
bought before employment tribunal, then it needs to establish: whether or not the employee
got dismissed and also seek that employee dismissed for the fair reason. Employees can take
the benefit of unfair dismissed, need to have the two years of continuous services from that
employer to seek a claim (Partington, 2021). Moreover, two limb tests have not been
satisfied. Under the first limb test is related to the five fair reason of dismissal list under the
employment act. Fair reason may include capabilities, conduct, redundancy etc. The second
limb is related to employer conduct, in which employees get dismissal due to the reasonable
and fair in the circumstances.
Conclusion
From the above report, it can be concluded that The English legal system is majorly
based on the constitutions and practice and is based on the direct grounds in administration of
justice. As it is seen from the report that the legal system is based on common law and very
country has its own legal systems. It also observed that delegated legislation plays a major
role in emergency situations.
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REFERENCES
Journal and books
Assaad, R. and Abdul-Malak, M.A., 2020. Legal perspective on treatment of delay liquidated
damages and penalty clauses by different jurisdictions: Comparative analysis.Journal of
Legal Affairs and Dispute Resolution in Engineering and Construction12(2)
p.04520013.
Bosworth, et.al. 2018.Race, criminal justice, and migration control: Enforcing the
boundaries of belonging. Oxford University Press.
Bryson, J.J., Diamantis, M.E. and Grant, T.D., 2017. Of, for, and by the people: the legal
lacuna of synthetic persons.Artificial Intelligence and Law25(3) pp.273-291.
Freedland, M. and Dhorajiwala, H., 2019. UK response to new trade Union strategies for new
forms of employment. European Labour Law Journal. 10(3). pp.281-290.
Guerrina, R. and Masselot, A., 2018. Walking into the footprint of EU Law: unpacking the
gendered consequences of Brexit. Social Policy and Society. 17(2). pp.319-330.
Morrison, K., 2019. HR Theory and Employment Law. In Management for Scientists.
Emerald Publishing Limited.
O’Rourke, A. and et.al., 2018. Old wine in new bottles? Regulating employee social media
use through termination of employment law: A comparative analysis. Common Law
World Review. 47(4). pp.248-271.
Partington, M., 2021.Introduction to the English legal system. Oxford University Press.
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Rodrigues, U.R., 2018. Law and the Blockchain.Iowa L. Rev.,104, p.679.
Sánchez-Monedero, J., Dencik, L. and Edwards, L., 2020, January. What does it mean
to'solve'the problem of discrimination in hiring? Social, technical and legal perspectives
from the UK on automated hiring systems. In Proceedings of the 2020 conference on
fairness, accountability, and transparency (pp. 458-468).
Venturelli, et.al, 2019. The state of art of corporate social disclosure before the introduction
of non-financial reporting directive: A cross-country analysis.Social responsibility
journal.
Westerveld, M. and Olivier, M. eds., 2019. Social Security Outside the Realm of the
Employment Contract. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Online reference
Most Important Source of English Law, 2021. [online]. Available
through:<https://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/constitutional-law/most-
important-source-of-english-law-constitutional-law-essay.php#:~:text=Case-law%2C
%20also%20known%20as%20Common%20law%2C%20is%20a,to%20the%20facts
%20of%20the%20case%20in%20question.>
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