Were the ten commandments the first laws of civilization? As the Ten Commandments were written in stone and writing had hardly developed anywhere else to that time, are those the first laws of civilization?
Nope. Even if we were to accept this definition of law as some written decree, and I'm unsure that's the case1, there are civilisations with written law that predate the Ten Commandments. Babylonian Law (c.1800 BC) predates the Ten Commandments. Also, the Code of Ur-Nammu predates even that (c.2050 BC). 1. Most definitions of law don't require that it be written, but rather that it is some system of rules that govern the behaviour of some group of people.
No, but... Common law does not apply in countries that follow the legal school of Code Civil, aka civil law legal system, such as Germany or France. Some basic principles are common between them and common law: While there's generally no right to a jury, the innocence part actually stems in both cases from ROMAN law: in dubio pro reo - in the case of doubt, (you have to decide) for the accused. The similar Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat - Proof lies on him who asserts, not on him who denies - is the source: It was butchered into &quot;innocent until proven guilty&quot;, but the sentiment is the same. Other countries that have no relation to common law are based on Sharia and Fiqh. There is absolutely no relation to Roman law either. However, there is a presumption of innocence, or as one of the largest Scholars of Islamic law Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib said in the mid-600s: &quot;Avert the prescribed punishment by rejecting doubtful evidence.&quot; However, what is considered doubtful is quite different. On the other hand, presumption of guilt was the foundational principle in other legal systems!
One can find contradictory claims out there. Here is an English version of the marriage law. There is a surprising amount of legal rigamarole (in Norway, as well) pertaining to clearing "impediments". Assuming that the parties have done their part, then we move to Chapter 4. Article 16: Marriage may take place before a minister of the church, a representative of a registered religious organization empowered to perform such ceremonies, cf. Article 17, or before a civil official so empowered So turning to Article 17: Religious solemnization of marriage shall be performed by the ministers of the National Church, and priests or other representatives of registered religious organizations in Iceland who have been empowered to perform such ceremonies by the Ministry of Justice and Ecclesiastical Affairs and that is now part of the Ministry of the Interior. I can't find any indication that ULC has been approved. There are 49 religions officially listed by Statistics Iceland, including Siðmennt, a secular humanist organization which gained official status on May 3rd, 2013 when the organization was officially registered as a secular life stance organization under a law passed in the Icelandic Parliament on January 30th of that year. A formal ceremony was held by the Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson who had strongly supported our cause, to mark this historical event. As a result, Siðmennt gained the same legal and funding status as religious life stance organizations in Iceland. Weddings conducted by Siðmennt celebrants since then are legal and couples no longer have to go to government offices for that purpose. In light of the fact that Siðmennt is officially listed and ULC is not listed, I would conclude that you did not accidentally marry anyone, even if they had dealt with the impediments.
Yes. France invented the civil law system and adopted it in connection with the French Revolution. Napoleon commissioned it in 1804. The summary of the story is here. As Wikipedia explains: Before the Napoleonic Code, France did not have a single set of laws; law consisted mainly of local customs, which had sometimes been officially compiled in &quot;custumals&quot; (coutumes), notably the Custom of Paris. There were also exemptions, privileges, and special charters granted by the kings or other feudal lords. During the Revolution, the last vestiges of feudalism were abolished. Specifically, as to civil law, the many different bodies of law used in different parts of France were to be replaced by a single legal code. The Constituent Assembly, on 5 October 1790, voted for a codification of the laws of France, the Constitution of 1791 promised one, and the National Assembly adopted a unanimous resolution on 4 September 1791, providing that “there shall be a code of civil laws common for the entire realm.” However, it was the National Convention in 1793 which established a special commission headed by Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès to oversee the drafting process. His drafts of 1793 (for which he had been given a one-month deadline), 1794, and 1796 were all rejected by a National Convention and Directory more concerned with the turmoil resulting from the various wars and strife with other European powers. The first contained 719 articles and was very revolutionary, but was rejected for being too technical and criticized for not being radical or philosophical enough. The second, with only 297 articles, was rejected for being too brief and was criticized for being a mere manual of morals. The third, expanded to 1,104 articles, was presented under the Directory, a conservative regime, but never even came up for discussion. Another commission, established in 1799, presented that December a fourth scheme drafted in part by Jean-Ignace Jacqueminot (1754–1813). Jacqueminot's draft, the so-called loi Jacqueminot, dealt almost exclusively with persons and emphasized the need to reform the Revolutionary divorce laws, to strengthen parental authority and increase the testator's freedom to dispose of the free portion of his estate. It was, of course, rejected. Napoleonic reforms Napoleon set out to reform the French legal system in accordance with the ideas of the French Revolution, because the old feudal and royal laws seemed confusing and contradictory. After multiple rejected drafts by other commissions, a fresh start was made after Napoleon came to power in 1799. A commission of four eminent jurists was appointed in 1800, including Louis-Joseph Fauré and chaired by Cambacérès (now Second Consul), and sometimes by the First Consul, Napoleon himself. The Code was complete by 1801, after intensive scrutiny by the Council of State, but was not published until 21 March 1804. It was promulgated as the &quot;Civil Code of the French&quot; (Code civil des Français), but was renamed &quot;the Napoleonic Code&quot; (Code Napoléon) from 1807 to 1815, and once again after the Second French Empire. The process developed mainly out of the various customs, but was inspired by Justinian's sixth-century codification of Roman law, the Corpus Iuris Civilis and, within that, Justinian's Code (Codex). The Napoleonic Code, however, differed from Justinian's in important ways: it incorporated all kinds of earlier rules, not only legislation; it was not a collection of edited extracts, but a comprehensive rewrite; its structure was much more rational; it had no religious content, and it was written in the vernacular. The development of the Napoleonic Code was a fundamental change in the nature of the civil law system, making laws clearer and more accessible. It also superseded the former conflict between royal legislative power and, particularly in the final years before the Revolution, protests by judges representing views and privileges of the social classes to which they belonged. Such conflict led the Revolutionaries to take a negative view of judges making law. This is reflected in the Napoleonic Code provision prohibiting judges from deciding a case by way of introducing a general rule (Article 5), since the creation of general rules is an exercise of legislative and not of judicial power. In theory, there is thus no case law in France. However, the courts still had to fill in the gaps in the laws and regulations and, indeed, were prohibited from refusing to do so (Article 4). Moreover, both the code and legislation have required judicial interpretation. Thus a vast body of case law has come into existence. There is no rule of stare decisis
This kind of quotation, for commentary, criticism, or reference, is generally allowed without obtaining permission. In the US, this falls under fair use (see 17 USC 107. In the UK and most commonwealth countries, it falls under fair dealing. In other countries there are various exceptions to copyright that will probably cover this. Even answers that do not directly quote the rule books often use information from those rulebooks to write an answer. Facts and ideas are never protected by copyright, so this is not going to be an issue. See 17 USC 102(b), which provides: (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. As a comment by user Trish reminds, game rules are facts and are not protected, although their exact wording may be.
In Bacon's time, common law countries had a greater proportion of legal rules articulated in case law precedents, and a small proportion of legal rules articulated in statutes passed by the legislature than it does today. Further, meaningful access to case law resources for litigants was much more difficult in Bacon's time than it is today. There were fewer secondary sources, few of those were comprehensive and organized at the top level by subject matter, you couldn't do word searches or key note searches, and even primary sources, consisting of statute books and case reporters, were limited in number, expensive, and hard to use. The private sector working together with civil society institutions would subsequently produce in American law, the digests and the &quot;restatements&quot; of the common law rules that Bacon sought (neither of which are themselves binding precedent). Characterizing the distinction as between a &quot;rule based&quot; system and a &quot;formless&quot; one is in my opinion not a description that furthers understanding. In many respects, the common law of Bacon's era has more black and white &quot;rules of law&quot; that could be applied umpire-like by judges arising out of an already substantial collection of case law precedents, than civil law countries whose statutory laws often stated &quot;standards&quot; that set for vague general principles without little guidance regarding how they are applied in particular circumstances (as opposed to more specific and unambiguous &quot;rules&quot;). Precedents provided clear guidance in common law systems in a lot of specific fact patterns (e.g. the working of the &quot;mailbox rule&quot; for contact formation), but civil codes lacked the same level of nitty gritty detail. In Europe, in contrast, lawyers had whatever late Roman Empire legal digests had considered, in summary form, but there was no elaboration or development of this in fact patterns present at the time the court was making decisions but not in Roman times. The Napoleonic Code and other major civil codes of Continental Europe hadn't been drafted at the time that Bacon lived. But what it did have what a subject-matter organized digest of the holdings of legal cases decided in the Roman Empire during Emperor Justinian's reign which were functionally treated as binding statutory authorities by the Latin speaking educated elite starting in the Renaissance and &quot;early modern&quot; period in European history which is known in legal circles as the process of the &quot;reception&quot; of Roman law after it had been dormant for centuries, a process that Britain did not participate in itself. The issue was not that the common law system of Bacon's time lacked legal rules, or that it was formless in the sense that there was not a clear, albeit, somewhat latent structure to those rules, although few people had access to the whole of the relevant authorities. Instead, what was missing in Bacon's time was a compact, comprehensive, statute-like, widely available authoritative statement of private law (the law governing the interaction of non-governmental parties) and criminal law, that could fit easily in a hefty volume or three (written in Latin) on a library bookshelf. This meant, in practice, in common law systems, that it was much harder to deal with legal questions (both transactional and litigation issues) without the assistance of a highly trained specialist lawyer who had spent years learning the system, while in civil law countries, an educated individual who was literate in Latin without other formal legal training had much more of a fighting chance of figuring out what the law required and said, reducing (but not eliminating by any means) the benefits associated with having highly trained legal counsel.
This was attributed to Dumblaws.com, which is now mercifully nonexistent. It is false, as is the supposed law against fishing for whales on Sunday (seriously? Whales in Ohio?). If someone makes such a claim and gives a specific citation like &quot;ORC 1533.02&quot;, you can look that law up. Otherwise, you can go to the state's repository of laws, which is searchable (not all states are as enlightened). No laws mention &quot;whale&quot; or &quot;housefly&quot;, and only 23 address &quot;fly&quot;, only referring to insects in a couple of cases where e.g. bakery showcases must keep out dust and flies. You might take on this collection, hosted by a law firm. I haven't bothered to check if &quot;It is illegal to drive a camel on the highway&quot; in Nevada – that a least verifiably refers to a law that did exist.
It is purely ceremonial. The tendency in modern jurisprudence is towards the practical and away from legalisms and technicalities. Even if a judge used a gavel in some way inappropriately, it would be unlikely to have any legal significance for anyone but the judge. An argument based on gavel misuse would fall into the &quot;fringe-on-the-flag&quot; category of legal arguments (yes, there are people who think that the court's powers are determined entirely by the fringe on the courhouse flag). The gavel is a traditional trapping of a common law courtroom, but has no legal significance.