1) Courts play an essential role within the Criminal Justice system here in America. Many fail to realize how these courts work or how they function. Looking even further, another question that is posed when examining the realm of American Courts is what contributes to the well being of courts. Many people would be quick to think that it's money that mainly contributes to the operation of these institutions. Cassia Sophn and her colleagues have brought up a legitimate topic of discussion when suggesting that conflict is the wellspring of the modern court. Conflict between citizens and conflict between agencies contribute to the courts in multiple different ways. .
One of the first ways that conflicts contribute to the courts is the way that the need for a formal court system. As Cassa Sophn suggests, a formal court system was spawned through development of a formal legal system. The functioning of the criminal justice system would not function smoothly without a court system. According to Sophn the creation of a court system was developed through the need for conflict resolution. When there is conflict, there needs to be a formal court system to formally resolve the problem. According to Sophn, as society began to grow, conflict occurred on more frequent and even became more complicated" (Sophn, 2011, pg. 29). What this means is that with the increase of conflict between citizens came the increase of needs for a formal court system to resolve this conflict. .
Furthermore, Sophn suggests that the development of conflict resolution systems can be traced all the back to the time when the Code of Hammurabi was developed. The Code of Hammurabi is a collection of 282 laws drafted by Hammurabi who was a king of Mesopotamian (ushistory.org). As Hammurabis Empire began to grow he saw the need to unify all of the different groups that were under his control (ushistory.org). He unified this population through the creation of the Hammurabi's code.