Civil Law (legal System)

Civil Law (legal System)

Civil law (or civilian law) is a legal system originating in Western Europe, intellectualized within the framework of late Roman law, and whose most prevalent feature 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 whose intellectual framework comes from judge-made decisional law which 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).

Historically, civil law is the group of legal ideas and systems ultimately derived from the Code of Justinian, but heavily overlaid by Germanic, canon-law, feudal, and local practices, as well as doctrinal strains such as natural law, codification, and legislative positivism.

Conceptually, civil law proceeds from abstractions, formulates general principles, and distinguishes substantive rules from procedural rules. It holds case law to be secondary and subordinate to statutory law, and the court system is usually inquisitorial, unbound by precedent, and composed of specially-trained, functionary judicial officers with limited authority to interpret law. Jury trials are not used, although in some cases, benches may be sat by a mixed panel of lay magistrates and career judges.