Global Legal Systems, Legal Families and their Classification

Abstract

The founders of the comparative system approach to the study of law (among the first wereAmerican R. Schlesinger, French R. David and M. Ancel, later Germans H. Kotz and K. Zweigert, ItalianR. Sacco, Canadian P. Glenn, etc.) at the turn of the 1960–1970s have made a breakthrough in legalscience. They have completed building the ground of a new direction of comparative legal research,identified and analyzed various legal commonalities of the past and present referring to them as familiesor systems (Anglo-Saxon, Romano-German, Socialist, Muslim, etc.). Many Russian authors still followthis terminology. The terms “legal system” and “legal family” are often used as similar, the concepts ofsystem and family are not given as a rule. The Anglo-Saxon legal family and totalitarian socialist legalsystem belong to the same classification unit. The article suggests a new approach and a synthesis oflegal systems. The author uses the methods of historical, logical, deductive, inductive and comparativestudy, formational-civilizational approach and, on this basis, identifies three major legal systems inthe contemporary world: Muslim (1.7 billion people), liberal semi-social capitalist system (applies tomore than 4.5 billion people, including many developing countries) and the totalitarian socialist system(1.5 billion people). When selecting legal families, the traditional approach of comparative law is used,but considering the social and cultural legal features. On this basis, within each of the global systemslegal families differ. In the system of Muslim law, there is fundamentalist Muslim law (radikalist) andmodern (advanced) legal family. There are classifications differ in Sunni and Shiite legal families,liberal semi-social capitalist system includes Anglo-Saxon family, Romano-German and other families(modern researchers call in particular Latin-American, Scandinavian families, etc.), in the totalitariansocialist system, there is orthodox and partially modernized families.