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Columns::November 18, 2002
Weekly Reader
Book surveys state’s judicial history
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$120
Gaunt, Inc. |
Rarely has a grand survey been undertaken to provide a history of a single judicial system from its establishment to the present as is done in The Creation of a Judicial System. Written by Erwin Surrency, former director of UGA’s law library, the book helps to explain the Constitutional doctrines of the American colonies after independence. The courts in England provided a model for organizing those judicial systems in Georgia as in other states. At a later period, new types of courts were created. Georgia established a dual system of state courts which has persisted down to the present. The accidents of organization shape many of these developments, which, the author argues, left Georgia without a supreme court until 1845, the only American state where this happened.
Overlooked in historical accounts are the minor courts before whom more litigants appear than the trial courts. Unforgettable in the social history of local communities also was court week, when citizens gathered to conduct business.
Historical events have impacted the courts in many ways. Developments are shaped by individuals, and the author has tried to connect individual judges with such events rather than referring to them by their impersonal titles.
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