Different Types of Law
There
are 5 types of laws in the U.S. Legal system. These are:
Administrative, Civil, Constitutional, Criminal and International. I
have included others for reference and learning purposes.
ADMINISTRATIVE
LAW
That
branch of public law which deals with the various organs of the
sovereign power considered as in motion, and prescribes in detail the
manner of their activity,
being concerned with such topics as the collection of the revenue,
the regulation of the military and naval forces, citizenship and
naturalization,sanitary measures, poor
laws, coinage, police,the public safety and
morals, etc. See Holl. Jur. 305-307.
ADMIRALTY
LAW
A
court exercising jurisdiction over maritime causes, both civil and
criminal, and marine affairs, commerce and navigation, controversies
arising out of acts done upon or relating to the sea, and over
questions of prize. Also, the system of jurisprudence relating to and
growing out of the jurisdiction and practice of the admiralty courts.
In
English law.
The
executive department of state which presides over the naval forces of
the kingdom. The normal head it the lord high admiral, but in
practice the functions of the great office are discharged by several
commissioners, of whom one is the chief, and is called the "First
Lord." He is assisted by other lords and by various secretaries.
Also, the court of the admiral. The building where the lords of the
admiralty transact business.
In
American law.
A
tribunal exercising jurisdiction overall maritime contracts, torts,
injuries, or offenses. 2 Pars. Mar. Law, 508.
CANON
LAW
A
body of ecclesiastical jurisprudence which, in countries where the
Roman Catholic church is established, is composed of maxims and rules
drawn from patristic sources, ordinances and decrees of general
councils, and the decretals and bulls of the popes. In England,
according to Blackstone, there is a kind of national canon law,
composed of legatine and provincial constitutions enacted m England
prior to the reformation, and adapted to the exigencies of the
English church and kingdom. 1 81. Comm. 82.
The
canon law consists partly of certain rules taken out of the
Scripture, partly of the writings of the ancient fathers of the
church, partly of the ordinances of general and provincial councils,
and partly of the decrees of the popes in former ages; and it is
contained in two principal parts,—the decrees and the decretals.
The decrees are ecclesiastical constitutions made by the popes and
cardinals. The decretals are canonical epistles written by the pope,
or by the pope and cardinals, at the suit of one or more persons, for
the ordering and determining of some matter of controversy, and have
the authority of a law. As the decrees set out the origin of the
canon law, and the rights, dignities, and decrees of ecclesiastical
persons, with their manner of election, ordination, etc., so the
decretals contain the law to be used in the ecclesiastical courts.
Jacob.
CASE
LAW
A
professional name for the aggregate of reported cases as forming a
body of jurisprudence; or for the law of a particular subject as
evidenced or formed by the adjudged cases; in distinction to statutes
and other sources of law.
CIVIL
LAW
The
"Roman Law" and the "Civil Law" are convertible
phrases, meaning the same system of jurisprudence; it is now
frequently denominated the "Roman Civil Law." The word
"civil," as applied to the laws in force in Louisiana,
before the adoption of the Civil Code, is not used in
contradistinction to the word "criminal," but must be
restricted to the Roman law. It is used in contradistinction to the
laws of England and those of the respective states. 5 La. 493.
The
system of jurisprudence held and administered in the Roman empire,
particularly as set forth in the compilation of Justinian and his
successors,—comprising the Institutes, Code, Digest, and Novels,
and collectively denominated the "Corpus Juris Civilis,"—as
distinguished from the common law of England and the canon law.
That
rule of action which every particular nation, commonwealth, or city
has established peculiarly for itself; more properly called
"municipal" law, to distinguish it from the "law of
nature," and from international law. The law which a people
enacts is called the "civil law" of that people, but that
law which natural reason appoints for all mankind is called the "law
of nations," because all nations use it. Bowyer, Mod. Civil
Law, 19.3. That division of municipal law which is occupied with the
exposition and enforcement of civil rights, as distinguished
from criminal law.
COLONIAL
LAW
In
America, this term designates the body of law in force in the
thirteen original colonies before the Declaration of Independence. In
England, the term signifies the laws enacted by Canada and the other
present British colonies.
COMMON
LAW
1.
As distinguished from the Roman law, the modern civil law, the canon
law, and other systems, the common law is that body of law and
juristic theory which was originated, developed, and formulated and
is administered in England, and has obtained among most of the states
and peoples of Anglo-Saxon stock.
2.
As distinguished from law created by the enactment of legislatures,
the common law comprises the body of those principles and rules of
action, relating to the government and security of persons and
property, which derive their authority solely from usages and customs
of immemorial antiquity, or from the judgments and decrees of the
courts recognizing, affirming, and enforcing such usages and customs;
and, in this sense, particularly the ancient unwritten law of
England.
3.
As distinguished from equity law, it is a body of rules and
principles, written or unwritten, which are of fixed and immutable
authority, and which must be applied to controversies rigorously and
in their entirety, and cannot be modified to suit the peculiarities
of a specific case, or colored by any judicial discretion, and which
rests confessedly upon custom or statute, as distinguished from any
claim to ethical superiority.
4.
As distinguished from ecclesiastical law, it is the system of
jurisprudence administered by the purely secular tribunals.
5.
As concerns its force and authority in the United States, the phrase
designates that portion of the common law of England (including such
acts of parliament as were applicable) which had been adopted and was
in force here at the time of the Revolution. This, so far as it has
not since been expressly abrogated, is recognized as an organic part
of the jurisprudence of most of the United States.
6.
In a wider sense than any of the
foregoing, the "common law" may designate all that part of
the positive law, juristic theory, and ancient custom of any state or
nation which is of general and universal application, thus marking
off special or local rules or customs.
CONSTITUTIONAL
LAW
1.
That branch of the public law of a state which treats of the
organization and frame of government, the organs and powers of
sovereignty, the distribution of political and governmental
authorities and functions, the fundamental principles which are to
regulate the relations of government and subject, and which
prescribes generally the plan and method according to which the
public affairs at the state are to be administered.
2.
That department of the science of law which treats of constitutions,
their establishment, construction, and interpretation, and of the
validity of legal enactments as tested by the criterion of conformity
to the fundamental law.
3.
A constitutional law is one which is consonant to, and agrees with,
the constitution; one which is not in violation of any provision of
the constitution of the particular state.
CRIMINAL
LAW
That
branch or division of law which treats of crimes and their
punishments. In the plural—"criminal laws"—the term may
denote the laws which define and prohibit the various species of
crimes and establish their punishments.
CROWN
LAW
Criminal
law in England is sometimes so termed, the crown being always the
prosecutor in criminal proceedings. 4 Bl. Comm. 2.
ECCLESIASTICAL
LAW
The
body of jurisprudence administered by the ecclesiastical courts of
England; derived, in large measure, from the canon and civil law. As
now restricted, it applies mainly to the affairs, and the doctrine,
discipline, and worship, of the established church.
FEUDAL
LAW
The
body of jurisprudence relating to feuds; the real-property law of the
feudal system; the law anciently regulating the property relations of
lord and vassal, and the creation, incidents, and transmission of
feudal estates. The body of laws and usages constituting the"feudal
law" was originally customary and unwritten, but a compilation
was made in the twelfth century, called "Feodarum
Consuetudines," which has formed the basis of later digests.
The feudal law prevailed over Europe from the twelfth to the
fourteenth century, and was introduced into Eng-land at the Norman
Conquest, where it formed the entire basis of the law of real
property until comparatively modern times. Survivals of the feudal
law,to the present day, so affect and color that branch of
jurisprudence as to require a certain knowledge of the feudal law in
order to the perfect comprehension of modern tenures and rules of
real-property law.
INTERNATIONAL
LAW
The
law which regulates the intercourse of nations; the law of nations. 1
Kent, Comm. 1, 4. The customary law which determines the rights and
regulates the intercourse of independent states in peace and war. 1
Wildm. Int. Law, 1.
The
system of rules and principles, founded on treaty, custom, precedent,
and the consensus of opinion as to justice and moral obligation,
which civilized nations recognize as binding upon them in their
mutual dealings and relations.
Public
international law is the body of rules which control the conduct of
independent states in their relations with each other.
Private
international law is that branch of municipal law which determines
before the courts of what nation a particular action or suit should
be brought, and by the law of what nation it should be determined; in
other words, it regulates private rights as dependent on a diversity
of municipal laws and jurisdictions applicable to the persons, facts,
or things in dispute, and the subject of it is hence sometimes called
the "conflict of laws." Thus, questions whether a given
person owes allegiance to a particular state where he is domiciled,
whether his status, property, rights, and duties are governed
by the lex situs, the lex loci, the lexfori, or
the lex domicilii, are questions with which private
international law has to deal. Sweet.
JUSTINIAN
CODE (jus-tin-ee-in) Roman
law.
A
collection of imperial constitutions drawn up by a commission of ten
persons appointed by the Roman emperor Justinian and published in
A.D. 529. Ten jurists, headed by Tribonian, carried out the project
beginning in February A.D. 528 and ending in April 529. It replaced
all prior imperial law, but was in force only until A.D. 534, when it
was supplanted by a revision, the Codex
Repetitae Praelectionis.
The precise contents of the first work are unknown. But the second
work, containing the 12 books of the revised code, includes the
imperial constitutions of the Gregorian, Hermogenian, and Theodosian
Codes, together with later legislation, revised and harmonized into
one systematic whole. It deals with ecclesiastical law, criminal law,
administrative law, and private law. In modern writings, the A.D. 534
version is the work referred to as the Justinian Code. Also termed
Justinianean Code
(jas-tin-ee-an-ee-;m); Code
of Justinian; Codex Justinianus (koh-deks-jas-tin-eeay-nas);
Codex Vetus Cold
Code"); Codex
Iustinianus Repetitae Praelectionis.
"By
the time when the Digest and Institutes had been completed it was
obvious that the Codex, published little more than four years
earlier, was incomplete, since in the interval Justinian ... had
promulgated other new constitutions. Tribonian, therefore, was
appointed to revise the Code, so as to bring it fully up to date, and
at the end of the year A.D. 534 this new Code, known as the Codex
Repetitae Praelectionis, was promulgated, and is the only Code which
survives to the present day. Justinian seem to have laboured under
the erroneous impression that the system he had framed would be
adequate for all time. But as there is nothing static about law,
further legislative enactments, termed Novellae
Constitutiones, were
issued during his reign.... In modern times Justinian's various
compilations came to be called collectively the Corpus
Juris Civilis: the
Corpus being regarded as a single work, made up of the Institutes,
the Digest,
the Codex Repetitae
Praelectionis, and the
Novels." R.W. Leage, Roman
Private Law 44 (C.H.
Ziegler ed., 2d ed. 1930).
NATURAL
LAW
The
rule and dictate of right reason, showing the moral deformity or
moral necessity there is in any act, according to its suitableness or
unsuitableness to a reasonable nature. Tayl. Civil Law, 99. This
expression, "natural law," or jus naturale, was largely
used in the philosophical speculations of the Roman jurists of the
Antonine age, and was intended to denote a system of rules and
principles for the guidance of human conduct which, independently of
enacted law or of the systems peculiar to any one people, might be
discovered by the rational intelligence of man, and would be found to
grow out of and conform to his nature, meaning by that word his whole
mental, moral, and physical constitution. The point of departure for
this conception was the Stoic doctrine of a life ordered "according
to nature," which in its turn rested upon the purely
supposititious existence, in primitive times, of a "state of
nature;" that is, a condition of society in which men
universally were governed solely by a national and consistent
obedience to the needs, impulses, and promptings of their true
nature, such nature being as yet undefaced by dishonesty, falsehood,
or indulgence of the baser passions. See Maine, Anc. Law, 50, et
seq.
POSITIVE
LAW
Law
actually and specifically enacted or adopted by proper authority for
the government of an organized jural society. "A 'law,' in the
sense in which that term is employed in jurisprudence, is enforced by
a sovereign political authority. It is thus distinguished not only
from all rules which, like the principles of morality and the
so-called laws of honor and of fashion, are enforced by an
indeterminate authority, but also from all rules enforced by a
determinate authority which is either, on the one hand, superhuman,
or, on the other hand, politically subordinate. In order to emphasize
the fact that laws,' in the strict sense of the term, are thus
authoritatively imposed, they are described as positive laws."
Holl. Jur. 37.
PRIVATE
LAW
As
used in contradistinction to public law, the term means all that part
of the law which is administered between citizen and citizen, or
which is concerned with the definition, regulation, and enforcement
of rights in cases where both the person in whom the right inheres
and the person upon whom the obligation is incident are private
individuals. See PUBLIC LAW.
PUBLIC
LAW
That
branch or department of law which is concerned with the state in its
political or sovereign capacity, including constitutional and
administrative law, and with the definition, regulation, and
enforcement of rights in cases where the state is regarded as the
subject of the right or object of the duty,—including criminal law
and criminal procedure,—and the law of the state, considered in its
quasi private personality, i.e., as capable of holding or exercising
rights, or acquiring and dealing with property, in the character of
an individual. See Holl. Jur. 106, 300. That portion of law which is
concerned with political conditions; that is to say, with the powers,
rights, duties, capacities, and incapacities which are peculiar to
political superiors, supreme and subordinate. Aust Jur. "Public
law," in one sense, is a designation given to "international
law," as distinguished from the laws of a particular nation or
state. In another sense, a law or statute that applies to the people
generally of the nation or state adopting or enacting it, is
denominated a public law, as contra distinguished from a private law,
affecting only an individual or a small number of persons. 46 Vt.
773.
REAL
LAW
At
common law. The body of laws relating to real property. This use of
the term is popular rather than technical.
In
the civil law. A law which relates to specific property, whether
movable or immovable.
Laws
purely real directly and indirectly regulate property, and the rights
of property, without inter meddling with or changing the state of the
person. Wharton
ROMAN
LAW
This
term, in a general sense, comprehends all the laws which prevailed
among the Romans, without regard to the time of their origin,
including the collections of Justinian. In a more restricted sense,
the Germans understand by this term merely the law of Justinian, as
adopted by them. Mackeld. Bom. Law, § 18.
In
England and America, it appears to be customary to use the phrase,
indifferently with "the civil law," to designate the whole
system of Roman jurisprudence, including the Corpus Juris Civilis;
or, if any distinction is drawn, the expression "civil law"
denotes the system of jurisprudence obtaining in those countries of
continental Europe which have derived their juridical notions and
principles from the Justinian collection, while "Roman law"
is reserved as the proper appellation of the body of law developed
under the government of Rome from the earliest times to the fall of
the empire.
STATUTORY
LAW (l7c)
The
body of law derived from statutes rather than from constitutions or
judicial decisions. Also termed statute law; legislative law;
ordinary law. Cf. COMMON LAW (1); CONSTITUTIONAL LAW.
