Sunday, January 4, 2015

Common Law Versus Civil Law: Societal Safeguards or Personal Responsibility? | CuencaHighLife

Common Law Versus Civil Law: Societal Safeguards or Personal Responsibility?

by David Morrill and Deke Castleman


....By contrast, Ecuador, along with all of
Latin America, most of Europe, all of Asia, and most of Africa, 150
countries in all, operates under “civil law.” In civil-law societies,
laws are written, collected, and codified by legislatures and are rarely subject to co-creation by the outcomes of lawsuits and the opinions of judges and juries. As such, the court system is inquisitorial, unbound by precedent.



Courts are composed of specially trained magistrates with limited authority to interpret the law. Court officers examine evidence and, often with the help of legal scholars, develop the arguments for both sides of a non-criminal dispute. Then they rule on
the issue.



In effect, a magistrate is an investigator, prosecutor, defense attorney, judge, and jury all rolled into one. He’s also a mediator; after a ruling, he helps resolve the disagreements that led to the lawsuit, about such issues as contracts, property ownership, divorce, child custody, personal injury, property damage, and
the like....<read more>
http://cuencahighlife.com/common-law-versus-civil-law-societal-safeguards-or-personal-responsibility/

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