Name: The Legal Systems We Live In Today
Uploaded: 2022-11-13T18:40:08.000Z
Duration: 4 min 55 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of manner

Imagine you are walking down the street to do some shopping and suddenly a roof tile

you ask yourself and you go inside the department store from which the tile fell off to complain.

The owner of the department store shows little interest in your misfortune and says that

Of course, you also have no idea how exactly the tile landed on your head – but because

you have a concussion, you go to a lawyer and sue in court.

What happens next depends on whether the incident happened in a country that practices Civil

Do you know which of the two is practiced where you live?

Let's say the whole thing happens to you in Germany, which belongs to the Continental

European Legal System, where Civil Law applies.

She is looking for a legal provision that fits your case.

In the German Civil Code, article 838, she will find the general rule that a building

user has to maintain the structure and is responsible for the damage caused if parts

She checks if the defendant really is the user of the building, if he has to maintain

the building by law, and whether he had negligently failed to do so.

If all those legal elements are fulfilled, the department store operator is liable, and

you, as the plaintiff who instituted the legal proceedings, will receive compensation for

If you had taken your walk in the United States, which belongs to the Anglo-American Legal

System, the Common Law, the judge would proceed differently.

In the US, the judge would instead look for a comparable case – such as the English

case of Byrne v. Boadle from 1863, in which pretty much the same thing had happened to

a poor passerby, only it had not been a loose brick, but rather a barrel stored in the building.

In this case, the court held the department store owner responsible, even though the plaintiff

could not prove negligence on the part of the defendant.

So what are the differences between Civil Law and Common Law?

The legal systems are differentiated primarily on the basis of their way of thinking!

The Civil Law System is characterized by thinking on the basis of general and abstract legal

provisions, most of which are laid down in codifications - such as the Civil Code in

Germany.The judge works deductively by applying the general rule to the concrete case - a

The Common Law System is characterized by similar cases that happened in the past.

The so-called doctrine of stare decisis, Latin for “to stand by things decided”, binds

judges to precedents — cases that happened in the past.

That is why the judge works on a case-by-case basis and compares them with one another.If

the judge wants to deviate from a previous decision, the so-called “Distinguishing”

is used to determine the differences between the case at hand and the precedent.

In summary, to determine wrongdoing and compensation, the civil law system relies on the code of

law interpreted by judges, while the common law system relies on similar cases from the

Share your thoughts in the comments below and tell us what type of law is practiced

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Subtitles ListPlay Video

The Legal Systems We Live In Today

technique

practice

determine

structure