Civil law is the part of a country's body of laws that deals with the private affairs of citizens, for example, marriage and property, rather than crime. In their technical and narrow sense, the words civil law describe the law that refers to people, things and the relationships that develop between them, excluding not only criminal law but also commercial law, labor law, etc. Codification took place in most civil law countries, with the French Civil Code and the German BGB being the most influential civil codes. Civil law is a legal system rooted in the Roman Empire and was codified and disseminated comprehensively starting in the 19th century, especially with the Napoleonic Code of France (180) and the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch of Germany (1900).Unlike common law systems, which rely heavily on judicial precedent, civil law systems are characterized by being based on legal codes that function as the primary source of law.
Today, civil law is the most common legal system in the world and is practiced in some 150 countries. Civil law is both a legal system and a branch of law. In the United States, the term civil law refers to court cases that arise in connection with a dispute between two non-governmental parties. Outside the U.S. In the US, most Western European states have a civil law system.
In the United States, civil law is the legal branch that covers private rights, rather than crimes. If your neighbor decides to sue you because your dog barks constantly, it's a matter of civil law. Civil law, the law of continental Europe, is based on a mixture of Roman, Germanic, church, feudal, commercial and customary law. European civil law has been adopted in much of Latin America, as well as in parts of Asia and Africa, and must be distinguished from the customary law of Anglo-American countries. Civil law refers to almost all other disputes.
These are the rules that apply when a person sues another person, a company or agency. This can cover a housing case, such as eviction or foreclosure, a family case, such as divorce or custody, consumer issues, such as debt or bankruptcy, or when someone files a lawsuit for money due to property or personal damage. All of these cases go to civil court. The term civil law comes from English legal scholarship and is used in English-speaking countries to group together all the legal systems of the jus commune tradition.
A lawyer specializing in common law would consult the original code, but would use the most recent case law to substantiate his argument. Civil law, as a legal system, refers to a popular way of structuring legal systems around broad codes and detailed statutes that determine the rights and obligations of individuals, without stressing the role of precedents, courts, judges and juries, as in common law countries. For Japan's legal system, which began in the Meiji era, European legal systems, especially the civil law of Germany and France, were the main models of emulation. Conceptually, civil law starts from abstractions, formulates general principles and distinguishes substantive rules from procedural rules. The civil law system often contrasts with the common law system, which originated in medieval England.
How an attorney practicing in each system can approach a case helps highlight the difference between these bodies of law. Thanks to the personality of their promoter and the innovative applied technique, the Napoleonic codifications of private and criminal law in France, especially their centerpiece, the civil code of 1804, which came to be known as the Napoleonic Code, acquired great fame and influence. It was first received in the Holy Roman Empire, in part because it was considered imperial law, and it spread in Europe mainly because its students were the only trained lawyers. Civil law systems, also called continental or Roman-Germanic legal systems, are found on every continent and cover about 60% of the world.
Examples of cases covered by civil law include negligence, fraud, breach of contract, medical negligence, and dissolution of marriage. Among the many aspects that served to weave the complex pattern of medieval law, the customs of merchants and the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church were of special importance. Rather than a compendium of laws or a catalog of case law, the code establishes general principles as rules of law. In accordance with this, some monarchs consolidated their kingdoms by trying to collect customary rules that would serve as national law for their kingdoms, such as when Charles VII of France, in 1454, commissioned the official enactment of Corona legislation.
Because of the different dates of codification and the different style and attitude of legal learning, the civil law family is thus divided into the French, or Romanist, branch and the German or Germanic branch. However, given the influence of the empire on the continent in Late Antiquity and the multiple incursions and occupations by Western European powers in the late Middle Ages, its laws were widely applied in The West.
