Continental Systems

Continental systems are sometimes known as codified legal systems.

A _____ Thus it was necessary for the legislators to speculate quite comprehensively about human behavior rather than simply looking at previous cases. In codifying their legal systems, many countries have looked to the examples of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, whose legislators wanted to break with previous case law, which had often produced corrupt and biased judgments, and to apply new egalitarian social theories to the law. B _____ The lawmakers of new nations sometimes wanted to show that the legal rights of their citizens originated in the state, not in local customs, and thus it was the state that was to make law, not the courts. In order to separate the roles of the legislature and judiciary, it was necessary to make laws that were clear and comprehensive. The lawmakers were often influenced by the model of the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church, but the most important models were the codes produced in the seventh century under the direction of the Roman Emperor Justinian. C _____ Versions of Roman law had long influenced many parts of Europe, including the case law traditions of Scotland, but had little impact on English law.

It is important not to exaggerate the differences between these two traditions of law. For one thing, many case law systems, such as California's, have areas of law that have been comprehensively codified. For another, many countries can be said to have belonged to the Roman tradition long before codifying their laws, and large uncodified – perhaps uncodifiable – areas of the law still remain. D _____ The clear distinction between legislature and judiciary has weakened in many countries, including Germany, France and Italy, where courts are able to challenge the constitutional legality of a law made by parliament (judicial review).

Despite this, it is also important not to exaggerate similarities among systems within the Continental tradition. For example, while adopting some French ideas, such as separation of the legislature and judiciary, the late nineteenth century codifiers of German law aimed at conserving customs and traditions peculiar to German history. E _____

Modern Japanese law

Despite a tradition of private law that more closely resembled English principles of judicial precedent, the lawmakers of Meiji Japan decided to adopt criminal and civil codes closely based on the existing French models. However, this rapid import of a new system was to a large extent an attempt to give Japan the appearance of a modernized, even Westernized country, and the way in which justice was actually administered continued to reflect older Japanese principles of refraining wherever possible from formal and open methods of solving disputes. F _____

Socialist legal systems

According to classical Marxism, legal systems in capitalist and pre-capitalist nations were created to reinforce and justify property relations.

G _____ In other words, the law is on the side of those with economic power. Marx theorized that with the coming of socialism, the state, and thus a state-produced system of law, would become irrelevant to social relations and would disappear.

H _____ The leaders of the Soviet Revolution, and hence the governments of many nations that came under Soviet influence, tried to apply socialist ideology to a Continental civil law tradition in as systematic and comprehensive a way as possible. This ideology is clearly stated, and socialist lawmakers criticized both common law and previous Roman civil law systems for masking their own capitalist ideology in apparently neutral, unbiased institutions. Even before the rejection of their socialist traditions, the Soviet republics had started to allow an increase in civil law cases, and a long process of revising existing civil and criminal codes had begun. As separatist movements grew in many parts of the Soviet Union, there was also development in Constitutional law.

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