Structure

One result of the above features is that in common-law countries the legal system is not organized in a coherent and clear structure. Its development tends to be incremental and casuistic, and it is not easy for the foreign lawyer to approach. Civil lawyers, on the other hand, lay great emphasis on system and structure. Furthermore, they tend to follow similar patterns in their organization of legal topics, and once these are understood it is relatively simple to locate the law on any given topic.

Incidence

Some version of the common-law is found today only in places once occupied by the British, among them Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Nigeria and Ghana. But (except for the special case of Israel) no country which has the common law seems able or willing to get rid of it.

So far we have spoken of the Civil Law in general, in comparing it to the Common Law. Within the former family, however, there are two great sub-branches. For one of them the French approach has largely been the model, for the other the German. The French have, directly or indirectly, influenced Belgium, the Netherlands, Mauritius, Quebec, Louisiana, Italy, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Sub-Saharan Africa, Spain, Latin America. The German model was followed later in such countries as Japan, Greece, Thailand, Taiwan, Portugal, Brazil.

Some systems, while recognizably those of the civil law, have rather gone their own way in the organization of their private and commercial law, for instance Austria (1811) and Switzerland (1907, 1911). Finally there has been much rethinking of the heart of private and commercial law in Quebec and the Netherlands and both have recently adopted an entirely new Civil Code.

Those countries of Eastern Europe which, before they became Soviet satellites, had their own civil-law systems (such as Poland, Hungary, and of course the German Democratic Republic) have turned again to their earlier tradition.

Part 3

Other systems

Outside the two large legal families are a number of systems, some relatively easy for a Western lawyer to understand, others much more remote.

'Mixed' Systems

In the first group are countries with a 'mixed' system influenced by both civil and common law. The older uncodified civil law of Holland is the basis of the Roman-Dutch law of South Africa, Zambia, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana and, on the other side of the ocean, Sri Lanka; it is marked by a rich juristic literature stemming from Hugo Grotius (de Groot) in the 17th century. But their long contacts with Britain mean that their public law and systems of court procedure owe much to the common law.

Scotland, Louisiana, Mauritius and Quebec are examples of a private law based on older civil and customary rules (uncodified in Scotland) struggling to endure in a common-law environment. Israel has a system all its own, where the older Ottoman and British mandate layers are now overridden by a modern system. It has no single constitutional document, but much of the modern law combines the broad legislative simplicity of the great codes of civil law with the careful transparency of the common-law judgment.