the religiously heterogeneous societies of America. Though the Canadian and American common law systems are deeply rooted in English common law tradition, they are also the result of a process less constrained than that which took place in England. Both Canadian and American law are more instrumentalist in their development than British law (Hall, et al, 1996).
In discussing the common law, Clarkson, Miller, Jentz, and Cross (2004) noted that there was a distinction between courts of law and courts of equity. Over time, most states in the United States adopted rules of procedures that resulted in combined courts of law and equity, but the most prevalent and unique feature of the common law is that it is judge-made law and the body of principles and doctrines that form the common law in England, Canada, and the United States emerged over time as judges decided actual legal controversies. This has created a body of legal precedents which serve as the building block used in the legal reasoning process in which judges decide what law applies to a given dispute and then apply that law or laws to the specific fact or circumstances of a case. As Clarkson, et al (2004, p. 11) put it, "through the use of legal reasoning, judges harmonize their decisions with those that have been made before, as the doctrine of stare decisis requires."
Civil law is a term with two distinct meanings. As used within the U.S. legal system, civil refers to non-criminal law such as the law of property, commercial law, administrative law, and the rules governing procedure in civil cases. However, the term also refers to a body of law distinct from common law (Hall, 1992). Civil law is essentially the legal tradition deriving from Roman law. It developed in Europe and spread throughout the world as a byproduct of the European expansion that took place from the fifteenth through the twentieth century. Among the countries whose legal tradition is base...