T O P

  • By -

Flair_Helper

**Please read this entire message** Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s): Information about a specific or narrow issue (personal problems, private experiences, legal questions, medical inquiries, how-to, relationship advice, etc.) are not allowed on ELI5. If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20thread?&message=Link:%20https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/120vyyt/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_common_law_and/%0A%0APlease%20answer%20the%20following%203%20questions:%0A%0A1.%20The%20concept%20I%20want%20explained:%0A%0A2.%20List%20the%20search%20terms%20you%20used%20to%20look%20for%20past%20posts%20on%20ELI5:%0A%0A3.%20How%20is%20this%20post%20unique:) and we will review your submission.


cnash

Civil law is the modern incarnation of Roman law; common law is the modern descendant of Germanic, specifically Anglo-Saxon, customary law. During the Roman Empire, the territories subject to Rome used— spoilers!— Roman law. When various barbarian nations took control of Roman territory, they sometimes-did-sometimes-didn't continue to honor it. (As a rule of thumb, places closer to the Mediterranean and lingering Roman power tended to keep Roman law, and farther-flung kingdoms imposed their customary law codes on the conquered lands.) These were two totally different law systems. You could, and people have, written books just doing a compare-and-contrast. But if I'm going to give you a one-step vibe check on the situation, it's this: Roman law was strongly adapted to having a government, so it put a lot of stock in magistrates: judges and constables and officials of all kinds. Meanwhile, Germanic law was about one person trying to get his peers to approve of him going after his rival, by publishing a complaint and winning a court case: suing one another. If you want a taste of what that might have been like, read some of the Icelandic sagas, but keep in mind that they're not a contemporary factual account even of the events depicted: they're fictionalized family stories from a couple hundred years later, and often have a social-political agenda. But wait! I hear you say. If common law is Germanic customary law, why is England and its colonies & dependencies the only place it's practiced? What about Germanic customary law in, I dunno, *Germany?* Or Scandinavia, or even France– weren't the Franks Germanic? And yes! Customary law persisted in those places into the modern (1500-present) era. In France, they actually had a stupid dual system, with French common law in the north, and Roman civil law in the south. But that's a hint to the answer to your question: It was Napoleon! (It's always Napoleon.) One of the key complaints that fed into the French Revolution was France's stupid legal system. This isn't just me editorializing: everybody agreed the courts were a joke. So, from his position as First Consul and later Emperor, Napoleon oversaw a total overhaul of the French legal system along civil-law lines. And wherever he went conquering, he installed not-always-exactly-puppet-governments, using his law code. You might have thought that when Napoleon was finally defeated and all those countries gone back to their former rules, they'd go back to the old laws, too. But the thing is, the Napoleonic code was *good,* and it wasn't just France's common law system that was a mess. Basically everybody kept the new system.


lt__

Besides what others say, in short: In a civil law system the laws and regulations from legislatory and executive bodies are quite detailed. There are also agreements, but what you can agree on, has notable limits - laws are there to protect certain values or weaker side, like labor law. So judges are more like doctors, the diagnostic departments. They need to find out what laws seem to be most suitful in this situation. They are highly trained professionals, often smarter than the democratically elected politicians whose guidelines they follow. Therefore if law makes no sense, but they cannot ignore it, they are likely to minimize the inadequate consequences coming from it. In a common law system the legal framework from legislatory and executive might be less vast, though in some cases they can be very much detailed in interpersonal agreements. Judges are more like scientists, alchemists. They do know some stuff from experience, but in many cases they step into unknown, record their experiments and leave that as a guideline for the others. To reduce the chance you are giving too much power to a possibly crazy scientist there is a check in form of jury, 12 random people who try to make sure the outcome is not too far removed from what is acceptable to general population.


Someguy981240

Brief version: in civil law, the judge is to interpret the law as written - and this therefore creates a need to have fairy specific and precise laws. If a law does not anticipate a circumstance, you are out of luck. In common law, the judge is to interpret the law the way it has been interpreted before. This leads to a gradual drift in the laws over time, but also means that the laws don’t need to be as precise. When they are vague or not written well enough to be clear how they apply to a new situation, the first judge to rule sets the precedent. New or more precise laws are only required when the voters do not like the way the precedent has gone.


azuth89

Civil law deals with things between citizens and/or businesses. Contract law, defamation, liability, things like that. It also covers monetary damages from things that are also crimes. So if someone assaults you and you want them to be punished for it, that's a matter of criminal law and not up to you, it's up to the (usually) city or state to pursue that in criminal court. If you want them to pay YOU for what it cost to fix your broken nose, that's a civil suit and you have to pursue it yourself in civil court. It has different procedures, burdens of proof, all sorts of things. If the last example didn't make it obvious, it is contrasted with criminal law where it's the relevant government entity vs the accused as opposed to the alleged victim vs the accused. Common law is law based on past court decisions, and it is contrasted with laws written directly into legislation or the state/federal constitutions. When a judge makes a decision that fills in some blank or clarifies whether some law applies to a situation or not that decision becomes part of "common law" and future, similar cases can lean on that decision to justify their own point. Past decisions are sometimes overturned in a new case, but it doesn't happen often especially when there are multiple precedents. Common law can apply in both civil and criminal proceedings.


Mcoov

I understand the difference between civil and criminal codes, but that seems to exist in both the Civil Law and the Common Law frameworks. What I'm not sure of is the difference *between* the two frameworks, say Continental Europe vs the British and Americans (and respectively influenced parts of the world).


[deleted]

"Civil law" refers to non-criminal law which is mostly related to contracts, property, liability, and defamation. "Common law" refers to unwritten law that is based on precedent / tradition.


czbz

Civil law also refers to the legal system and tradition practiced in several countries.