ROMAN LAW

I. 12 Tables

The code of the Roman Law. It was written between 451 and 450 B.C., and took as a source the oral existing Law in that moment. The authors were 10 justices called decenviros, and they registered on tables of bronze or wood that was placed in the principal Roman forum. It seems to be that the Law of Twelve Tables was established to appease the claims of the plebeian ones, which were supporting that his freedoms were not protected from suitable form by the Statute law, at least such and since the patrician judges were applying it. In the first original version, there were made ten tables, two were added more to the following year. Some and others were destroyed during the plunder of Rome by the Gauls in 390, but the posterior Latin literature has allowed that we should know some of these laws. Twelve Tables were including the different disciplines of the Law, with incorporation of the punishments foreseen for some infractions. This law suffered numerous reforms, but it managed to have a force closely of 1000 years.

The real importance of the laws or Law of the Tables XII resides in that this codification constitutes the conclusion of the process of consolidation of the civil Roman State, of the civitas. For work it divides, up to the draft of this legal code, the right in Rome had had a sacred character in reason of his own customary character and for had been tied to the monarchy and to the college of the Pontiffs, principally. According to the tradition, the king Numa Pompilio would have been the first monarch in providing to the incipient Roman State of a series of juridical dispositions, the calls leges regiae. Later, after the fall of the monarchy, the application of this common law passed to be a patrimony of a small patrician sector, fundamentally of the College of the Pontiffs who were controlling the juridical dispositions written in the pontifical books, maybe not thereby so arbitrary as some historians support, but with the disadvantage of not being known by the plebeian ones. The initial resistance of a great number of patrician becomes detached so much of the events that the ancient sources us transmit like of the own content of the laws. Titus Livio says to us that still in the year 390 B.C. the pontiffs were opposed to this code and after the fire of Rome caused by the Gauls - in which 12 plates of laws would have been destroyed - the pontiffs did everything possible in order that some of these laws were not written again.

The laws of the Tables XII are extremely hard with the insolvent debtors. There are besides, some procedure that regulates the economic life, fundamentally relative to the commercial agreements, and others that regulate situations of diverse character as the prohibition of burying the dead men inside the city, the inheritance of the goods of the pater families or of the intestate freedman, the application of fines before cases of damages or defamation, etc. As a whole, the laws of the Tables XII present a few features of the Roman society of this epoch. First, the social stratification demonstrated in the difference of the estates patrician and plebeian.

Certainly, the promulgation of these laws did not solve the tensions and clashes between patrician and plebeian, but the existence of a written, accessible and valid legislation for all, favored undoubtedly the collaboration between both orders and helped to reinforce definitively the structures of the city been.

II. Corpus Juris Civilis

It is the set of the legislative reforms of Justiniano in his last state. It dates back of the VIth century of the age christens. Understands four fundamental parts: a) the code; b) the digest; c) the institutions, which it is an elementary agreement of right, and D) the novels, The Corpus juris civilis can be considered from two points of view: as source of the straight of Justiniano and as summary of juridical materials, in his classic epoch.

FRENCH LAW

I. Napolenic Code

The Napoleonic Code was implanted in all the States created by this Emperor, it continues being the base of the French legislation and of other states, and both the administrative system and the judicial one are essentially the same ones that were restored during his mandate; equally there is kept the educational system regulated by the State. The feudalism and the servitude were abolished and there was established the freedom of worship (except in Spain). A constitution was granted to every State: that was granting the universal masculine suffrage and a bill of rights and the creation of a parliament; there was restored the administrative and judicial French system; the schools remained subordinated to a centralized administration and there was extended the educational free system so that any citizen could accede to the secondary education without his social class or religion was born in mind. Every State was having an academy or institute destined for the promotion of the arts and the sciences, at the time that the work of the investigators was financed, principally that of the scientists. The creation of constitutional governments continued being only a promise, but the progress and efficiency of the management real achievement. Regarding his content, the Civil Code was an eclectic text that was assembling beginning of the Revolution - spirit of equality and freedom of the citizens, abolition of the feudal regime, free access to the property and application of the individualism as base of the right-, rules of the Roman law and procedure of the former regime.

Bonaparte took part actively in 36 of 84 discussions that were kept between1800 and 1804 to realize it. When his definitive compendium appeared, he exclaimed: " I Have closed the chasm of the anarchy, I have arranged the chaos; I have purified the Revolution ". For the first time the right passed to be founded exclusively on lay and rational and not religious bases. For his effort collector, Napoleon's Code was adopted by his enemies.

UNITED KINGDOM LAW

I. Common Law

The common right is the result of a process of historical - political evolution, related directly to the development of the British society. The common right managed to develop as a group of procedure based on previous cases, previous decisions, not by means of the development of written procedure approved by means of a legislative state process, since it is typical in the systems of Roman tradition. Tthe birth of the common right with the invasion of the England villages by the normands in the year 1066 A.C due to the introduction of important changes in the juridical field.

Before the Norman invasion, the legal processes were loaded with formalisms and divine aspects. There existed three ways of solving conflicts that turn out to be interesting of mentioning.