The Common Law and Civil Law legal systems dominate western legal thought and practice, co-existing with minor traditions such as Socialist, Religious, and Tribal/Traditional. The scope of the course is limited to legal systems, laws, and historical events which contributed most significantly to the Western/European legal culture in which we live today. It is presented in roughly chronological order, and includes selections from law codes, legal documents, and scholarly analysis of legal systems or issues. It ranges from ancient Mesopotamia through classical Greece and Rome, includes Byzantine law, the revival of Roman Law at Bologna in the High Middle Ages and birth of a common European law, and concludes with the division between the Common Law and Civil Law.
