Evolution and Formation of the Civil Law System

Author: Li Jingbing / Yao Xinhua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: This is a work on civil law, primarily focusing on the legal systems of continental European countries and Latin American countries. When writing this book, I did not have any particular purpose in describing those well-known characteristics that distinguish the civil law system from the common law world; nor did I want to imitate others who are more learned than me in exploring the historical development of the modern civil law system. In this comparative legal study, my main purpose is to seek the reasons behind the outstanding existence and development of civil law. Therefore, I hope to contribute to understanding the forces that drive legal evolution. I am confident that so far, people know very little about the following questions: Why does law evolve when it evolves, or why does it evolve in the direction it evolves, or when and why does it respond to external pressures. In addition to all the excellent works on the legal history of individual countries, the study of the overall development of law is still in its infancy. As a result, many of the contents in this book may seem familiar to civil law researchers, but I believe that many of the contents in this book will also be new even to legal scholars in Europe and Latin America. At the same time, I hope this book can provide insights into the nature of the civil law system for legal professionals in Anglo-American countries. The central theme of this book is easy to explain. Legal factors—such as Roman law, Germanic customary law, canon law, and feudal law, which historically came together to construct the modern Western legal system—were largely the same in various places. However, most modern Western legal systems can be divided into civil law and common law systems, resulting in any civil law system being very similar to another civil law system, but completely different from any common law system.