SIGNIFICANT PERSON OR CONCEPT | DEFINITION, OR IMPORTANCE | TWO EXAMPLES |
- HAMMURABI (POSITIVE LAW AS MADE BY A PERSON)
| - Codification
- Retribution (eye for an eye)
- Patriarchal
- All Babylonians Subject to the law
- King is above the law
- Very harsh and cruel
- Son gets hand cut off if strikes father, not mother
- Doctor gets hand cut off if surgery goes wrong
- Death for those who lie is court
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- MOSAIC LAW
(NATURAL LAW COMING FROM GOD) | - Many laws similar to code of Hammurabi (killing, adultery and perjury are still forbidden)
- Basis of Jewish and Christian faiths
- Restitution to victim (civil court today)
- Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mt. Sinai
- Those who steal must repay the victim for goods stolen.
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- GREEKS
| - Democratic ideals in political and legal system
- Limited democracy – citizenship limited to native-born men over age of 18; women, slaves and foreigners were excluded
- Trials by jury of fellow citizens; could include 100s of people
- Jury acted as judge
- Charter; s.3 – right to vote
- S. 11 guarantees right to trial by jury
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- ROMAN LAW
| - Created a legal profession and trained scholars
- Justinian Code – emperor Justinian had all the laws of the time collected and organized into one manageable code
- Presumption of innocence and no one is above the law
| - Basis of modern day lawyers
- Codes adopted
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- BRITISH – Feudalism
| - It is a system of government where the king divides the land among his lord and nobles who will provide him with military service
- The lords and nobles have vassals who do the work on the land, give produce to them and can provide military service
- The king appointed judges who travel throughout England and listen to cases.
- Judges met regularly in London to discuss cases and share experiences
- The decisions that traveling judges made became the basis of English common law
- It was a very fair system as it replaced the arbitrary judgments that lords had made over their vassals in the past.
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- Precedent
| - a legal case establishing a principle or rule that a court utilizes when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts.
- A Precedent was created every time the decision about a case became common knowledge in the English legal community
- Stare Decisis – stand by the decision; requires than a precedent be considered when ruling on a case with similar facts.
- Initially precedents were unwritten
- This system was considered to be an improvement over the right of a lord to judge cases however he chose
- Appeals to decisions were allowed
- Precedent introduces a degree of certainty in the law as lawyers can examine similar cases and expect a somewhat similar result.
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- Case law
| - As the number of judges and cases increased, recording decisions became necessary
- Cases began to be recorded and published in paper and electronic form
- Now recorded cases are given a title called a citation to make it easy to find in a law library
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- The Rule of Law
| - Many kings felt they were above the law but the Magna Carta in 1215 established that everyone was equal under the law and had to obey the law
- Equality became important for the first time
- People had legal rights
- No person cold be imprisoned without a court appearance within a reasonable time (Habeas Corpus)
- In Canada every dispute must be settled by peaceful means, either by discussion and negotiation or by due process in the courts
- The Rule of Law brings order to people’s lives by preventing the use of violence and the abuse of human rights
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- Statute Law
| - Parliament was created to help make laws and reduce the amount of power the king had
- When common law and case law cannot provide answers, parliament makes laws to fill in the gaps
- Members of the public could now read the laws and know what they said
| - Parliament is seen as the institution that represents the wishes of the people
- This was an important step in the development of democracy
- Canada’s substantive law represents common law decisions and statute laws passed by government
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10. FRENCH | - French civil code – rooted in Roman law
- Quebec employs civil law system – civil code of Quebec
- Judges base decisions on the code and interpretations of the code by scholars rather than precedent
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