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I am trying to develop an artificial legal reasoning system. I am using the English language for it, but I want/need to develop it (firsthand) for the civil/continental law system, not for the common law / Anglo-Saxon law system. But currently it seems impossible to do this, because I don't know any English-speaking jurisdiction that uses a civil law system. Is there any such jurisdiction/country? Maybe a very small one, but still with its corpus of law and with some amount of case law (court decisions)?

Community
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TomR
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5 Answers5

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Because of its French roots, Louisiana uses civil law.

bdb484
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Malta has two official languages, one of which is English (the other is of course Maltese), and its legal system is based on a mixture of common law and civil law. I don’t know in which language its legal decisions are published, though.

Mike Scott
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Generally yes - I need only English text e.g. for the French or Germany law.

A list of (semi-offcial) German Federal Law translations can be found here:

Translations of these materials into languages other than German are intended solely as a convenience to the non-German-reading public. Any discrepancies or differences that may arise in translations of the official German versions of these materials are not binding and have no legal effect for compliance or enforcement purposes.

But I need not just the texts of the laws/acts (which are more or less available), but also - the case law (extended court decisions and, maybe, also court proceedings) (which are unavailable except for just some important decisions in the more general area of constitutional matters and not of the tax and accounting law) and the commentaries and law science.

In my experience, Google Translate with Federal laws brings good results.

With State (Länder) law, the results often need a lot of corrections.

So for case or court proceedings, you should try Google Translate.

The results will probably vary depending on the writing style.

Sources:

Mark Johnson
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Similar to Louisiana, the Province of Quebec in Canada uses Civil Law, also due to its French roots.

wumpus D'00m
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South Africa also has an hybrid legal system.

Michael restore Monica Cellio
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