COURT SYSTEMS AND LAWof judges have, over the years, been recognized as
excessive and more a holdover from fears of arbi-
trary and class-based favoritism of judges. From
the refusal to place limits on the power of legisla-
tures, Civil law countries have developed constitu-
tional limitations, even in the form of courts,
though often hidden under other names. Histori-
cally, Civil law countries divided the field between
private and public law, with most of the concern
historically being with civil law (law of persons,
marriage, contracts, torts, etc.). Public law was felt
to be the concern of legislatures or the sovereign.
However, the coming of the modern state has led
to an enormous growth of administrative law,
along with appropriate court systems, leading to
situations not much different in essence from
those found in developed common law countries.
Civil codes have receded in significance as
state legislatures and parliaments enact more far-
reaching laws never contemplated in earlier times,
particularly those associated with large-scale in-
dustry, the welfare role of governments, complex
bodies of labor law, and especially with the emer-
gence of the government as an economic partici-
pant in national affairs. Perhaps of greatest signifi-
cance is the emergence of new international entities,
especially the European Community, before which
national codes have been slowly giving way. Of
course, that tendency may be reversed, but it
seems strongly in process. On the other hand,
common law countries have recognized the advan-
tages of classic civil law procedures, such as the
importance of certainty in legal decision making,
though such certainty is sought not through a code
but by a succession of cases. The power of judges
to make decisions has been the object of attempts
by the U. S. Congress to place caps on awards for
injury, as well as the attempt of persons to bypass
courts and seek justice through changes in legisla-
tion, as in cases of pollution, abortion, and other
public issues.
Is one system better than the other? The ques-
tion is unanswerable in that form. Even though
civil law authorities continue to be suspicious of
lawyers, they discover they must have them and
grant them powers they would prefer not to. That
is, of course, a well-known problem in the United
States as well. Each system must be understood in
the context of the culture and social structure of
the country that employs it. Ultimately, any ques-
tion of superiority must be answered in terms of
how well the system serves the legal needs of the
country. Most countries, in fact, employ a mix of
systems in which one finds bits and pieces of both
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