Question

Business perspective: Are the following countries civil law or common law countries? What are some of the implications of this?

-United States of America

-Canada

-Spain

Answer 1

USA (exception is Louisiana state that implements civil laws) and Canada (Quebec region is exception) are the countries that follow common law system, whereas Spain is the country that follows civil law system.

Following different types of law system means different implications for these countries. The first implication is the basis of justice and judgement delivered by the authorities. When civil law system is followed, then it is the exhaustive set of codes, guidelines and statutes that govern the decisions. In contrast to it, in common law system, it is the judicial precedents, past judgments and customs that become the primary basis of judgement. The second implication is the impact of past decisions, affecting the present decisions. In common law system, decisions taken in the past have significant impact upon the present decisions as past decisions become the basis. But, civil law system has lesser scope of what decisions took place in the past. A new case will be examined in the context of related laws and judgement will not be affected by the past decisions. It makes civil law system to be more static in nature.