Concept
Legal system
Overview
A legal system is a set of legal norms, institutions, and processes by which those norms are applied, often within a particular jurisdiction or community. It may also be referred to as a legal order. The comparative study of legal systems is the subject matter of comparative law, while the definition of legal systems in the abstract has been largely the domain of legal philosophy. Although scholarship has largely focused on national legal systems, many other distinct legal systems exist; for example, in Canada, in addition to the Canadian legal system there are numerous Indigenous legal systems.
The term "legal system" is often used to refer specifically to the laws of a particular nation state. Some countries have a single legal system, while others may have multiple overlapping legal systems arising from distinct sources of sovereign authority, as is often the case in federal states. In addition, different groups within a country are sometimes subject to different legal systems; this is known as legal pluralism. International law is also sometimes classified as a legal system, but this classification is disputed.
Legal systems vary in their sources of law and the extent to which they are based on formal written law; some civil law systems have been based exclusively on statutory law, while some customary law systems are based entirely on oral tradition.
Legal systems are classified in many different ways. One popular classification divides them into the civil law tradition, common law tradition, religious law systems, customary law systems, and mixed legal systems. Modern scholarship, however, has moved away from these fixed categories toward an understanding of legal systems as drawing from multiple legal traditions or patterns.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Legal system is discussed.
That the development of the legal system is dependent upon the first of these phenomena--that is, upon political organization--is directly apparent from the fact that the administration of justice in general presupposes two sources of authority. Here again the beginnings are to be found in the totemic age.
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
In their case, therefore, the moral law is an imperative, which commands categorically, because the law is unconditioned; the relation of such a will to this law is dependence under the name of obligation, which implies a constraint to an action, though only by reason and its objective law; and this action is called duty, because an elective will, subject to pathological affections (though not determined by them…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason
states what it is
_C.P._ In a cause of that kind those who are accused confess that they did the very thing for which they are blamed; but since they allege that they did it lawfully, it is necessary for us to explain the whole principles of law. And that is divided into two principal divisions,--natural law and statute law. And the power of each of these is again distributed into human law and divine law; one of which refers to…
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4
states what it is
Sometimes what is called the constitution of the state, that is, the interest of the government; sometimes of the interest of particular orders of men who tyrannize the government, warp the positive laws of the country from what natural justice would prescribe. In some countries, the rudeness and barbarism of the people hinder the natural sentiments of justice from arriving at that accuracy and precision which, in…
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
states what it is
Divisions Of Law The difference and division of the Lawes, has been made in divers manners, according to the different methods, of those men that have written of them. For it is a thing that dependeth not on Nature, but on the scope of the Writer; and is subservient to every mans proper method. In the Institutions of Justinian, we find seven sorts of Civill Lawes. 1.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
states what it is
Philosophers who discussed Legal system
Related ideas
- Francisco de Vitoria
- Hans Kelsen
- Federation
- Jurisprudence
- Scientism
- Translation
- Nation state
- Nationalism
- Rule of law
- Soviet Union
- Statute
- Legal positivism
- H. L. A. Hart
- Cold War
- International law
- John Austin (legal philosopher)
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Jurisprudence.