Legal Systems

COMMON LAW - CONTINENTAL LAW

 Common Law

“Do no harm or threat of harm”

Key Features
Also called
 Judicial precedent • Not codified
• Precedent
 Case law • Interpreted by the Judge
 Judge made law • Local judges can be elected
• Flexible
• Honed over time
Origins of common law
The common law—so named because
it was "common" to all the king's
courts across England—originated in
the practices of the courts of the
English kings in the centuries
following the Norman Conquest in
1066.
The doctrine of precedent
developed during the 12th
and 13th centuries as the
collective judicial decisions
that were based in
tradition, custom and
precedent.
Practiced in….
 Civil Law

“Corpus Juris Civilis”

Key Features
Also called
 Civilian law • Completely Codified, Abstract
• Absolute
 Codified law
• Derived from Roman Law
 Continental law • Distinguished substantive and
procedural rules
Origins of civil law

• Code of Hammurabi
• Majorly inspired by
Roman law
• Constantinople
• Byzantium
• Silk road
• Corpus Juris Civilis –
Justinian I
Practiced
in….
Comparision
Common Law
 British colonies
 Codified
 Judicial precedents are binding
 Judge makes rulings, sets precedent
and acts as a moderator between
conflicting parties
 Primary source – Precedent/case law
 An adversarial system
Civil Law
 European kingdoms and colonies
 Not codified
 Judicial precedents are not binding
 Judge establishes facts and applies
the code of applicable laws
 Statutes or subsidiary laws are the
primary source of law
 An inquisitorial system
Citations:
 Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803)
 www.juriglobe.ca/eng/syst-onu/index-alpha.php
 www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/C/CommonLaw.aspx
 web.archive.org/web/20110727131223/http://w3.uniroma1.it/idc/centro/publications/
43finn.pdf
 www.radford.edu/~junnever/law/commonlaw.htm
 Michel Fromont, Grands systèmes de droit étrangers, 4th edn. (Paris: Dalloz, 2001)
 "The World Factbook“, cia.gov
 Reynolds 1998, p. 58
 Reynolds 1998, p. 59
 www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0859206.html