Outline of civil law

Civil law is a legal system originating from Europe, intellectualized within the framework of Roman law, the main feature of which is that its core principles are codified into a referable system which serves as the primary source of law. This can be contrasted with common law systems, the intellectual framework of which comes from judge-made decisional law, and 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).

Origins and development

Civil law takes as its major inspiration classical Roman law (ius civile), and in particular Justinian law (6th century AD), and further expanded and developed in the late Middle Ages under the influence of canon law. The Justinian Code's doctrines provided a sophisticated model for contracts, rules of procedure, family law, wills, and a strong monarchical constitutional system. Roman law was received differently in different countries. In some it went into force wholesale by legislative act, i.e., it became positive law, whereas in others it was diffused into society by increasingly influential legal experts and scholars.

Subgroups

Civil law systems 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 Roman law is an academic source used in civil matters: 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, Quebec, Louisiana, the Nordic countries, and Italy and Spain.
• those with comprehensive codes that exceed a single civil code, such as France, Germany, Greece, Japan, 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.

Civil law codes

The concept of codification developed especially during the 17th and 18th century, as an expression of both Natural Law and the ideas of the Enlightenment. The political ideal of that era was expressed by the concepts of democracy, protection of property and the rule of law. That ideal required the creation of certainty of law, through the recording of law and through its uniformity. So, the aforementioned mix of Roman law and customary and local law ceased to exist, and the road opened for law codification, which could contribute to the aims of the above mentioned political ideal.

See also

• Common law
• Roman law
• Justinian law
• Natural Law
• Enlightenment