Lernkarten
What are the three sources of law
- legal custom: developed over a longer period of time
- Written law: qualified law, legal acts/ordinances
- Judical opinion: court decisions, opinions of scholars, lawyers, judges
What are the subtypes of Private Law
Relationship between private persons
- Family law
- Law of succession
- Law of property
- Law of contracts
- Commercial law
- Law of cooperation
- Tort Law
- Trust Law
What are the subtypes of Public Law
Acts and behaviour of the state
- Constitutional law (rules over the organization of the state including fundamental rights)
- Criminal Law (prohibiting, punishing, prosecuting certain offensive behaviour)
- International Law (relation between states themselves
What are the main sujects covered by the different areas of Public Law ?
Constitutional Law:
- How the government works in election
- In parliamentary procedure
- And the division of power between different arms of government
- Human right values
- Democratic core principles
International Law:
- Relation between nation states
Criminal Law:
- Guilty mind -> guilty act
- Guilty act = offense
- Guilty act can be committed if you are insane or under drugs
- Punishments: imprisonment, fines, community service
In comparative law we compare which two forms of law?
- Civil law (CH+most of Europe):
- Made by the parliament and the government
- Judges merely interpret the laws in the individual cases
- Common law (USA+UK)
- Stare decisis or precedent were the major innovation
- Judged make the law – what is just and fair
- Judges must decide their cases similar on how other courts have done it
- Analyse old cases
- Precedent = statement by the judge in deciding a case
What are the main purposes of comparitive law?
- to attain a deeper knowledge of the legal systems
- to perfect the legal systems
- possibly, to contribute to a unification of legal systems, of a smaller or larger scale (cf. for instance, the United Nations treaty on the international sale of goods)
What are the main Institutions of the law
- Independent courts
- Representative parliament
- The military
- Police
- The bureaucratic organisation
- Civil society itself
What did John Locke and Montesquieu (father of comparitive law) say about how government should be organised?
- If someone has the total power, this person will abuse the power
- Because of that they advocated the separation of power (Gewaltentrennung)
