Difference Between Common Law And Civil Law

In today’s western world, most nations follow one of the two major systems of law: civil law or common law. Civil law is descended from the codified laws of the Roman Empire, particularly the accumulation of Roman law ordered by Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. Most European countries today practice civil law. In contrast, is not embodied in a text or code. In England, common law flourished from the "manorial court" system of the Middle Ages and evolved through case after case of in court decisions, which was usually based upon relational experience and precedent. Traditionally, the common law judge of medieval England did not consult an official text before rendering his judgment, but drew instead upon precedents established by other court decisions. Eventually, jurists wrote commentaries on the common law. Although these demanded the respect of the legal profession, they did not institute law and judges were not required to follow them when deciding cases.

While England had several traditional ties to the remainder of Western Europe in the middle ages, its legal customs developed differently from that of the continent for a number of reasons. One of the most fundamental ways in which they differed was in the establishment of judicial decisions as the basis of common law and legislative decisions as the basis of civil law.

Common law can be traced back to England following the Norman Conquest in 1066 and the subsequent introduction of Norman feudalism. In the Norman practice of feudalism, the monarch was the absolute landlord with all titles of real property ultimately traced back to William I and his descendants. The king created land grants to the great lords; the lords in turn offered grants to their own ret...

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...ges. In the 12th and 13th centuries power was increasingly concentrated in the crown as opposed to in the hands of local lords. The escalation of commerce and industry brought new influence and prosperity to the cities, so peasants increasingly had financial opportunities available to them that were not tied to the land. Subsequently, as the great wars of the latter Middle Ages such as the Hundred Years' War, and plagues such as the Black Death wreaked devastation and destruction with the population, rural labor shortages and improved agricultural technology altered the position of the peasantry in the economic equation. Nevertheless, two important factors in that new equation were the foundations of common law and peer participation that evolved from the manorial court system. Those factors remain a viable part of the English-based judicial systems to this day.