The British Legal System

Roman Law

Roman law was heavily influenced by Greek teachings. It forms the bridge to the modern legal world, over the centuries between the rise and decline of the Roman Empire. Roman law, in the days of the Roman republic and Empire, was heavily procedural and there was no professional legal class. Instead a lay person, iudex, was chosen to adjudicate. Precedents were not reported, so any case law that developed was disguised and almost unrecognised. Each case was to be decided afresh from the laws of the state, which mirrors the (theoretical) unimportance of judges' decisions for future cases in civil law systems today. During the 6th century AD in the Eastern Roman Empire, the Emperor Justinian codified and consolidated the laws that had existed in Rome so that what remained was one twentieth of the mass of legal texts from before. This became known as the Corpus Juris Civilis. As one legal historian wrote, "Justinian consciously looked back to the golden age of Roman law and aimed to restore it to the peak it had reached three centuries before."


The Middle Ages

Roman law was lost through the Dark Ages, but in the eleventh century AD scholars in the University of Bologna rediscovered the texts and were the first to use them to interpret their own laws. Medieval European legal scholars began researching the Roman law and they began using its concepts and prepared the way for the partial resurrection of Roman law as the modern civil law in a large part of the world. After the Norman conquest of England which introduced Norman and Islamic legal concepts into medieval England, the English King's powerful judges developed a body of precedent which became the common law. In particular, Henry II instituted legal reforms and developed royal, professional courts administered by a small number of judges who lived in Westminster and traveled throughout the kingdom. Henry the II also instituted the Assize of Clarendon in 1166, which allowed for jury trials and reduced the number of trials by combat. In France, judges were based in the area they resided in, and jurors were nominated by parties to the legal dispute rather than by the sheriff. But also, a Europe wide lex mercatoria was formed, so that merchants could trade using familiar standards, rather than the many splintered types of local law. A precursor to modern commercial law, the lex mercatoria emphasised the freedom of contract and alienability of property.

Common Law is the law that comes from the common people, unlike Civil law (i) which is based on Roman law, Legislation which comes from the "experts" and executive decisions made by politicians. It is based on the accumulated precedents, created by judicial decisions over time, it is the definitive example of NATURAL LAW.

Stare Decisis is the principle that similar cases should be decided according to consistent principled rules so that they will reach similar results, and lies at the heart of all common law systems.

Constitutional law is a body of law dealing with the distribution and exercise of government power.

Statutory law or statute law is written law (as opposed to oral or customary law) set down by a legislature (as opposed to regulatory law promulgated by the executive branch or common law of the judiciary).

Administrative law is the body of law that governs the activities of administrative agencies of government. Government agency action can include rulemaking, adjudication, or the enforcement of a specific regulatory agenda.

Admiralty Law
Seaborne transport was one of the earliest channels of commerce, and rules for resolving disputes involving maritime trade were developed early in recorded history. Early historical records of these laws include the Rhodian law (of which no primary written specimen has survived, but which is alluded to in other legal texts: Roman and Byzantine legal codes) and later the customs of the Hanseatic League.

We need to Reform of The Legal System

Common law comes about at the root levels of society: it is not law that is imposed by some authority from on high. The development of common law was "essentially a private affair concerning millions of people throughout dozens of generations and stretching across several centuries." It is a process that is self adjusting and which goes on everyday unnoticed, without great expense to the state and without fractionalizing society.

Civil law is a modern legal system based upon Roman law, as distinguished from Common law. Civil law is based on written legal codes, a hallmark of the Roman legal system, in which disputes were settled by reference to a written legal code arrived at through legislation, edicts, and the like.

The problem arises when we take into account the Legislative interference with the Common law by generations of politicians, lawyers and financiers who have corrupted the original purpose of Natural Justice and Democratic Process. The influences of Civil law (Roman law) and Admiralty law has further corrupted these basic principles.

The Restoration of EQUITY

"Equity" may generally be defined as the correction of a defect or error in the law. This idea is apparently of ancient origin, tracing back at least as far as Aristotle, who defined equity as an exception to the rule where the lawgiver's pronouncement is defective and erroneous. There are a number of reasons why a law may be deemed "defective" or "erroneous."
The fact of the matter is that there exists all around us a great body of law which has not ever been (nor could it be) written down in one spot. In a way, it's more of a process which has a single guiding rule, the "golden rule," a negative rule: Don't do something to someone that you don't want to have visited on yourself, either directly or through the agency of a government.

This is the fundamental principle to which we must return, marked by reference to a truly NATURAL (Common) LAW System of NATURAL JUSTICE. The Rule of EQUITY should give the final decision regarding the veracity and status of a NATURAL LAW to the COMMUNITY.

“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.” John Adams