LEGAL SYSTEMS

CIVIL LAW

 Civil law, civilian law, or Roman law,  neo-Roman law,

Romano-Germanic law or Continental law.
 The expression civil law is a translation of Latin jus civile,
or "citizens' law"
 legal system originating in Europe
 Most important feature is that its core principles
are codified.
 civil law formulates general principles
 distinguishes substantive rules from procedural rules.
 It holds case law to be secondary and subordinate
to statutory law.
 Civil law practitioners, however, traditionally refer to
their system in a broad sense as jus commune, literally
"common law", meaning the general principles of law as
opposed to laws peculiar to particular areas.
 The purpose of codification is to provide all
citizens with 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 parts, sections,
articles, arranged by subject matter in some
pre-specified order,
 Sections or Articles explain the principles of
law, rights and entitlements, and how basic
legal mechanisms work.
 Law codes are laws enacted by a legislature.
 Civilian countries can be divided into four categories
as follows:
1. Countries where Roman law in some form is still
living law but there has been no attempt to create
a code. Examples San Marino and Andorra.
2. civil law is an academic source of authority but
common law is also influential Scotland, Zimbabwe,
South Africa, Sri Lanka etc.
3. civil law is the background law but has its public law
heavily influenced by common law:  Louisiana,
Philippines, Puerto Rico, Quebec
4. Where there are comprehensive codes, for example:
Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, Mexico
 civil law jurisdictions deal with case law apart from
any precedent value.
 Civil law courts generally decide cases using legislative
provisions on a case-by-case basis, without reference to
other or even superior judicial decisions.
 While the typical French Speaking court decision is short,
concise and devoid of explanation or justification,
 in Germanic Europe, the Supreme Courts can and do tend
to write more verbose opinions supported by legal
reasoning.
 A line of similar case decisions, while not precedent per
se, constitute Jurisprudence Constante.
 no statutory requirement that any case be reported or
published in a law report, except for the councils of state
and constitutional courts.
CIVIL LAW COUNTRIES
 All European Union states (except the UK and Ireland) and European states,
 all of continental South and Middle America (except Guyana and Belize),
 Quebec,
 all of East Asia (except Hong Kong),
 Congo,
 Azerbaijan,
 Kuwait,
 Iraq,
 Russia,
 Turkey,
 Egypt,
 Madagascar,
 Lebanon,
 Switzerland,
 Indonesia,
 Vietnam,
 Thailand
 Thus civil law/Code Law is based on an all-
inclusive system of written rules (codes) of
law.
 Under code law, the legal system is generally
divided into three separate codes:
1. commercial,
2. civil, and
3. criminal.
The civil law system, also called a codified
legal system, is based on a detailed set of
laws that make up a code.
COMMON LAW

 According to Black's Law Dictionary, (10th Ed.), "The body

of law derived from judicial decisions, rather than from
statutes or constitutions; [synonym] CASELAW, [contrast]
STATUTORY LAW."
 originated during the Middle Ages in England and from
there propagated to the colonies of the British Empire.
 also known as judicial precedent or judge made
law or case law other names Anglo-American, English,
judge-made, legislation from the bench.
 It is that body of law which is developed by judges, courts
 According to the principle of stare decisis, if a similar
dispute has been resolved in the past, the court is
usually bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior
decision.
 Source of law: Case law, statutes/legislation
 Common law seeks “interpretation through
the past decisions of higher courts which
interpret the same statutes or apply
established and customary principles of law
to a similar set of facts”.
 Judges act as impartial referees; lawyers are
responsible for presenting the case
 High level of judicial independence
 the stare decisis principle that cases
should be decided according to consistent
principled rules so that similar facts will
yield similar results, lies at the heart of
all common law systems.
 If, however, the court finds that the
current dispute is fundamentally different
from all previous cases, and legislative
statutes are either silent or ambiguous on
the question, judges have the authority
and duty to resolve the issue.
COMMON LAW COUNTRIES
 India
 the United States
 Pakistan
 Nigeria, 
 Bangladesh
 Canada,
 Malaysia,
 Ghana,
 Australia,
 Sri Lanka,
 Hong Kong,
 Singapore,
 Burma,
 Ireland, 
 Israel
 New Zealand,
 Papua New Guinea,
 Jamaica,
 Trinidad and Tobago,
 Cyprus,
 Antigua and Barbuda,
 Bahamas, Barbados,
 Belize,
 Dominica,
 Grenada,
 Marshall Islands,
 Micronesia,
 Nauru, Palau, 
 South Africa
 Zimbabwe
 Cameroon,
 Namibia,
 Liberia,
 Sierra Leone,
 Botswana,
 Guyana, and
 Fiji. 
 Common law is opposed to Statutory Law
 Law as opposed to equity
 Common law systems tend to give more weight
to separation of powers between the judicial
branch and the executive branch.
 Common law courts usually use an adversarial
system, in which two sides present their cases to
a neutral judge. In contrast, civil law systems
usually use an inquisitorial system in which an
examining magistrate serves two roles by
developing the evidence and arguments for one
side and then the other during the investigation
phase.
 Unlike the common law proceedings, the
president of the bench in the inquisitorial
system is not merely an umpire and is
entitled to directly interview the witnesses
or express comments during the trial, as long
as he or she does not express his or her view
on the guilt of the accused.
SOCIALIST LAW
 Socialist law or Soviet law denotes a general
type of legal system which has been used
in communist and formerly communist
States.
 based on the Civil Law system
 provide for most property to be owned by
the State.
 Source of law: Statutes/legislation
 Courts are subordinate to the legislature
 Examples: Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Lao
People’s Democratic Republic, Vietnam
  Legal systems in all socialist states
preserved formal criteria of the Romano-
Germanic civil law; for this reason, law
theorists in post-socialist states usually
consider the Socialist law as a particular case
of the Romano-Germanic civil law. 
 Socialist law is similar to Common
Law or Civil Law but with a greatly
increased Public law sector and decreased 
Private Law sector
COMMUNIST STATE
  communist state (sometimes referred as Workers' State)
is a State that is usually administered and governed by
a single party representing the proletariat, guided
by Marxist- Leninist philosophy, with the aim of
achieving communism. 
 the current order of society stems from its economic
system, capitalism, that in this system, there are two
major social classes:
a. the working class—who must work to survive, and who
make up the majority within society
b. the capitalist class—a minority who derives profit from
employing the working class, through private ownership
of the means of production, and that conflict between
the two classes will trigger a revolution.
 Marx saw that in his contemporary time, the
new nation States were characterized by
increasingly intensified class contradiction
between the Capitalist Class and the Working
Class.
 He predicted that if the class contradictions of the
capitalist system continue to intensify, that the
working class will ultimately become conscious of
itself as an exploited collective and will overthrow
the capitalists and establish collective ownership
over the means of production, therein arriving at
a new phase of development called socialism.
 The state ruled by the working class during the
transition into classless society is called the
“dictatorship of proletariat". 
 Vladimir Lenin theory of revolutionary vanguard
  He therefore advocated that the Communist
party should be structured as a vanguard of
those who have achieved full class
consciousness to be at the forefront of the class
struggle and lead the workers to expand class
consciousness and replace the capitalist class as
the ruling class, therein establishing the
Proletarian state.
 The constitutions of most socialist states
describe their political system as a form of
democracy.
 Thus, they recognize the sovereignty of the
people as embodied in a series
of representative parliamentary institutions.
 Such states do not have a separation of powers;
instead, they have one national legislative body
(such as the Supreme Soviet in the Soviet
Union) which is considered the highest organ of
state power and which is legally superior to the
executive and judicial branches of government.