The Romano-Germanic
Legal System (Civil Law or Civilian Law) is a legal
system originating in 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 (i.e.
doctrine of judicial precedent). Historically,
the Romano-Germanic legal system is the
group of legal ideas and systems ultimately
derived from the Code of Justinian, but heavily
overlaid by Germanic, Canonical, Feudal,
and Local Practices, as well as doctrinal
strains such as natural laws, codification,
and legislative positivism. Conceptually, the
Romano-Germanic legal system 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.
The marked feature of the Romano-Germanic
Systems is that they use Codes with brief text
that tends to avoid factually specific scenarios.
Code articles deal in generalities and thus
stand at odds with statutory schemes which
are often very long and very detailed. The
Romano-Germanic Legal System is the most
widespread system of law in the world, in
force in various forms in about 150 countries.
Language of Instruction: English (legal terms,
however, are also given in Arabic and French).