Criminalité et répression

→ 24h de cours - writing examination, short case with questions to answer, multiple

choice question. Speak English in class. Remember all lessons of comparative law

from last year.

Examen → orals questions to respond to. Paper with subjects, and a time to write

Introduction

Common law is a legal system ≠ romano-germanic legal system. René David is the

creator of the concept of the legal system.

legal system = something which is quite large, inside what you can find legislation,

regulation, individual organisation, legal terminology. They are all linked between

them. It is quite a large bag inside what we have different legal elements, which can

be different because the legislation of a parliament is not the same as a contract

negotiated between two private peoples. There is just something common between

them, but the combination between them permits us to obtain a good system.

Common law:

• judges, court decisions (court common law cases), precedent = case law

• a “written law”

• more for practicers, easy to approach for “normies”.

Romano-germanic legal system

• codes: written laws, statutes

• legislator

• abstraction → difficult to understand for ordinary people, more for

specialist

Common law expansion wasn't expected, but at least it spread all over the world.

The Common Law is probably the most used legal system in the world.

Part 1: Common law in England and

Wales

→ original contest

The common law in England and Wales was not expected in England and Wales. We

know the date of birth, which is 1060. The duck of Normandy, who has a certain

power and a certain institutional organisation (executives over him), when he

became a king, he used the same organisation as in Normandy that he used to have

as a duke. Duke or king, they all govern with the same kind of institution, because the

general context was feudality. They were all feudal institutions.

Ch1: from the beginning until now

1

Common Law – Pr. Mariani

Since the battle of Hastings, we must recognize that the English system changed.

Nothing was really expected nor wanted but it remains somehow. The legal way to

elaborate and to use legal institutions changed since the beginning. Principles have

evolved, judges have changed, they are now practitioners, but everything is used the

same way as when William the Conqueror did.

Section

1:

Some historical legal

background

This historical legal background is about the common law’s origins. They are totally

linked to the Norman conquest

A) the norman conquest

As he was the duck of Normandy, Alexandre was a foreigner. He built institutions for

the new territories. William was not a people of England, when he won the battle of

hasting, his first volunteer was to establish himself in England. Anglo-Saxon people

were more generous than other people. The Bayeux tapestry shows a precise

precise description of the way William organized a military expedition to

conquer England:

They had to think about institutions, because people would just have to follow the

rules, and no need to organise battle. Civilian rules are some economic techniques

to rule a place where you do not have a lot to govern. This explains the first part of the

installation of common law in England.

King William used at first a feudal schema, and inside, the king was central. It was to

keep total control on legal institutions, after the Norman conquest. There was in

England something that could be called English law. It was quite easy for William to

organise his central power. He did that in a primitive way, but this primitive way could

be useful, because the general context in England at that time was also primitive.

The project of william was to stay at the heart of england. He was in the south of

England and wanted to govern the country with a few people. The king decided to

control the legal questions and for instance to judge, and hear, by himself the dispute

about who could arrive in the country. This country was, again, quite primitive, but

people inside have their own organisation.

All the country was separated by “hundreds” and “shires”. They had a kind of

administrative circonscriptions. In hundred, they had shires, and in shires they had

villages. His goal was to govern all the county, and he began with

...