August 10, 2004

Great comparative law resource: the CIA Fact Book includes a page describing each country's legal system, sometimes tersely ("Latvia: based on civil law system") and sometimes with quirky or newsy details ("Chile is in the process of completely overhauling its criminal justice system; a new, US-style adversarial system is being gradually implemented throughout the country with the final stage of implementation in the Santiago metropolitan region expected in June 2005"; Lebanon follows an eclectic "mixture of Ottoman law, canon law, Napoleonic code, and civil law"; the Solomon Islands profess "English common law, which is widely disregarded").