Legal systems

The civilian legal system, or civil law system, is the general typology of legal systems found in most countries. It is an alternative to common law system and has its roots in Roman law. It is employed by almost every country that was not a colony of Great Britain. In most jurisdictions the civil law is codified in the form of a civil code, but in some, like Scotland, it remains uncodified. Most codes follow the tradition of the Code Napoleon in some fashion. Notably, the German code was developed from Roman law with reference to German legal tradition.

Common law is a system of law used in England, all of the states of the United States (except Louisiana) and other former British possessions such as in the Laws of Australia, Canada, India, and Ireland.

Islamic law (Sharia) is derived from the Koran and used in some Middle Eastern nations, such as in the Laws of Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Common law (case law, precedental law) regulates, via precedents, how laws are to be understood).

Common law is derived from Anglo-Saxon customary law, also referred to as judge-made law, as it developed over the course of many centuries in the English courts. The English called their system the common law because it applied throughout the country.

English common law developed from the rules and principles that judges traditionally followed in deciding courts cases. But judges could expand precedents to make them suit particular cases. They could also override (reject) any precedents that they considered to be in error or outdated. In this way judges changed many laws over the years. The common law thus came to be law made by judges.

Civil law is based on legislation that is found in constitutions or statutes passed by government. The majority of civil-law countries have assembled their statutes into one or more carefully organized collections called codes. Most modern law codes can be traced back to the famous code commissioned by the Roman emperor Justinian I in the A.D. 500’s. Justinian’s code updated and summarized the whole of Roman law. It was called the Corpus Juris Civilis, meaning Body of Civil Law. For this reason legal systems that are based on the Roman system of statute and code law are known as civil-law systems.

In civil-law countries, such as France, Germany and Mexico, the statutes, not the courts, provide the final answer to any question of law. Judges may refer to precedents in making their decisions. But they must base every decision on a particular statute and not on precedent alone.

Answer the questions about the text.

1. What is law?

2. What makes law one of the basic social institutions?

3. How do laws relate to justice?

4. How are laws written?

5. In what form is the civil law codified?

6. What is Islamic law based on?

7. What are the historical roots of the civil law system?

8. What is civil law based on?

9. Are judges in civil-law countries allowed to refer to precedents?