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Switzerland Legal System Essay

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Switzerland’s legal system is reliant on a civil law tradition and thus is dependent on written codes which is held as a primary source for statements of law with authority. Going back in history it is shown that civil law is composed of a group of legal ideas and systems stemmed from a collection of fundamental works in jurisprudence, cloaked by Napoleonic, Germanic, canonical, feudal and local practises including doctrinal strains such as natural law, codification and legal positivism. Swiss foreign policy has since 1815 been governed by the principle of neutrality, so they did not support or aid either side to a conflict and remained impartial during the first and second World War. England’s law on the other hand was made by judges sitting in courts thus known as common law so has become more like Switzerland as legislation has stated to overtake judicial law making. Their laws are seen to be dominated by statutory law, which generate general principles and sets aside functional and procedural rules. Unlike the United Kingdom judicial decisions are not rated as high. Switzerland is a federal union, meaning civil procedure and the make-up of the judiciary are governed by state law of 26 cantons, in unifying the various cantonal rules enshrines the rights to take part in decision making process’s on Federals state level, having equal share in the central legislator. Switzerland is also not a part of the European Union despite having strong ties into the EU. Its legal

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