Legal Anthropology, also called the legal anthropology of laws, is an important sub-field of anthropology that studies “the complex interaction of human beings within legal systems”. The main questions that Legal Anthropology investigators seek to answer focus on how to do legal systems across cultures differ? How does legal behavior vary across cultures? And what can we learn from other cultures? These are some of the fundamental questions that Legal anthropologists try to answer in their work.

Legal anthropology is different from many other sections of anthropology simply because its focus is not on the physical attributes of people as they exist in the natural environment. Rather, Legal Anthropology scholars want to analyze how social norms and legal rules vary across cultural boundaries, and how such variations affect particular individuals and groups in various settings. Legal anthropologists also try to understand cultural diversity through comparative research. For instance, researchers may compare two cultures using only quantitative methods, such as statistics, to determine similarities and differences. Lanjutkan membaca →

Civil law is an alternative legal system derived in many parts of the world and taken to extremes in some others. The civil law system is highly rationalized within the context of Roman law, which, like civil law, focuses on individual rights protected by a representational, legal structure, and has many important components common to all legal systems. Civil law courts are designed to provide a higher degree of justice based on the concept of equity, rather than on the theory of retribution. Civil law courts are generally lower in jurisdiction than other courts, to ensure that litigants receive a fair hearing.

Historically civil law courts have developed from three different legal systems: the common law, judicial authority based on equity, and common law systems influenced by customary law. The jurisdiction of these courts varies greatly, due to the existence of different legal systems within different states. A common law system is influenced by several sources, including family traditions, common law jurisdictions, and historical practices. For example, the courts of Texas inherited the Texas state court system from the United States Congress through Article VI of the Constitution, and then added in the original text certain pre-existing federal common law rules such as the power of attorney and bail. Lanjutkan membaca →