Law, Legal Systems, and Legal Families

Abstract

As mentioned by Confucius that ‘Past assists to understand the future’; the concepts of legal systems, and legal families also help us to understand the past, recognize the present, and appreciate the future. Legal families and legal systems are not identical, but are closely interconnected. Law can be described as any standard that is legitimate, valid and enforceable. However, each country might have hundreds, perhaps thousands, of laws. Each law treats one or some specific issues different from other laws. Despite the diversity among laws in terms of contents and treatment, a legal system integrates all laws within its jurisdiction with the help of certain governing principles and rules commonly spread out in all such laws. Similarly, the diversity among laws of different countries is extremely insurmountable in providing an accurate account. For example, after the establishment of the United Nations (UN), more than 180,000 treaties have been concluded, which in a strict sense do not constitute the segment of domestic laws. The idea of legal tradition reduces these insurmountable domestic legal systems into certain groups or families based on their commonalities in terms of legal concepts, in particular the system of legitimacy, validity, and enforceability. In short, a legal system integrates all laws in existence within its jurisdiction. A legal family provides membership to legal systems based on commonalities of principles, rules, and institutions.