Why are Britain and Ireland the only part of Europe to use common law?

by Lazar_Taxon

This question has been asked before (e.g. here or here), but the responders seem to somewhat flippantly attribute this to Napoleon, which doesn't explain the use of civil law in Germanic countries like Austria or the Scandinavian states which were never under Bonapartist rule.

wakeupal

Common law was developed in England after the Norman conquest, essentially by English judges. It's a collection of legal principles taken from centuries of opinions and scholarship written by English judges suited in the context of England.

Common law countries across the world are almost always former colonies of England (and later Britain or the UK). The US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India etc. were all colonized by Britain and had the English law system imposed on them. Continental European countries that had no association with England had no reason to adopt English common law. In fact, some regions that were influenced by both continental European countries and the UK have a mixed system, for example, Quebec in Canada (French and British), or South Africa (Dutch and British).

The civil law legal tradition in continental Europe did not originate from Napoleon. It was first and foremost influenced by Roman law, in particular, the Corpus Juris Civilis compiled under Emperor Justinian. In the late Middle Ages and beyond, there was a renaissance of Roman law. It was first centered in Bologna in modern Italy, where scholarship based on Roman law spread across Europe, and a community of scholars, known as the jus commune was developed.

In continental Europe, ideas such as natural rights, the separation of powers, and nationalism eventually culminated in separate legal codes in different countries and a rejection of the jus commune. The Napoleonic Code in France was an epitome of this movement. Other European countries, influenced by both the Napoleonic Code and the centuries of Roman law scholarship before Napoleon, would eventually promulgate their own national codes, the most prominent of which is the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch.

I am not to familiar with the development of Austrian or Scandinavian law, maybe someone more familiar with those can answer how those countries' legal systems came about.

Everything I wrote came from this book:

Merryman, John; Perez-Perdomo, Rogelio. The Civil Law Tradition, 3rd Edition: An Introduction to the Legal Systems of Europe and Latin America.