legal codes
Codified statutory rules
Legal codes are comprehensive, systematically organized collections of laws governing a particular jurisdiction or subject area.
Unlike case law built from individual court decisions, legal codes present statutes arranged by topic—criminal codes address offenses and punishments, civil codes govern private disputes, tax codes regulate revenue collection.
The state legislature updated its legal code to address cybercrime.
Countries following the civil law tradition, such as France and Germany, rely heavily on legal codes as their primary source of law.
- lawsEnforceable societal rules
- statutesFormally enacted laws
- legislationOfficial enactment of statutes
- rule of lawSupremacy of established laws
- constitutionInherent physical or structural makeup
ordinances · building codes · codification · bill · Hammurabi · decree · Corpus Juris Civilis · edict · canon · Sharia · Twelve Tables · written law · due process · act · provisions · amendments · letter of the law · fine print
- legal systemattorney, landmark cases, criminal cases, lawyers, civil cases
- Ancient Greek lawSolon, Solonian reforms, ostracism, lawgiver, public trial
- ancient lawsHammurabi, Roman law, Twelve Tables, Ten Commandments, Corpus Juris Civilis
- legal documentscontract, affidavit, deed, will, subpoena
- legal historymedieval law, Roman law, Roman jurisprudence, common law, civil law
- legal researchcase law, digests, LexisNexis, headnotes, annotations
legal codescommon law
Jurisprudence from judicial decisions
unwritten law · case law · judicial precedent · customs · tradition
legal codessocial norms
Shared behavioral expectations
informal rules · moral codes · etiquette · unwritten rules · gentlemen's agreements
legal codesnatural law
Inherent moral principles
moral law · divine law · ethical principles · conscience · higher law
code, legal, illegal, codify, illicit, legalize, legalized, illegally, legality