1. Provide a graphic illustration of the English and Canadian parliamentary system. Note their similarities and differences.
Graphical representation of Canadian parliamentary system
Differences and Similarities of the two parliamentary systems
The two court systems are divided into levels and the highest court is at the top. In the case of the English court system, the House of Lords sits at the top while in the case of the Canadian system, the court highest in hierarchy is the Supreme Court of Canada. Court of Appeal is the second in hierarchy for both countries while different divisions of the court are found below the High Court and are charged with different specialties, they deal with specialized cases as per their categories. Both systems do not employ the use of an Inquisitorial system whereby the court is actively involved in investigating facts of the case. They prefer the use of adversarial system whereby the court is impartial and the prosecution takes the case against the defense. However, some legal scholars consider "inquisitorial" misleading, and prefer the word "nonadversarial” (Glendon and Carozza, 2008).
5. What is the significance of the European Court of Human Rights in relation to England and what is meant by "becoming an English court? ”
The European Court of Human Rights was established by the European Convention on Human Rights to hear complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Apart from hearing the complaints, the court also issue advisory opinions to its 47 member states. The European Court of Human Rights has four main functions which include: hearing inter-state complaints, hearing individual complaints, providing advisory opinions when requested and clarifying the interpretation of judgments and also assess whether judgments are being abided to. Despite these roles played by the European Court of Human Rights, it does not form part of the European court system(Glendon and Carozza, 2008). There have been several reforms for the ECHR. The reforms are however not an England initiative and there have been some conferences in the recent past aimed at streamlining the operations of the court. England handed over the six-month chairmanship of the court to Albania in May and there were plans to make several changes before May 23rd when they were to hand over the Chairmanship.
There have been some waging debates in Calgary about the current issues going on the country in the recent past. The MLAs on the Member Services for instance approved a new pension plan for the provincial politicians. The scheme was however blasted by the opposition leaders who claimed that the scheme would lead to a total of 16% increase. The nature of debate that went on was very similar to the way debates are conducted in the English system where the Canadian system developed from. The debates are done in a balanced environment until the side with more supporters emerges as winners. In this scenario for instance, the motion was defeated by Tory members and mason.
References
Glendon MA, Carozza PG, Picker CB. (2008) Comparative Legal Traditions, p. 101. Thomson-West.
Les chiffres-clés de la Justice, French Ministry of Justice, October 2006
