Summary of differences between civil and common law legal systems Unlike common law systems, civil courts deal with jurisdiction independently of precedents. Past judgments are nothing more than cowardly leaders. When it comes to court proceedings, judges in civil law systems are more like investigators, while their counterparts in common law systems are more likely to be arbitrators between parties making arguments. Most modern legal systems can be described as either common law, civil law, or a mixture of both. Although the length of constitutions varies considerably, most details are usually devoted to the legislative and executive branches and the relationship between them. Federal systems, of course, have bicameral legislation. But also many unitary systems, where the House of Commons is directly elected and the House of Lords is composed of those who can represent rural interests (France) or have particular competences (Ireland). In most countries (but not in the United States), the House of Commons can ultimately override the House of Lords. Common law systems provide greater flexibility in providing different types of collateral for assets – an important feature of commercially financed PPP agreements such as BOTs. They also have the concept of trusts, which allow collateral interests of a trustee to be held for lenders in a syndicated loan situation without the need to formally transfer or re-register collateral interests on behalf of new lenders. Civil law does not know such a concept, so security rights usually have to be re-registered in the name of the new lender (with additional registration fees and notary fees).

The France is in the process of putting in place a trust law that will solve a number of these problems. However, in OHADA countries, deposits involving a notary public are necessary to formalize securities. Today`s national legal systems are generally based on one of four basic systems: civil law, common law, law, religious law or a combination of these. However, each country`s legal system is shaped by its unique history and therefore includes individual variants. [1] The science that studies law at the level of legal systems is called comparative law. Then “dismisses” by the judge, who has a little more flexibility than in a civil law system, in order to create an adequate remedy at the end of the case. In these cases, lawyers come to court and try to convince others on legal and factual issues and play a very active role in court proceedings. And unlike some civil jurisdictions, common law countries such as the United States prohibit anyone other than a fully licensed attorney from creating legal documents of any kind for another person or entity. It is only the domain of lawyers. There are hundreds of legal systems in the world. At the global level, international law is of great importance, whether through the practice of sovereign States or through agreement between them in the form of treaties and other agreements.

Some transnational entities, such as the European Union, have created their own legal structures. At the national level, the United Nations has more than 180 sovereign States. Many of them are federal and their components may have their own additional laws. Religious law refers to the notion of a religious system or document used as a legal source, although the methodology used varies. For example, the use of Judaism and halacha for public law has a static and immutable quality that excludes amendment by legislative acts of government or development by judicial precedent; Christian canon law is closer to civil law in its use of codes; And Islamic Sharia (and fiqh jurisprudence) is based on precedent and reasoning by analogy (qiyas) and is therefore considered similar to common law. [21] For a partial list of common law and civil law countries, see The Legal Systems of the World on Wikipedia Today, the difference between the principles of general law and civil law lies in the actual source of law. Common law systems refer extensively to statutes, but court cases are considered the primary source of law, allowing judges to proactively contribute to the rules. For example, the elements required to prove the crime of murder are included in case law and are not defined by law. For consistency, the courts adhere to precedents set by superior courts that consider the same issue.

The Islamic legal system, consisting of Sharia (Islamic law) and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), is the most widespread religious legal system and, along with common law and civil law, one of the three most common legal systems in the world. [22] It is based both on divine law derived from the hadith of the Qur`an and Sunnah, and on the decisions of ulema (jurists), who use the methods of ijma (consensus), qiyas (analogous deduction), ijtihad (research) and urf (common practice) to derive fatwā (legal advice).