True Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Theories Part VII

Civil Law (Legal System)

Civil law, civilian law, or Roman law is a legal system originating in Europe, intellectualized within the framework of late Roman law, and whose most prevalent feature is that its core principles are codified into a referable system that serves as the primary source of law. This can be contrasted with common law systems whose intellectual framework comes from judge-made decisional law which gives precedential authority to prior court decisions on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different occasions (doctrine of judicial precedent, or stare decisis).

Historically, civil law is the group of legal ideas and systems ultimately derived from the Codex Justinianus but heavily overlaid by Napoleonic, Germanic, canonical, feudal, and local practices, as well as doctrinal strains such as natural law, codification, and legal positivism.

Conceptually, civil law proceeds from abstractions formulates general principles and distinguishes substantive rules from procedural rules. It holds case law to be secondary and subordinate to statutory law. When discussing civil law, one should keep in mind the conceptual difference between a statute and a codal article. The marked feature of civilian systems is that they use codes with brief text that tend to avoid factually specific scenarios. Code articles deal in generalities and thus stand at odds with statutory schemes which are often very long and very detailed.

Overview

The purpose of codification is to provide all citizens with manners and a written collection of the laws which apply to them and which judges must follow. It is the most widespread system of law in the world, in force in various forms in about 150 countries, and draws heavily from Roman law, arguably the most intricate known legal system dating from before the modern era.

Where codes exist, the primary source of law is the law code, which is a systematic collection of interrelated articles, arranged by subject matter in some pre-specified order, and that explain the principles of law, rights and entitlements, and how basic legal mechanisms work. Law codes are simply laws enacted by a legislature, even if they are in general much longer than other laws. Other major legal systems in the world include common law, Halakha, canon law, and Islamic law.

Legal systems of the world

Civil law traditions in Europe

Napoleonic Code

Austro-German law

Mixed (local + Napoleonic/Austro-German)

Scandinavian law

Common law

Mixed (common law + Roman law)

Civilian countries can be divided into:

• Those where Roman law in some form is still living law but there has been no attempt to create a civil code: Andorra and San Marino

• Those with uncodified mixed systems in which civil law is an academic source of authority but common law is also influential: Scotland and the Roman-Dutch law countries (South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, and Guyana)

• Those with codified mixed systems in which civil law is the background law but has its public law heavily influenced by common law: Puerto Rico, Philippines, Quebec, and Louisiana

• Those with comprehensive codes that exceed a single civil code, such as Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, and Mexico: it is this last category that is normally regarded as typical of civil law systems, and is discussed in the rest of this article.

The Scandinavian systems are hybrid since their background law is a mix of civil law and Scandinavian customary law and has been partially codified. Likewise, the laws of the Channel Islands (Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark) are hybrids that mix Norman customary law and French civil law.