 | Chapter Outline
(See related pages)
- Definitions
- Anglo-Saxon case law
- Most familiar to Americans and Canadians
- Developed in England
- A.K.A. "common law"
- Important aspects
- task of judges to find proper law
- training of judges and lawyers in special schools
- role of judge is to be a neutral arbiter
- law protects the individual against disproportionate power of the government
- The courts base decision on precedents and statutes
- Continental European code law
- Related to Roman Law
- Notable characteristics:
- judges rely more on statute or code than precedent
- training of code law lawyers and judges more general than those in common law system
- distinction between law as a tool of the state and law as something above the state is most marked in criminal cases
- The original code law systems were European
- Box: Durkheim's Theory of Law
- The blending of case law and code law
- Distinctions between the two are a matter of degree
- Distinctions becoming less clear in recent years as code law systems adopt features of case law systems and vice versa
- Religious law: the Sharia
- Most important of various forms of religious law
- A.K.A. Islamic Law
- Shia and Sunni variations
- Courts
- Extent of tradition of constitutionalism related to how removed courts are from other sources of political power
- Courts often organized to handle different kinds of law (criminal, civil, constitutional)
- Courts also organized by jurisdiction
- Examples
- The Law in China
- The European Court of Justice
|
|