我们不能说一个文件或几个文件就能揭示出一国人民或其政府的特性。
But when hundreds and thousands of documents strike a consistent note, over more than a hundred years, we have a right to say that is the keynote.
从历史的角度来看，普通法就是由英国皇家法院的巡回法官的判决所得出的普通的一般法——优于地方法。
The enforcement of a claim presupposed the existence of a special form of action, a writ, with the result that the original common law represented a system of "actions" similar to that of classical Roman law.
它拥有最古老的成文宪法、最古老的持续的联邦体制以及最古老的民族自治实践。
One of the most interesting features of America’s youth is that the whole of its history belongs in the period since the invention of the printing press.
不仅包括这个国家自1776年以来的殖民时期的记录，还有当前五十个州以及各州和联邦（nation）之间错综复杂的关系网络的历史记录。
Thus, to take a very elementary example, the reports of the United States Supreme Court fill some 350 volumes, and the reports of some States are almost equally voluminous: the reader who wants to trace the history of law in America is confronted with over 5,000 stout volumes of legal cases.
Lesson One: Legal System 法律制度
Part One
第一部分 特征与特点
The United States is at once a very new nation and a very old nation.
美国既是一个非常新的国家也是一个非常老的国家。
It is a new nation compared with many other countries, and it is new, too, in the sense that it is constantly being renewed by the addition of new elements of population and of new States.
因此它的整个历史都得以记录下来：确实可以很有把握地说，任何其它国家都没有像美国这样全面的历史记录，因为像在意大利、法国或者英国过去的传说中湮没的那样的事件在美国都成了有文字记载的历史之一部分。
And the American record is not only comprehensive; it is immense.
如果存在令状（于1227年），诉讼请求就可以被采纳或执行；没有法院令状（为前提）的诉讼请求就没有追索权，因而该诉讼请求也不存在。
This system became inflexible when the "Provisions of Oxford" (1258) prohibited the creation of new writs, except for the flexibility which the "writ upon the case" allowed and which later led to the development of contract and tort law.
“牛津条例”（1285年）禁止创设除了“个案令状”之外的新令状，这种“个案令状”使该制度变得较为灵活了，而且导致了后来合同和侵权法的发展。
The narrow limits of the forms of action and the limited recourse they provided led to the development of equity law and equity case law.
但是到了十五世纪，衡平法和衡平判例法发展成了一个独立的法律制度和与一般的普通法法院一争高下的司法系统（衡平法院）。
Its rules and maxims became fixed and, to a degree, inflexible as in any legal system.
其规则和格言变得非常固定而且在某种程度上不像在其它法律制度中一样灵活。
当千百万个文件都以同样的方式去解决同样的中心问题，我们就有理由从中得出可以被称为国民特定的确定结论。
Part Two
普通法和衡平法
The American legal system, like the English, is methodologically mainly a case law system.
对于诉的形式的严格限制及由此产生的对追索权的限制导致了衡平法和衡平判例法的发展。
"Equity", in its general meaning of doing "equity", deciding ex aequo et bono, was first granted by the King, and later by his Chancellor as "keeper of the King's conscience", to afford relief in hardship cases.
但如果横跨一百多年的千百万个文件敲出始终如一的音调，我们就有理由说这就是其主调。
When hundreds and thousands of documents address themselves in the same ways, to the same overarching problems, we have a right to read from them certain conclusions which we can call national characteristics.
许多私法领域仍然主要是由判例法构成，广泛而不断增长的制定法一直受制于有约束力的（解释制定法的）判例法。
Knowledge of the case law method as well as of the technique of working with case law therefore is of central importance for an understanding of American law and legal methodology.
“衡平”的一般意义就是寻求“公平”，即公平且善良地裁决，它最初是由国王，后来由作为“国王良知守护人”的大法官颁行，以便在艰难的案件中提供救济。
In the fifteenth century, however, equity law and equity case law developed into an independent legal system and judiciary (Court of Chancery) which competed with the ordinary common law courts.
同英国一样，美国法律制度从方法论上来说主要是一种判例法制度。
Most fields of private law still consist primarily of case law and the extensive and steadily growing statutoryng interpretation through case law.
与许多别的国家相比它是一个新的国家。同时，它还因新人口成分和新州的加入而持续更新，在此意义上，它也是新国家。
But in other senses it is old. It is the oldest of the "new" nations--the first one to be made out of an Old World colony.
因此，判例法方法的知识以及使用判例法的技巧对于理解美国法律和法律方法是极其重要的。
The Common Law is historically the common general law -- with supremacy over local law--which was decreed by the itinerant judges of the English royal court.
采纳或执行某项诉讼请求是以存在法院令状这种特殊形式的诉为前提的，而这就使最初的普通法表现为由类似于古罗马法的“诉”所构成的体系。
If a writ existed (in 1227) a claim could be enforced; there was no recourse for a claim without a writ, the claim did not exist.
而且其记录不仅全面，还非常浩繁。
It embraces not only therecord ofthe colonial era andofthe Nation since 1776, butofthe present fifty States as well, and the intricate network of relationships between States and Nation.