Civil law

(1) Civil law (as opposed to "common law") is a legal system used in many countries of the world, especially in continental Europe, but also Quebec, Louisiana, Japan, Latin America, and elsewhere. Some authors wrongly think that the Scottish legal system is also based on civil law, but it is, in fact, a mixed system, combining elements of civil law and of common law. In the western and southwestern parts of the U.S., laws in such diverse areas as divorce and water rights show the influence of their Iberian civil-law heritage, being based on distinctly different principles from the laws of the northeastern states colonized by settlers with English common-law roots.

The civil law is based on Roman law, especially the Corpus Juris Civilis of Emperor Justinian, as latter developed through the Middle Ages by mediaeval legal scholars. The most authoritative modern source is Karl Eduard Zachariae.

Originally civil law was one common legal system in much of Europe, but with the development of nationalism in the 17th century Nordic countries and around the time of the French Revolution, it became fractured into separate national systems. This change was brought about by the development of national codes, most importantly the Napoleonic Code, but the German and Swiss codes are also of historical importance. Around this time civil law incorporated many ideas associated with the Enlightenment.

Some authors consider that civil law latter served as the foundation for socialist law used in Communist countries, which in this view would basically be civil law with the addition of Marxist-Leninist ideas.

Civil law, in this sense, is primarily contrasted to common law, which is the legal system developed among Anglo-Saxon peoples, especially in England. The primary difference is that, historically, common law was law developed by custom, beginning before there were any written laws and continuing to be applied by courts after there were written laws, too, whereas civil law was the exclusive product of the civil code. By the end of the 20th century, the difference between the two systems had become primarily procedural, with courts in common-law countries using an adversarial system -- in which the judge (and jury) consider only whatever evidence the parties to the litigation put before them and decide what facts to believe and then what verdict is just -- and with judges in civil-law countries acting more as investigators -- so they first ascertain what the facts are and then apply the written code of law to them to render a decision.

(2) Civil law (as opposed to "criminal law") is the branch of a legal system that deals with disputes between individuals, the other branch being criminal law, which involves litigation by the "sovereign" (or government) against individuals suspected of violating the statutes enacted to define criminal conduct. Thus, civil law, in this sense, encompasses disputes involving contracts, wills, accidents, and other common societal interactions. It includes commercial law and, according to the respective jurisprudential doctrines, it may include administrative law too. When anyone sues someone, that is a "civil case," meaning one that is within the civil law.

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