What Should You Know About Civil Law

What is Civil Law?

Civil Law is a type of legal field that typically addresses nonviolent circumstances and events that are perceived as presumable wrongs suffered. In contrast to peripheral legal fields, Civil Law maintains firm jurisdiction within the judicial review of occurrences, grievances, and complaints whose rectification is considered to be unlikely outside of a judicial setting.

Civil law, in the most basic of contexts, is applied to non-criminal matters to legally resolve an underlying issue. As a result of the designated area of legal issues, civil law will cover a wide range of areas, including issues relating to divorce cases, child support proceedings, personal injury suits or child custody matters. In addition, civil law is applied to business disagreements, such as disputes over contracts. Civil law will also include lawsuits brought by a party to recover damages relating to property ownership issues.

A civil law court is a means for disagreeing parties or entities to resolve legal disputes in an expedited and orderly manner. The majority of civil courts will seek to provide a legal remedy to an underlying legal problem; the resolutions delivered in a civil court will provide the winning party with compensation in the form of monies, the delivery of a specific job or an order for the losing party to abstain from a certain activity. Civil law is based on statutes, judge-made rulings or both, depending on the acting jurisdiction.

Civil Law vs. Criminal Law

While legal fields such as criminal law retain similar qualities of judicial review, Civil Law will typically address disputes in lieu of violent crimes.

While a murder charge may be tried within a Criminal lawsuit, only a charge of Wrongful Death may be heard before a Civil Court

Decisions rendered by a civil court – in conjunction to civil law – will only be permitted to award the party to those favor was ruled with compensatory measures; punitive recourse is not permitted to be implemented within the realm of Civil Law

Civil Law vs. Common Law:

Within the setting of Common Law, passed case decisions, rulings, and judicial review will be cited as primary sources with regard to sentencing; conversely, within a civil law setting, presupposed legal statues and mandates will be considered to be the primary foundations of sentencing

Civil Law and Tort Law:

Tort Law is the legal field in which wrongdoings taking place against the backdrop of Civil Law; in contrast to Criminal Law, Torts are defined as wrongs or injustices suffered by one or both parties – torts typically exist outside of criminal prosecution. Within the realm of Tort Law, civil wrongdoings are considered to be divided into 3 primary sections in which a bulk of Torts may be categorized:

Negligent Torts are torts suffered by one individual at the hands of another individual, which resulted from negligence in lieu of malicious intent

Intentional Torts are torts suffered by one individual at the hands of another individual, which resulted from malicious intent

Strict Liability Torts occurring within the jurisdiction of Civil Law review the tort suffered with regard to the degree of implicit liability expressed

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