International, constitutional and administrative law, criminal law, contract, tort, property law and trusts are regarded as the “traditional core topics”, although there are many further disciplines. In civil law the sources recognised as authoritative are, primarily, legislation—especially codifications in constitutions or statutes passed by government—and customized. Codifications date again millennia, with one early instance being the Babylonian Codex Hammurabi.
Increasing numbers of businesses opt for business arbitration underneath the New York Convention 1958. The Catholic Church has the oldest repeatedly functioning legal system within the western world, predating the evolution of modern European civil law and common law methods. The Eastern Catholic Churches, which developed totally different disciplines and practices, are governed by the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. The canon law of the Catholic Church influenced the frequent law through the medieval period through its preservation of Roman law doctrine such as the presumption of innocence. In …