Common Law Legal Systems in The Present Day
Civil law Common law Bijuridical (Civil and Common law) Islamic lawThe common law constitutes the basis of the legal systems of: England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Ireland, federal law in the United States and the law of individual U.S. states (except Louisiana), federal law throughout Canada and the law of the individual provinces and territories (except Quebec), Australia (both federal and individual states), Kenya, New Zealand, South Africa, India,Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Pakistan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, The Bahamas, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Granadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, and many other generally English-speaking countries or Commonwealth countries (except Scotland, which is bijuridicial, and Malta). Essentially, every country that was colonised at some time by England, Great Britain, or the United Kingdom uses common law except those that were formerly colonised by other nations, such as Quebec (which follows the law of France in part), South Africa and Sri Lanka (which follow Roman Dutch law), where the prior civil law system was retained to respect the civil rights of the local colonists. India uses common law except in the state of Goa which retains the Portuguese civil code. Guyana and Saint Lucia have mixed Common Law and Civil Law systems.
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Famous quotes containing the words common, law, legal, systems, present and/or day:
“The common behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“They who say that women do not desire the right of suffrage, that they prefer masculine domination to self-government, falsify every page of history, every fact in human experience. It has taken the whole power of the civil and canon law to hold woman in the subordinate position which it is said she willingly accepts.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“No civilization ... would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.”
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“The present age ... prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence ... for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane.”
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“On the first day of a revolution he is a treasure; on the second he ought to be shot.”
—Anonymous. Quoted in Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, third edition (1987)