There are important differences between a law and a code. [4] The most distinctive features of civilian systems are their legal systems, with concise and widely applicable texts that generally avoid factual scenarios. [5] [4] The short articles of a civil code deal with generalities and contrast with ordinary laws, which are often very long and very detailed. [4] A striking example of a civil code is the Code Napoléon (1804), named after the Frenchman Emperor Napoleon. The Napoleonic Code consists of three components: An important common feature of civil law, besides its origins in Roman law, is the complete codification of received Roman law, i.e. its inclusion in the Civil Code. The oldest known codification is the Hammurabi Codex, written in ancient Babylon in the 18th century BC. However, this code and many of the following codes were primarily lists of civil and criminal offences and their penalties. The typical codification of modern civil systems appeared only with the Justinian Code.

Another key difference between civil procedure and law enforcement is purpose. Remember that the purpose of a civil lawsuit is to compensate the plaintiff for the damages. On the other hand, the purpose of prosecution is to punish the accused. Historically, civil law is the set of legal ideas and systems ultimately derived from the Corpus juris civilis, but strongly superimposed by Napoleonic, Germanic, canonical, feudal and local practices,[2] as well as by doctrinal currents such as natural law, codification and legal positivism. Several Islamic countries have civil law systems that incorporate elements of Islamic law. [24] For example, the Egyptian Civil Code of 1810, which developed in the early 19th century – which is still in force in Egypt and forms the basis of civil law in many countries in the Arab world where civil law is used – is based on the Napoleonic Code, but its main author Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri attempted to integrate the principles and characteristics of Islamic law, take into account the unique circumstances of Egyptian society. In civil law, a case begins when a lawsuit is brought by a party, which may be an individual, organization, corporation or corporation, against another party. The complaining party is called the plaintiff, and the responding party is called the defendant, and the process is called litigation. In civil lawsuits, the plaintiff asks the court to order the defendant to redress an injustice, often in the form of financial compensation to the plaintiff. In contrast, in criminal law, the case is filed against a defendant by the government, usually referred to as a state and represented by a prosecutor. A person can never file a criminal complaint against another person: a person can report a crime, but only the government can file a criminal complaint in court. Crimes are activities punishable by the government and divided into two broad categories of seriousness: crimes punishable by imprisonment for more than one year and offences punishable by imprisonment of one year or less.

Case: Germanic laws appeared in the 6th and 7th centuries. In order to clearly distinguish the law applicable to the Germanic privileged classes from their Roman subjects, and to regulate these laws according to popular law. Under feudal law, a number of private customs were compiled, first under the Norman Empire (Very Old Customary, 1200-1245), and then elsewhere, to record seigneurial and later regional customs, court decisions and the legal principles underlying them. The custumals were commanded by gentlemen who, as lay judges, presided over the seigneurial courts in order to learn about the judicial process. The use of guardians of influential cities quickly became a widespread practice. In accordance with this, some monarchs consolidated their kingdoms by attempting to gather custumals that would serve as the law of the land for their empires, such as Charles VII. In 1454 he appointed an official guardian of the right of the crown. Two important examples are the Coutume de Paris (written in 1510; revised in 1580), which served as the basis for the Napoleonic Code, and the Sachsenspiegel (circa 1220) of the dioceses of Magdeburg and Halberstadt, which was used in northern Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. Common examples of civil lawsuits include disputes related to divorce, property, custody, and injury. Unlike common law systems, civil law courts deal with case law independently of precedent.

Civil and criminal cases are shared by the same courts, but they have very different objectives, goals and outcomes. Sometimes, a number of facts give way to civil lawsuits. This does not violate double jeopardy and is actually quite common. In its narrow technical sense, the term civil law describes the law that designates persons, things and relationships that develop between them, to the exclusion not only of criminal law, but also of commercial law, labor law, etc. Codification took place in most civil law countries, with the French Civil Code and the German Civil Code being the most influential civil codes.