International legal systems
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Across the world, business people should familiarize themselves with laws from their respective countries. All laws regarding ownership of a company, as well as operations, should be strictly followed. Failure of compliance with these laws could subject them to legal action resulting in the realization of numerous losses by their companies. There are three main legal systems across the world, which include: Civil law, common law, and statutory law.
Civil law is a collection of rules ratified as a whole documented system. It is also referred to as code law. When a country’s government ratifies a civil law, it tries to document all laws and all the rights governing each aspect of society. The most ancient civil law was enacted by a king of Babylon named Hammurabi. The current day civil law draws its basis from the Napoleonic and Justinian code. Justinian led the Byzantine Empire, which had succeeded in conquering close to the entire world towards the west. Justinian coded the law in a whole system to bring order to his administration and govern the citizens in his empire. The Justinian code, as well as the Napoleonic code of 1804, was based on the traditions of the Roman Empire.
Common law originated in England. England stood out from the rest of the European countries in how it came up with the law. England’s arrival at common law was dependent on the accumulation of decisions made in past cases. When the then feudal system of laws had deteriorated, then the English common law found a pathway to come into being. The topmost rulers during medieval times were the feudal lords who represented their respective castles and land. In the feudal lords’ territories were serfs who did not have many rights. The serfs, though, started gaining few rights as tenant farmers, and with their rights emerging and growing, disputes among them had to be resolved.
Feudal lords acted as the dispute settlers by listening to both disputing parties and coming up with a solution. Since no laws were formulated to guide them in decision making, they started recording those decisions they made so that they and the rest of the people would use them as references when such cases arose in the future. Besides the developing common law, English kings in the year 1066 instituted another legal system where the king was the highest authority concerning legal matters. Kings’ decisions were made from common sense, and the principle of equity and the courts from which they made decisions were known as equity court, which later formed the system of the common law. Today common law is used in countries like England and the United States of America.
Statutory law has statutes, which are laws that are ratified by lawmakers. For example, the British parliament is the body of lawmakers in the United Kingdom, while the U.S congress is the lawmaker body in the United States of America. Statutes are often ratified to add or amend the current laws in effect (Dlabay & Scott, 2010, p. 194). They also define laws when circumstances arise.
References
Dlabay, L., & Scott, J. C. (2010). International Legal Systems and Liability. In International business (4th ed.). Cengage Learning.