The United States has not established a unified procuratorial system, and its procuratorial system takes the right of public prosecution as its main content and basic function, and the essence of procuratorial power is the derivative of administrative power.
The United States is an independent country that broke away from British colonial rule in the18th century. It has a direct relationship with Britain's legal and cultural traditions, and finally established a system with English common law as the main legal form, becoming one of the major countries that implement common law in the world. Therefore, the American procuratorial system naturally has the traditional characteristics of Britain. However, it also inherited the procuratorial system of other countries in some aspects and to varying degrees, mainly the European model of France, Spain and the Netherlands, which can be said to be a mixture of the procuratorial models of these countries (including Britain). At the same time, combined with American democratic politics, it developed into a representative of Anglo-American legal system with distinctive American characteristics. Its main performance is as follows:
First, the American procuratorial system is a derivative of the government's executive power and has obvious administrative nature.
One of the manifestations of the administrative procuratorial system in the United States is the integration of the federal procuratorial organs and the federal Ministry of Justice. The United States federal attorney general is the federal attorney general, and the federal deputy attorney general is the deputy attorney general. Procuratorial organs exercise investigation power and investigation command power. In the United States, the investigation of criminal cases is mainly carried out by the police and prosecutors, and the whole investigation is under the unified command of the attorney general. The main investigation activities of criminal cases in the United States are undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which not only maintains social security activities, but also investigates important cases involving the federal government and federal criminal law. The FBI is under the jurisdiction of the Attorney General, the Attorney General. Therefore, the Attorney General has the right to mobilize and guide the activities of the FBI and its branches all over the country. At the same time, the prosecutor in charge of case preparation has the right to command and issue orders to the police investigating the case. The second manifestation of the administrative nature of the American procuratorial system is that the power to decide whether to accuse a criminal offence is controlled by the administrative organ. The United States openly flaunts itself as a democratic constitutional country with "separation of powers". Judicial power is completely independent and can only be exercised by the courts. In order to check and balance each other, the supreme head of government and the Senate have the right to appoint and confirm the judges of the Supreme Court, but once appointed, the judges of the High Court are lifelong and cannot be removed unless there is an obvious crime. This form can ensure judicial independence, but it may also bring judicial arbitrariness. In order to avoid judicial corruption and arbitrariness, administrative organs strengthen the restriction on judicial power by controlling the right of criminal prosecution, and the power to decide whether to charge criminal offences is in the hands of administrative organs, which has obvious administrative nature. Therefore, American prosecutors are only administrative officials and do not have judicial protection similar to that of French prosecutors. Of course, their procuratorial power can only be administrative power. The third manifestation of the administrative nature of American procuratorial system is that American procuratorial organs undertake the function of providing legal advice to the government. Since the U.S. federal prosecutor was originally a legal officer of the government, it was his earliest duty to provide consulting services to the president or the government. In the federal prosecution system, the Federal Attorney General (Minister of Justice) is a member of the government cabinet, and he undertakes the related functions of providing legal advice to the government and ministries and drafting draft laws. In the state procuratorial system, the names of procuratorial organs in many States are very different, such as legal department, legal affairs department, legal affairs bureau, procuratorial office and so on. Prosecutors are directly called legal advisers in many countries, and they also undertake the responsibility of initiating and participating in civil and administrative litigation.
Second, the American procuratorial system is a concentrated expression of the right of public prosecution and does not have the function of legal supervision.
As the power exercised by prosecutors in criminal proceedings, the procuratorial power in the United States is a concentrated expression of prosecutors prosecuting criminal crimes on behalf of the government and in the name of public welfare representatives. In criminal proceedings, the prosecutor directs the investigation, accepts the accusation and decides whether to prosecute or not, and decides whether to appear in court in person to support the prosecution. This series of powers is the concentrated expression of the right of criminal public prosecution. It does not undertake the function of supervising judicial trials and judgments. In the United States, there is no private prosecution in criminal cases, and the prosecution system is implemented by procuratorial organs and juries. The important duty of the U.S. attorney's office is to prosecute crimes. However, the right of criminal prosecution in the United States is not exclusive to procuratorial organs, but is exercised by the grand jury and the prosecutor or the prosecutor's client respectively. In the United States, major criminal cases must be decided by a legally constituted jury whether to approve the prosecutor's indictment. In fact, the grand jury exercises the right to examine and prosecute, which limits the prosecutor's right to investigate and prosecute. The grand jury is responsible for investigating felony cases within the jurisdiction of federal courts. Felony cases are prosecuted by the grand jury, and misdemeanor cases are directly prosecuted by the prosecutor. Now, in the current criminal proceedings, due to the complexity and formalism of the grand jury reviewing cases, its use is increasingly restricted. The public prosecutor bears the real right of criminal prosecution and decides whether to initiate a public prosecution. After initiating a public prosecution, he has the discretion to decide whether to attend the trial in person. At present, because the status of grand jury in criminal proceedings is getting lower and lower, the criminal prosecution in American federal criminal proceedings is mainly undertaken by federal prosecutors to replace grand jury prosecution. Of course, in the state procuratorial system, the way and power to prosecute criminal offences are mainly made by the grand jury and state prosecutors, but in some States, prosecutors have greater power.
Third, the procuratorial system in the United States is decentralized and there is no unified procuratorial system.
The procuratorial system in the United States has the characteristics of "three levels, two tracks and mutual independence". The so-called "three levels" means that the procuratorial organs in the United States are built on the federal, state and town governments. The so-called "dual-track system" means that the procuratorial functions of the United States are exercised by the federal procuratorial system and the local procuratorial system respectively, and they are parallel and do not interfere with each other. The procuratorial organs in the United States are independent of each other regardless of their "level". Because the United States has not established a unified procuratorial power system, its prosecutors usually independently investigate and accuse criminal acts in the name of the government when exercising their functions and powers. Its dispersion is reflected in the following aspects: the United States is a federal country, so there are three sets of procuratorial power systems: one is the federal procuratorial system, which exercises the right to prosecute all federal crimes; The federal prosecution system in the United States consists of the prosecution department of the federal department of justice and the federal district attorney's office. Its main function is to investigate and prosecute violations of federal laws, and to participate in litigation on behalf of the federal government in civil cases to which the Federation is a party. In general, they decide to investigate and prosecute on their own, but they must abide by the principles and policies formulated by the Federal Minister of Justice. In some special cases, such as cases involving national security and major corruption cases of government officials, they often seek the support and help of the Criminal Division of the Ministry of Justice. Only with the approval of the federal attorney general or the assistant attorney general in charge of the work of the Criminal Division can they initiate public prosecution. The other is the national procuratorial system, which exercises the right to prosecute all criminal acts within its respective jurisdiction. The local procuratorial system in the United States is dominated by state procuratorial organs, which are composed of state attorneys general and institutions headed by state attorneys. State attorneys-general are nominally the chief prosecutors of a state, but most of them do not undertake the public prosecution function and rarely interfere in the specific affairs of the prosecutor's office. In most countries, state attorneys general and state prosecutors maintain the relationship of consultation and guidance. They are the chief prosecutors of criminal cases in each state and are usually regarded as law enforcement administrators in their counties. Generally speaking, local police organs will accept the guidance and even command of prosecutors in criminal case investigation. The other is the municipal procuratorial system. The town procuratorial organ is a local procuratorial organ independent of the state procuratorial system, but not all towns in the United States have their own procuratorial organs. In some states, there are no prosecutors in towns, and all procuratorial work belongs to state prosecutors. In those towns with their own procuratorial organs, procuratorial officials have no right to prosecute violations of federal or state laws, but can only investigate and prosecute violations of municipal laws and regulations. These illegal acts are called "minor crimes" and are mostly related to gambling, alcoholism, traffic and public health. There is no complete and unified organization to execute procuratorial power in the federal and state systems of the United States. The federal prosecution system in the United States does not have a unified organization like the French prosecution system. On the contrary, it has set up prosecutors' offices in courts at all levels as prosecutors' offices exercising procuratorial power. However, the names of procuratorial systems in different States are different, and the ways of setting up institutions are different. American prosecutors exercise procuratorial power independently, and are not subject to the command of other prosecutors or the constraints of procuratorial organs. They are all independent crime commanders as public welfare representatives. The independent prosecutor system is a prominent feature of American procuratorial organs.
In addition, in order to meet the needs of the independent prosecutor system, the United States has made strict provisions on the qualifications of prosecutors, which embodies high-quality standards. In all states of the United States, it is almost universally required that prosecutors must have a higher doctorate or master's degree in law and rich experience in judicial practice, and be lawyers or people proficient in law. In fact, a person is considered qualified to be a prosecutor only if he has obtained a practicing lawyer's license in his own state and joined the bar association in any state. Some countries also stipulate that prosecutors must have several years of legal practice experience. In order to enable prosecutors to exercise their functions and powers fairly according to law, the United States has formulated relevant systems to ensure that prosecutors receive adequate economic income and material treatment. Its main symbol is the implementation of high salary system, and prosecutors have relatively rich income, which is higher than that of ordinary administrative officials and basically the same as that of judges. According to the survey of 1973, the annual salary of chief prosecutors in China's top ten cities is $30,300 in Seattle, Washington, and $48,998 in Buffalo, New York. There are other generous benefits, such as longer holidays, priority housing security and medical services, and generous pensions. The above economic security has played a positive role in eliminating the worries of prosecutors, working hard and enforcing the law fairly.
To sum up, the procuratorial system in the United States takes the right of public prosecution as its main content and basic function, and independent prosecutors assume decentralized power to investigate duty crimes. In essence, it is a derivative of administrative power and a concentrated expression of administrative power in the judicial system.