【正文】 ions accredited law schools. These law teacher producer schools are mostly national, located in urban locations, and include schools such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of Michigan, Chicago, New York University, Northwestern University, and Georgetown. If it is true that the fulltime faculty of the law schools have a virtual monopoly on who will and will not enter the (legal) profession and on the power to mold future generations, then the existence of a hierarchy among the law schools suggests that an elite group of schools is primarily responsible for staffing the law schools, which in turn produce lawyers for the hierarchies within the profession.Lesson Four：Judicial System 司法系統(tǒng)Background背景美國法院系統(tǒng)的突出特點是雙軌制，即由聯(lián)邦法院和州法院這兩個相互獨立且平行的體系組成。按照美國憲法的規(guī)定，凡是法律未明確授與聯(lián)邦法院的司法管轄權(quán)，均屬于州法院。此外還有索賠法院(the Court of Claims)、關(guān)稅法院(the Customs Court)、關(guān)稅及專利上訴法院(the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals)等聯(lián)邦特別法院(Special Courts)。美國的聯(lián)邦法官都是由總統(tǒng)任命的；各州的法官多經(jīng)選舉產(chǎn)生，但也有些是由地方行政長官(如州長或市長)或地方立法機關(guān)(如州議會或市議會)任命的。例如，美國聯(lián)邦最高法院的9名大法官中，除首席大法官(Chief Justice)外，其他8人均可稱為副(或助理)大法官(Associate Justice)；而一些州審判法院的巡回法官(Circuit Judge)之下也設(shè)有副(或助理)法官(Associate Judge)。2, to handle matters of particular federal interest. The presence of two parallel court systems often raises questions concerning the relationship of the state and federal systems, presenting important issues of federalism. The United States Supreme Court, posed of nine justices, sits as the final and controlling voice over all these systems.Although a few states, such as Nebraska, have a twotiered system, most states, as well as the federal courts, are based on a threetiered model. That means that for any litigant there will be the opportunity to plead his case before a trial court and then, should he lose, there are two levels of appeal at which he ultimately may succeed. For example, in the federal system the trial court is the United States District Court, of which there is at least one in every state. Many larger states are divided into two, three or even four judicial districts, depending on population, geography and caseload. There are ninetyfour districts in the United States and each district court has one judge, or more monly two or more. After an adverse judgment in the district court, a litigant may appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the circuit in which the district court is located. There are eleven numbered intermediate appellate courts in the federal system, each including anywhere from three to ten states and territories. Additionally, there is a Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, hearing appeals from the federal district court there, and one for the Federal Circuit, taking appeals from various specialized federal tribunals, such as the Claims Court. Each court of appeals has four or more judges who sit in panels of three to review district court decisions, as well as some decisions of administrative agencies. A losing litigant in the court of appeals may, in some cases, be able to obtain review by the United States Supreme Court. Cases in the state courts similarly may proceed through a trial court, a state appellate court, and then the state supreme court. If a federal constitutional question is involved the decision of the state supreme court may be reviewed by the United States。Text課文Part One： CourtsThere are fiftytwo separate court systems in the United States. Each state, as well as the District of Columbia, has its own fully developed, independent system of courts and there is a separate federal court system. The federal courts are not superior to the state courts。此外，有此基層法院的審判人員還稱為治安法官(Justice of the Peace)或司法官(Magistrate)。許多州也有一些專門法院，如遺囑檢驗法院(Probate Court)、青少年法院(Juvenile Court)、家庭關(guān)系法院(Court of Domestic Relations)和小額索賠法院(Small Claims Court)等。聯(lián)邦法院是一個統(tǒng)一的系統(tǒng)。在刑事領(lǐng)域中，聯(lián)邦法院負(fù)責(zé)審理那些違犯聯(lián)邦法律的刑事案件；在民事領(lǐng)域中，聯(lián)邦法院負(fù)責(zé)審理以合眾國為一方、涉及聯(lián)邦性質(zhì)的問題，以及發(fā)生在不同州的公民之間且有管轄權(quán)爭議等種類的民事案件。 and the imbalance in terms of women and minorities in the student body and faculty in the law schools.Part One： Curriculum and the Case MethodThe traditional firstyear program offered in virtually all American law schools includes contracts, torts, property, criminal law and civil procedure. Duncan Kennedy has described the traditional firstyear curriculum as basically teaching the ground rules for late 19th century laissezfaire capitalism. The second year and third year course expound the moderate reformist New Deal program and the administrative structure of the modern regulatory state. The peripheral subjects, if they are offered, include legal philosophy, legal history, legal process, and clinical education, a kind of playground or finishing school for learning the social art of self presentation as a lawyer.However, as new areas of the law continue to develop in response to contemporary issues and problems, some law schools have expanded curricula to include courses and clinical programs in environmental law, housing and urban development, womens rights, health in the workplace, welfare rights and consumer protection. There are also increasing efforts to teach law in interdisciplinary contexts, drawing on other disciplines such as history, psychology, sociology, medicine, and economics.In teaching the traditional curriculum, law teachers in almost all the law schools use to some extent the case method or the Socratic method. Developed in the 1870s by Christopher Columbus Langdell at the Harvard Law School, the case method looked to the mon law as the source of legal priniciples and focussed on the teaching of an abstract conception of the law as a science. The legal principles elicited were to be taught divorced from the grubby world of practiceand also from politics, history, economics, and social contexts. This narrow formalistic approach was justified on the ground that it taught students how to state, analyze, evaluate and pare concrete fact situations thus developing their powers and skills of analysis, reasoning, a