Civil Law – that part of the law that encompasses business, contracts, estates, domestic (family) relations, accidents, negligence, and everything related to legal issues, statutes, and lawsuits, that is not criminal law. In a few areas civil and criminal law may overlap or coincide. For example, a person may be liable under a civil lawsuit for negligently killing a pedestrian with his auto by running over the person and be charged with the crime of vehicular homicide due to his/her reckless driving. Assault may bring about arrest by the police under criminal law and a lawsuit by the party attacked under civil law.

Civil Law – referring to one’s basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution (and the interpretations and statutes intended to implement the enforcement of those rights) such as voting, equitable taxation, freedom of speech, press, religion and assembly. Generally these are referred to as “civil rights” which have required constant diligence and struggle to ensure and expand, as in the Civil Rights movement between 1950 and 1980. Violation of one’s civil rights may be a crime under Federal and/or state statutes. Civil rights include civil liberties. Civil liberties emphasize protection from infringement upon basic freedoms, while statutory rights are based on laws passed by Congress or state legislatures

Civil law is a legal system inspired by Roman law, the primary feature of which is that laws are written into a collection, codified, and not determined, as in common law, by judges.

[1] The principle of civil law is to provide all citizens with an accessible and written collection of the laws which apply to them and which judges must follow. It is the most prevalent and oldest surviving legal system in the world. The primary source of law is the law code, which is a statute grouping rules and standards concerning a particular subject matter and arranged in classified order.

[2]A code may also be described as “a systematic collection of interrelated articles written in a terse, staccato style.”

[3] Law codes are usually created by a legislature’s enactment of a new statute that embodies all the old statutes relating to the subject and including changes necessitated by court decisions. In some cases, the change results in a new statutory concept. The two other major legal systems in the world are common law and Islamic law.

A prominent example of civil law would be the Code Napoleon (1804), named after French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The Code comprises three components: “Persons,” “Things and Different Forms of Ownership,” and “Different Ways of Acquiring the Ownership of Things.” Rather than a catalog of judicial decisions, the Code consists of abstractly written principles as rules of law.

Civil law is sometimes inappropriately referred to as Roman law or otherwise called Romano-Germanic law or continental civil law, especially by people under its jurisdiction. The expression civil law is a translation of Latin Jus Civile, or “citizens’ law”, which was the Late Imperial term for its legal system, as opposed to the legal systems of conquered or adversarial peoples.

If you need legal assistance with a Civil law matter, please call Nichols Law Firm PLLC at (518) 483-2200 to arrange a  conference to discuss your options.

Civil Matters
- Sexual Harassment
- Wrongful Termination
- Contractor Disputes
- Evictions
- Small Claims
- Labor Relations
- Discrimination