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The law of California consists of several levels, including constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law, as well as case law. The California Codes form the general statutory law.
Contents
Unique features
Because California law is enormous, it is necessary to focus only on a few features which are unique to California law, when compared to the laws of its sister states as well as federal law.
Popular sovereignty
California has a powerful tradition of popular sovereignty, which is reflected in the frequent use of initiatives to amend the state constitution, as well as the former state constitutional requirement (repealed in 1966 and enacted as Government Code Section 100) that all government process shall be styled in the name of "the People of the State of California." (Government Code Section 100 also expressly states that sovereignty resides in the people.) This means that all criminal prosecutions and all enacted laws are done in the name of "the People," rather than "the State" or "the Commonwealth" as in much of the United States. The preambles of the state's two open meeting laws, the Brown Act and the Bagley-Keene Act, both contain the same sentence: "The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them."
Statutory structure and citation
California is unusual in that like Texas and New York, and unlike 46 other states, it has separate subject-specific codes rather than a single code divided into numbered titles.
During the state's first century, the California Legislature was rather sloppy in drafting statutes. This has resulted in two bizarre anomalies in California statutory law. First, some acts are designated as "Acts" and others are designated as "Laws," with no coherent distinction between the two. A typical example of this problem is in California consumer law, where an injured consumer may attempt to sue on behalf of all similarly injured consumers under the Unfair Competition Law and the Consumers Legal Remedies Act.
The second oddity is that California is the only state that always precedes a citation to statute subsections with the word "subdivision" (abbreviated in some contexts to "subd."). The reason is that the Legislature often failed to leave gaps in the section numbering in the California codes for future expansion, and then occasionally resorted to the shortsighted technique of appending an alphabetical letter to a section number in order to insert a new section between two existing sections on similar subject matter. For example, the summary judgment statute in California is Section 437c of the Code of Civil Procedure. But alphabetical letters are traditionally used in the U.S. to designate subsections of statutes. To avoid confusion as to whether one is citing section 437c (that is, the section with number 437c) or 437(c) (subsection (c) of the section numbered 437), the "subdivision" prefix must be used when citing any subsection of all California statutes.
Similar to New York, but unlike most other states and the federal judiciary, nearly all of California civil procedure law is located in the Code of Civil Procedure (a statute) rather than in the California Rules of Court (a set of regulations promulgated by the judiciary). Therefore, whenever the Judicial Council of California identifies a significant defect in California civil procedure, it must lobby the Legislature and the Governor to change the statutes, rather than merely promulgating a simple rule change. This can be problematic as even noncontroversial technical amendments may be stalled due to unrelated disputes between the Legislature and Governor. A recent example is the California Electronic Discovery Act, which was vetoed in October 2008 (along with many other bills) by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger simply as his expression of disgust with the Legislature's inability to fix the state's dysfunctional budget, rather than because of any substantive defect in the bill itself. The Electronic Discovery Act had to be reintroduced in the next legislative session and was finally signed by the Governor on June 29, 2009.
Codification
Unlike the majority of states, contract law is fully codified in the Civil Code (which even includes details such as a definition of consideration). However, the Restatement of Contracts (Second) is also used by California courts. Non-compete clauses are automatically void except for a small number of exceptions.
Evidence privileges are fully codified in the Evidence Code (meaning if it's not codified it doesn't exist), in contrast to the Federal Rules of Evidence, which has allowed a residual exception for continuous development of privileges under the common law.
Celebrity justice
The huge concentration of celebrities in Hollywood has resulted in a large number of statutes custom-tailored to the needs of celebrities, such as the California Celebrities Rights Act, as well as the 1990 enactment of the first anti-stalking law anywhere in the United States (which inspired the enactment of similar laws across the country). Celebrities' marital problems (and their ability to pay to litigate them thoroughly) have resulted in a very detailed Family Code, a rich corpus of family case law, and a large number of family law specialists officially certified by the State Bar of California. Lee Marvin and Barry Bonds are among the celebrities whose marital disputes were litigated before the Supreme Court of California. Celebrities' spouses often attempt to establish California jurisdiction over marital disputes, since the state's community property system (under which a 50/50 split of marital assets is strictly mandated by statute) is more favorable to the noncelebrity spouse who earned less during the marriage than the celebrity spouse.
The widespread distribution of Hollywood motion pictures and television shows has given millions of media consumers worldwide some degree of superficial familiarity with California law. For example, the section numbers of the California Penal Code have become familiar to viewers around the world. Section 187 (murder) is probably the most well-known.
Powerful, innovative or controversial laws
The Unruh Civil Rights Act and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act are among the most powerful civil rights laws in the United States. Both offer much broader coverage and more generous remedies than their federal equivalents. California appellate courts were the first in the United States to begin carving out exceptions to at-will employment, in 1959.
The California Environmental Quality Act (Public Resources Code Sec. 21000, et seq.) (CEQA) has far more lenient standing requirements than the federal National Environmental Policy Act, with the result that it is much easier for California landowners to sue each other than comparable landowners in other states.
California is renowned for its innovations in tort law, including strict liability for defective products, insurance bad faith, market-share liability, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and wrongful life.
The California three strikes law (codified in the Penal Code) has resulted in severe penalties in some cases and has been somewhat controversial in its application.