England and Wales
England and Wales is a legal jurisdiction covering England and Wales, two of the four nations of the United Kingdom. "England and Wales" forms the constitutional successor to the former Kingdom of England and follows a single legal system, known as English law. The devolved National Assembly for Wales was created in 1999 by the Parliament of the United Kingdom under the Government of Wales Act 1998 and provides a degree of self-government in Wales; the powers of the Assembly were expanded by the Government of Wales Act 2006, which allows it to pass its own laws, the Act formally separated the Welsh Government from the Assembly. There is no equivalent body for England, directly governed by the Parliament and the government of the United Kingdom. During the Roman occupation of Britain, the area of present-day England and Wales was administered as a single unit, with the exception of the land to the north of Hadrian's Wall – though the Roman-occupied area varied in extent, for a time extended to the Antonine/Severan Wall.
At that time, most of the native inhabitants of Roman Britain spoke Brythonic languages, were all regarded as Britons, divided into numerous tribes. After the conquest, the Romans administered this region as the province of Britain. Long after the departure of the Romans, the Britons in what became Wales developed their own system of law, first codified by Hywel Dda when he was king of most of present-day Wales. However, after the Norman invasion of Wales in the 11th century, English law came to apply in the parts of Wales conquered by the Normans. In 1283, the English, led by Edward I, with the biggest army brought together in England since the 11th century, conquered the remainder of Wales organised as the Principality of Wales; this was united with the English crown by the Statute of Rhuddlan of 1284. This aimed to replace Welsh criminal law with English law. Welsh law continued to be used for civil cases until the annexation of Wales to England in the 16th century; the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542 consolidated the administration of all the Welsh territories and incorporated them into the legal system of the Kingdom of England.
Prior to 1746 it was not clear whether a reference to "England" in legislation included Wales, so in 1746 Parliament passed the Wales and Berwick Act. This specified that in all prior and future laws, references to "England" would by default include Wales; the Wales and Berwick Act was repealed in 1967, although the statutory definition of "England" created by that Act still applies for laws passed before 1967. In new legislation since 1967, what was referred to as "England" is now "England and Wales", while references to "England" and "Wales" refer to those political divisions. England and Wales are treated as a single unit for some purposes, because the two form the constitutional successor to the former Kingdom of England; the continuance of Scots law was guaranteed under the 1706 Treaty of Union that led to the Acts of Union 1707, as a consequence English law—and after 1801, Irish law—continued to be separate. Following the two Acts of Union, Parliament can restrict the effect of its laws to part of the realm, the effect of laws, where restricted, was applied to one or more of the former kingdoms.
Thus, most laws applicable to England applied to Wales. However, Parliament now passes laws applicable to Wales and not to England, a practice, rare before the middle of the 20th century. Examples are the Welsh Language Acts 1967 and 1993 and the Government of Wales Act 1998. Measures and Acts of the National Assembly for Wales passed since the Government of Wales Act 2006 apply in Wales but not in England. Following the Government of Wales Act, effective since May 2007, the National Assembly for Wales can legislate on matters devolved to it. Following a referendum on 3 March 2011, the Welsh Assembly gained direct law-making powers, without the need to consult Westminster; this was the first time in 500 years that Wales had its own powers to legislate. Each piece of Welsh legislation is known as an Act of the Assembly. For a company to be incorporated in the United Kingdom, its application for registration with Companies House must state "whether the company's registered office is to be situated in England and Wales, in Scotland or in Northern Ireland", which will determine the law applicable to that business entity.
A registered office must be specified as "in Wales" if the company wishes to use a name ending cyfyngedig or cyf, rather than Limited or Ltd. or to avail itself of certain other privileges relating to the official use of the Welsh language. Outside the legal system, the position is mixed; some organisations combine as "England and Wales", others are separate. In sports, cricket has a combined international team administered by the England and Wales Cricket Board, who govern the sport across both nations, whilst football, rugby union, rugby league, the Commonwealth Games and other sports have separate national representative teams for each country. A few Welsh association football clubs, most notably Cardiff City F. C. and Swansea City F. C. play in the English football league system, while The New Saints F. C. which represents places on both sides of the border, plays in the Welsh football league system. Some religious denominations organise on the basis of England and Wales, most notably the Roman Catholic Church, but small denominations, e.g. the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
Prior to the disestablishment of the Church in Wales in 1920, the Anglican churc
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia, located in the Indian Ocean to the southwest of the Bay of Bengal and to the southeast of the Arabian Sea. The island is geographically separated from the Indian subcontinent by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait; the legislative capital, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, is a suburb of the commercial capital and largest city, Colombo. Sri Lanka's documented history spans 3,000 years, with evidence of pre-historic human settlements dating back to at least 125,000 years, it has a rich cultural heritage and the first known Buddhist writings of Sri Lanka, the Pāli Canon, date back to the Fourth Buddhist council in 29 BC. Its geographic location and deep harbours made it of great strategic importance from the time of the ancient Silk Road through to the modern Maritime Silk Road. Sri Lanka was known from the beginning of British colonial rule as Ceylon. A nationalist political movement arose in the country in the early 20th century to obtain political independence, granted in 1948.
Sri Lanka's recent history has been marred by a 26-year civil war, which decisively ended when the Sri Lanka Armed Forces defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009. The current constitution stipulates the political system as a republic and a unitary state governed by a semi-presidential system, it has had a long history of international engagement, as a founding member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the G77, the Non-Aligned Movement. Along with the Maldives, Sri Lanka is one of only two South Asian countries rated "high" on the Human Development Index, with its HDI rating and per capita income the highest among South Asian nations; the Sri Lankan constitution accords Buddhism the "foremost place", although it does not identify it as a state religion. Buddhism is given special privileges in the Sri Lankan constitution; the island is home to many cultures and ethnicities. The majority of the population is from the Sinhalese ethnicity, while a large minority of Tamils have played an influential role in the island's history.
Moors, Malays and the indigenous Vedda are established groups on the island. In antiquity, Sri Lanka was known to travellers by a variety of names. According to the Mahavamsa, the legendary Prince Vijaya named the land Tambapanni, because his followers' hands were reddened by the red soil of the area. In Hindu mythology, such as the Ramayana, the island was referred to as Lankā; the Tamil term Eelam, was used to designate the whole island in Sangam literature. The island was known under Chola rule as Mummudi Cholamandalam. Ancient Greek geographers called it Taprobanē from the word Tambapanni; the Persians and Arabs referred to it as Sarandīb from Cerentivu or Siṃhaladvīpaḥ. Ceilão, the name given to Sri Lanka by the Portuguese Empire when it arrived in 1505, was transliterated into English as Ceylon; as a British crown colony, the island was known as Ceylon. The country is now known in Sinhala in Tamil as Ilaṅkai. In 1972, its formal name was changed to "Free and Independent Republic of Sri Lanka".
In 1978 it was changed to the "Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka". As the name Ceylon still appears in the names of a number of organisations, the Sri Lankan government announced in 2011 a plan to rename all those over which it has authority; the pre-history of Sri Lanka goes back 125,000 years and even as far back as 500,000 years. The era spans the Palaeolithic and early Iron Ages. Among the Paleolithic human settlements discovered in Sri Lanka, which dates back to 37,000 BP, Batadombalena and Belilena are the most important. In these caves, archaeologists have found the remains of anatomically modern humans which they have named Balangoda Man, other evidence suggesting that they may have engaged in agriculture and kept domestic dogs for driving game. One of the first written references to the island is found in the Indian epic Ramayana, which provides details of a kingdom named Lanka, created by the divine sculptor Vishwakarma for Kubera, the Lord of Wealth, it is said that Kubera was overthrown by his demon stepbrother Ravana, the powerful emperor who built a mythical flying machine named Dandu Monara.
The modern city of Wariyapola is described as Ravana's airport. Early inhabitants of Sri Lanka were ancestors of the Vedda people, an indigenous people numbering 2,500 living in modern-day Sri Lanka; the 19th-century Irish historian James Emerson Tennent theorized that Galle, a city in southern Sri Lanka, was the ancient seaport of Tarshish from which King Solomon is said to have drawn ivory and other valuables. According to the Mahāvamsa, a chronicle written in Pāḷi, the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka are the Yakshas and Nagas. Ancient cemeteries that were used before 600 BC and other signs of advanced civilisation have been discovered in Sri Lanka. Sinhalese history traditionally starts in 543 BC with the arrival of Prince Vijaya, a semi-legendary prince who sailed with 700 followers to Sri Lanka, after being expelled from Vanga Kingdom (present-day Ben
India
India known as the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh largest country by area and with more than 1.3 billion people, it is the second most populous country as well as the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, while its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia; the Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE. In the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, Buddhism and Jainism arose. Early political consolidations took place under the Gupta empires. In the medieval era, Zoroastrianism and Islam arrived, Sikhism emerged, all adding to the region's diverse culture.
Much of the north fell to the Delhi Sultanate. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal Empire. In the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, in the mid-19th under British Crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance and led to India's independence in 1947. In 2017, the Indian economy was the world's sixth largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the fastest-growing major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption and inadequate public healthcare. A nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the second largest standing army in the world and ranks fifth in military expenditure among nations. India is a federal republic governed under a parliamentary system and consists of 29 states and 7 union territories.
A pluralistic and multi-ethnic society, it is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindush, equivalent to the Sanskrit word Sindhu, the historical local appellation for the Indus River; the ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as "The people of the Indus". The geographical term Bharat, recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations, it is a modernisation of the historical name Bharatavarsha, which traditionally referred to the Indian subcontinent and gained increasing currency from the mid-19th century as a native name for India. Hindustan is a Middle Persian name for India, it was introduced into India by the Mughals and used since then. Its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety; the name may refer to either the northern part of India or the entire country.
The earliest known human remains in South Asia date to about 30,000 years ago. Nearly contemporaneous human rock art sites have been found in many parts of the Indian subcontinent, including at the Bhimbetka rock shelters in Madhya Pradesh. After 6500 BCE, evidence for domestication of food crops and animals, construction of permanent structures, storage of agricultural surplus, appeared in Mehrgarh and other sites in what is now Balochistan; these developed into the Indus Valley Civilisation, the first urban culture in South Asia, which flourished during 2500–1900 BCE in what is now Pakistan and western India. Centred around cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Kalibangan, relying on varied forms of subsistence, the civilization engaged robustly in crafts production and wide-ranging trade. During the period 2000–500 BCE, many regions of the subcontinent transitioned from the Chalcolithic cultures to the Iron Age ones; the Vedas, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism, were composed during this period, historians have analysed these to posit a Vedic culture in the Punjab region and the upper Gangetic Plain.
Most historians consider this period to have encompassed several waves of Indo-Aryan migration into the subcontinent from the north-west. The caste system, which created a hierarchy of priests and free peasants, but which excluded indigenous peoples by labeling their occupations impure, arose during this period. On the Deccan Plateau, archaeological evidence from this period suggests the existence of a chiefdom stage of political organisation. In South India, a progression to sedentary life is indicated by the large number of megalithic monuments dating from this period, as well as by nearby traces of agriculture, irrigation tanks, craft traditions. In the late Vedic period, around the 6th century BCE, the small states and chiefdoms of the Ganges Plain and the north-western regions had consolidated into 16 major oligarchies and monarchies that were known as the mahajanapadas; the emerging urbanisation gave rise to non-Vedic religious movements, two of which became independent religions. Jainism came into prominence during the life of Mahavira.
Buddhism, based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha, attracted followers from all social classes excepting the middle
Law of the Republic of Ireland
The law of Ireland consists of constitutional and common law. The highest law in the State is the Constitution of Ireland, from which all other law derives its authority; the Republic has a common-law legal system with a written constitution that provides for a parliamentary democracy based on the British parliamentary system, albeit with a popularly elected president, a separation of powers, a developed system of constitutional rights and judicial review of primary legislation. The sources of Irish law reflect Irish history and the various parliaments whose law affected the country down through the ages. Notable omissions from the list include laws passed by the first and second Dáil, the Brehon Laws which were traditional Celtic laws, the practice of, only wiped out during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland; these latter laws are of historical interest only. The Irish Constitution was enacted by a popular plebiscite held on 1 July 1937, came into force on 29 December of the same year; the Constitution is the cornerstone of the Irish legal system and is held to be the source of power exercised by the legislative and executive branches of government.
The Irish Supreme Court and High Court exercise judicial review over all legislation and may strike down laws if they are inconsistent with the constitution. The Constitution can only be amended by referendum. A proposal to amend the Constitution is introduced into Dáil Éireann as a bill and if passed by the Dáil, passed or deemed to have been passed by the Senate, is put to the people. Only Irish citizens resident in the state may vote. There is no threshold for such referendums and a simple majority of voters is sufficient for a proposal to be passed. Once passed by the people the President signs the referendum bill into law; as of November 2011, there have been 33 such referendums: 23 of which were approved by the people and 10 of which were rejected. The constitution was amended twice during an initial transitional period of three years following the election of the first President of Ireland, when amendments could be made without recourse to the people. Modern-day statute law is made by the bicameral National Parliament — more known by its Irish name, the Oireachtas.
Acts of the Oireachtas are split into sequentially numbered sections and may be cited by using a short title which gives the act a title based on its subject matter and the year in which it was enacted. While the Oireachtas is bicameral, the upper house, the Senate, has little power which at most allows the Senate to delay rather than veto legislation, something that has only happened twice since 1937. Article 50 of the Constitution of Ireland carried over all laws, in force in the Irish Free State prior to its coming into force on 29 December 1937, insofar as these laws were not repugnant to the new constitution. A similar function had been fulfilled by Article 73 of the Constitution of the Irish Free State, which carried over all legislation that had in force in Southern Ireland, insofar as these laws were not repugnant to the Constitution of the Irish Free State; as a result, while the Irish state has been in existence for less than one hundred years, the statute book stretches back in excess of 800 years.
By virtue of the Statute Law Revision Act 2007, the oldest Act in force in Ireland is the Fairs Act 1204. The statute law of Ireland includes law passed by the following: Pre-union Irish statutes the King of England as a lawgiver for Ireland, the Parliament of Ireland English and British statutes, which applied to Ireland in their original enactment or were subsequently applied to Ireland the King of England the Parliament of England the Parliament of Great Britain Statutes of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which applied to Ireland in their original enactment or were subsequently applied to Ireland Statutes of independent Ireland the Oireachtas of the Irish Free State the present Oireachtas Notwithstanding the declaration in the 1937 constitution that the Oireachtas is to be "the sole and exclusive" legislature, it has long been held that it is permissible for the Oireachtas to delegate its law-making power to other bodies as long as such delegated legislation does not exceed the "principles and policies" set out in the relevant authorising statute.
All instances of delegated legislation in the Republic are known as statutory instruments, although only a small sub-set of these are numbered as statutory instruments and published by the Stationery Office. This latter subset is composed of statutory instruments which are required to be laid before the Oireachtas or which are of general application. In addition, a body of charters, statutory rules and orders and other secondary legislation made prior to independence in 1922 continues to be in force in Ireland insofar as such legislation has not been revoked or otherwise ceased to be in force. Ireland was the subject of the first extension of England's common law legal system outside England. While in England the creation of the common law was the result of the assimilation of existing customary law, in Ireland the common law was imported from England supplanting the customary law of the Irish. This, was a gradual process which went hand-in-hand with English influence in Ireland; as with any common-law system, the Irish courts are bound by the doctrine of stare decisis to apply clear precedents set by higher courts and courts of co-ordinate jurisdiction.
The main exception to this rule being that the
Supreme Court of Sri Lanka
The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka is the highest court of Sri Lanka. The Supreme Court is the highest and final judicial instance of record and is empowered to exercise its powers, subject to the provisions of the Constitution; the Court has ultimate appellate jurisdiction in constitutional matters, take precedence over all lower Courts. The Sri Lanka judicial system is complex blend of both civil-law. In some cases such as capital punishment, the decision may be passed on to the President of the Republic for clemency petitions; the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka was created on 18 April 1801 with the "Royal Charter of Justice of 1801 of King George the 3rd establishing the Supreme Courts of the Island of Ceylon" by the British, who controlled most of the island at the time, excluding the inland territory of Kandy. This creation was replaced by a new Charter covering the whole of the island. In 1972 the country adopted a new Constitution; the court consists of the Chief Justice and not less than six and not more than ten other Judges, appointed by the President, upon the President's recommendation for such appointment to the Constitutional Council is approved by the Council.
The Chief Justice, The Justices of the Supreme Court and The Justices of the Court of Appeal are addressed as "Your Lordship" and receives the title "The Honourable Justice". The President of Sri Lanka is responsible for the appointment and removal of all the judges of the Supreme Court; the Supreme Court judges are appointed with the consent of the Constitutional Council. From 3 October 2001 until 2011, with the 17th Amendment, the Constitutional Council had the task of advising the President on the appointment of the judges. If the appointment is for a period less than fourteen days, this requirement will not apply; the Justices are not allowed to hold any other office without the consent of the Constitution or the President. In the discharge of its functions relating to the appointment of Judges of the Courts, the Council may obtain the views of the Chief Justice and of the Attorney General. Judges who hold office during good behaviour can serve until the retirement age for the judges fixed at 65 years, as per the Constitution.
They cannot be removed except by an order of the President made after an address to the Parliament and the support of the majority of its members. The order has to be presented to the President for removal on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity. A resolution for the presentation of the order of the president can be obtained by the Speaker or be placed on the Order Paper of Parliament only if notice of the resolution is signed by no less than one third of the total number of Members of Parliament and sets out full particulars of the alleged misbehaviour or incapacity. Parliament is required to provide for all matters relating to the presentation of the address, including the procedure for the passing of the resolution, the investigation and proof of the alleged misbehaviour or incapacity, the right of the judge to appear and to be heard in person or by representative, by law or by Standing Orders of Parliament. A Judge is not permitted to perform or hold any other office, whether paid or not, or accept any place of profit or emolument, except as authorized by the Constitution or by written law or with the written consent of the President.
A judge of the Supreme Court can only be removed by Parliament, however if convicted of a criminal offense the judge may face a jail sentence. The 2015 indictment of Justice Sarath De Abrew is the first time that a sitting Supreme Court judge has been indicted on a criminal offense; the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka is housed in the Hulftsdorp court complex. Article 118 of the Constitution - the Supreme Court is the highest and final superior court of record and is empowered to exercise original advisory and appellate judicial functions, it is the final Court of Record and the Court of Appeal of Sri Lanka. The Supreme Court has the following powers, subject to the provisions of the Constitution: Jurisdiction in respect of Constitutional matters Jurisdiction for the protection of fundamental rights Final appellate jurisdiction Consultative jurisdiction Jurisdiction in petitions relating to election of President, it was proved right by the Impeachment of Shirani Bandaranayake. Shirani Bandaranayake the former chief justice was impeached by the parliament for rulings against the government, including one against a bill proposed by Basil Rajapaksa the minister for economic development and the brother of president Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Bandaranayake was replaced as chief justice by former Attorney General Mohan Peiris. Peiris is considered to be an ally of President Rajapaksa and his appointment is seen by critics as further consolidation of power by the president and his family. Bandaranayake has refused to recognise the impeachment and lawyers groups have refused to work with the new chief justice. Bandaranayake's controversial impeachment has drawn much criticism and concern from within and outside of Sr
County court
A county court is a court based in or with a jurisdiction covering one or more counties, which are administrative divisions within a country, not to be confused with the medieval system of county courts held by the high sheriff of each county. Since 2014, England and Wales have had what is described as "a single civil court" named the County Court, with unlimited financial jurisdiction; however it should be understood that there are County Court buildings and courtrooms throughout England and Wales, not one single location. It is "a single civil court" in the sense of a single centrally organised and administered court system. Before 2014 there were numerous separate county court systems, each with jurisdiction across England and Wales for enforcement of its orders, but each with a defined "county court district" from which it took claims. County court districts did not have the same boundaries as counties: the name was used because the county courts had evolved from courts which did in fact correspond to a county's territory.
Today the court sits in many County Court centres corresponding to the old individual county courts. County Court matters can be lodged at a court in person, by post or via the Internet in some cases through the County Court Bulk Centre. Cases are heard at the court having jurisdiction over the area where the claimant lives. Most matters are decided by a district circuit judge sitting alone. Civil matters in England do not have juries. Judges in the County Court are either former barristers or former solicitors, whereas in the High Court they are more to have been a barrister. Civil claims with an amount in controversy under £10,000 are dealt with in the County Court under the small claims track. Claims between £5,000 and £25,000 that are capable of being tried within one day are allocated to the "fast track" and claims over £25,000 to the "multi track." These'tracks' are labels for the use of the court system - the actual cases will be heard in the County Court or the High Court depending on their value.
For personal injury and some landlord-tenant dispute cases the thresholds for each track have different values. Appeals are to a higher judge, the High Court of Justice or to the Court of Appeal, as the case may be. In debt cases, the aim of a claimant taking County Court action against a defendant is to secure a County Court judgment; this is a legal order to pay the full amount of the debt. Judgments can be enforced at the request of the claimant in a number of ways, including requesting the Court Bailiffs to seize goods, the proceeds of any sale being used to pay the debt, or an Attachment of Earnings Order, where the defendant's employer is ordered to make deductions from the gross wages to pay the claimant. County Court judgments are recorded in the Register of Judgments and Fines and in the defendant's credit records held by credit reference agencies; this information is used in consumer credit scores, making it difficult or more expensive for the defendant to obtain credit. In order to avoid the record being kept for years in the register, the debt must be settled within thirty days after the date the County Court judgment was served.
If the debt was not paid within the statutory period, the entry will remain for six full years. County court is the name given to the intermediate court in one Australian state, namely the County Court of Victoria, they hear indictable criminal offences except for treason and manslaughter. Their civil jurisdiction is intermediate over civil disputes where the amount claimed is greater than a few tens of thousands of dollars but less than a few hundreds of thousands of dollars; the limits vary between states. In some states the same level of court is called a district court. Below them are the magistrates courts. Above them are the state supreme courts; some states adopt the two-tier appellate system, with the magistrates courts below and the state supreme courts above. In Northern Ireland there are seven county courts, following the same model as those of England and Wales before unification in 2014; these are the main civil courts. While higher-value cases are heard in the High Court, the county courts hear a wide range of civil actions, consumer claims, appeals from magistrates' courts.
The county courts are called family care centres when hearing proceedings brought under the Children Order 1995 and appeals from the family proceedings courts. Many United States states have a county court system, which may be purely administrative focused on registration of properties and deeds or most may have jurisdiction over civil cases such as lawsuits and criminal courts and jails where trials from misdemeanors to felony cases are centered about a common jail system managed by the county Sheriffs departments. For example, in Texas, county courts handle Class A and B misdemeanors, share jurisdiction with justice of the peace and district courts on some mid-size civil cases, have appellate jurisdiction from municipal and justice of the peace court cases. With the growth of the largest cities, many large urban centers have subsumed whole or most of c
