Primer on the Civil-Law System.

摘要

Civil law is the dominant legal tradition today in most of Europe, all of Central and South America, parts of Asia and Africa, and even some discrete areas of the common-law world (e.g., Louisiana, Quebec, and Puerto Rico). Public international law and the law of the European Community are in large part the product of persons trained in the civil-law tradition. Civil law is older, more widely distributed, and in many ways more influential than the common law. Despite the prominence of the civil-law tradition, judges and lawyers trained in the common-law tradition tend to know little about either the history or present-day operation of the civil law. Beyond the most basic generalities-e.g., the common law follows an 'adversarial' model while civil law is more 'inquisitorial,' civil law is 'code-based,' civil-law judges do not interpret the law but instead follow predetermined legal rules-judges and lawyers from the United States seldom have any deeper sense of the civil-law tradition. This overview is designed for judges and lawyers who seek to expand their knowledge of the civil-law tradition and who might wish to consider the civil-law system as a source of legal reforms.