The four major legal families of law are Civil Law, Common Law, Socialist Law, and Sacred Law. Today, most nations follow either Civil Law or Common Law. Sometimes, countries mix civil and common law and use a little of both. Some countries that follow Civil Law are China, Japan, Germany, France, and Spain. The countries that follow Common Law are North America, the United Kingdom, and other Commonwealth countries around the world. There are unique differences from civil law and common law.
Today, Civil law is used throughout western Europe, Latin America, parts of Africa, and the Far East. Civil law is also called Roman-Germanic, Roman Law, and sometimes Continental Law. Civil law is code-based. This means that there is primacy of written codes of law. Civil Law somewhat can compare to the Ten Commandments.
There are four major codifications of law that were involved in the history of Civil Law. They are Roman Law of Emperor Justinian, Canon Law of the Catholic Church, Napoleonic Code of the early 19th Century of France, and German Law. In the sixth century, Justinian arranged for the compilation and codification of law. This resulted in Corpus Juris Civilis, or the Institutes of Justinian. There were laws pertaining to family, property, torts, and contracts. The goal was to simplify massive amounts of legal materials. When the Institutes of Justinian came, all previous laws were disregarded. Justinian forbade commentary on his code by legal scholars. This code remained