Civil law is a body of rules that defines and protects the private rights of citizens, offers legal remedies that may be sought in a dispute, and covers areas of law such as contracts, torts, property and family law. Civil law is derived from the laws of ancient Rome which used doctrines to develop a code that determined how legal issues would be decided.
The core function of Civil Law is to resolve disagreements and disputes between individuals, families or organizations by providing due and equitable compensations to the victims. The Civil law focuses more on the providing compensation to the victims rather than giving punishment to the accused.
In a civil law system, a judge merely establishes the facts of a case and applies remedies found in the codified law. As a result, lawmakers, scholars, and legal experts hold much more influence over how the legal system is administered than judges.
What the Civil Law Is:
- A comprehensive system of rules and principles usually arranged in codes and easily accessible to citizens and jurists.
- A well-organized system that favours cooperation, order, and predictability, based on a logical and dynamic taxonomy developed from Roman law and reflected in the structure of the codes.
- A primarily legislative system, yet leaving room for the judiciary to adjust rules to social change and new needs, by way of interpretation and creative jurisprudence.
Some salient features of the civil law:
- There is generally a written constitution based on specific codes (e.g., civil code, codes covering corporate law, administrative law, tax law and constitutional law) enshrining basic rights and duties; administrative law is however usually less codified and administrative court judges tend to behave more like common law judges.
- The key motto of the Civil Law is to protect its civilians from any type of breach, unjust and/or biases and to provide equal rights and opportunities for all.
- Less freedom of contract - many provisions are implied into a contract by law and parties cannot contract out of certain provisions.
- Courts specific to the underlying codes – there are therefore usually separate constitutional court, administrative court and civil court systems that opine on consistency of legislation and administrative acts with and interpret that specific code
Our Specialization
Family Disputes, Property Disputes, Domestic Violence, 138 NI disputes, MCGM, SRA, RERA, MHADA, Personal Injury, arising any disputes out of Motor Vehicle Act etc.'
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