The law of ancient Rome as embodied in the Justinian code, especially that which applied to private citizens.
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The body of law having to do with the private rights of individuals.
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The definition of civil law means the code of laws developed from the Romans and used today in Europe and the United States or any body of law in a nation or state, particularly having to do with individual rights.
An example of a civil law is one allowing everyone the freedom to own property.
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A system of law having its origin in Roman law, as opposed to common law or canon law.
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The body of law of a state or nation governing the behavior of individuals and corporations.
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The law determining private rights and liabilities, as opposed to criminal law and other public law.
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The body of codified law developed from Roman law and still in force in many European and American nations.
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The body of law that an individual nation or state has established for itself.
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A legal system derived from Roman law and based on fixed rules and statutes rather than on a court’s interpretation of broad principles. Prominent in continental Europe, Latin America, Scotland, Quebec, and Louisiana. See also common law and natural law.
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The law pertaining to civil or private rights and duties rather than to matters arising under administrative, criminal, or military law.
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(law) Roman law based on the Corpus Juris Civilis; it contrasts with common law.
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(law) The body of law dealing with the private relations between members of a community; it contrasts with criminal law, military law and ecclesiastical law.
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Attributive form of civil law.
Civil-law country.
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Other Word Forms
Noun
Singular:
civil-law
Plural:
civil-laws
Civil-law Sentence Examples
He first studied theology at Giessen, but after the campaign of 1814, in which, like his brother August, he took part as a Hessian volunteer, began the study of jurisprudence, and in 1818 established himself as Privatdocent of civil law at Giessen.
Equity here is defined to mean "any body of rules existing by the side of the original civil law, founded on distinct principles, and claiming incidentally to supersede the civil law in virtue of a superior sanctity inherent in those principles."
Vansittart's brother, Robert Vansittart (1728-1789), who was educated at Winchester and at Trinity College, Oxford, was regius professor of civil law at Oxford from 1757 until his death on the 31st of January 1789.
The members accidentally discovered that the fear of it had a great influence over the lawless but superstitious blacks, and soon the club expanded into a great federation of regulators, absorbing numerous local bodies that had been formed in the absence of civil law and partaking of the nature of the old English neighbourhood police and the ante-bellum slave patrol.