legal systems
Courts and codes
Legal systems are the frameworks of laws, courts, and institutions that govern how disputes are resolved and justice administered within a society.
Major traditions include common law (precedent-based, as in the U.S. and U.K.), civil law (code-based, as in France and Germany), and religious law (as in Islamic sharia).
A country's legal system shapes everything from contracts to criminal punishment: The two legal systems handle property rights very differently.
- common lawJurisprudence from judicial decisions
- courtsJudicial bodies or playing areas
- jurisprudencePhilosophy governing legal systems
- civil lawLaw governing private disputes
- criminal justiceState apparatus for prosecuting offenders
indigenous law · hybrid systems · rule of law · law and order · Roman law · restorative justice · adjudication · sovereignty · tribunals · trials · robes · barristers · codification · human rights · defendants · attorneys · verdicts · lawyers
- social systemspolitical systems, capitalism, feudalism, economic systems, socialism
- systemsecosystems, ecosystem, biological systems, transportation network, communication systems
- comparative historycolonialism, imperialism, revolutions, modernization, industrialization
- law and societysocial control, social order, rule of law, criminology, criminal justice
- legal historymedieval law, Roman law, Roman jurisprudence, common law, civil law
- worldbuildinglore, setting, realms, kingdoms, races
legal systemsvigilante justice
Unauthorized punishment by civilians
mob justice · lynch law · blood feuds · lynch mobs · frontier justice
legal systemsdivine law
Rules from deity
natural law · moral law · religious law · social norms · unwritten rules
legal systemsanarchy
Disorder from absent authority
lawlessness · anomie · chaos · state of nature · failed states
system, legal, illegal, delegate, legalize, legally, systemic, relegate, legalized