The classificatory criteria (David and Zweigert & Kötz's methods):
1. Historical origin and pedigree (the system's parentage — Roman-law descent, English common-law descent);
2. Sources and method (codification vs. precedent; statute's supremacy vs. its interpretive servitude);
3. Legal technique and style (Zweigert's "stylistic factors" concepts, institutions, sources' weighting — the code-and-commentary style vs. the case-and-argument style);
4. Ideology and worldview (the system's philosophy: individualist-liberal, socialist-collectivist, religious-dharmic, Confucian-harmonist);
5. Structure and institutions (court organization, the profession's form, the judiciary's role);
6. The classifications themselves:René David's families (Romanist, Germanic, Scandinavian, Anglo-American, Socialist, Religious — Hindu, Islamic, Jewish; the mixed systems' list); Zweigert & Kötz's (Romanist, Germanic, Nordic, Anglo-American, Far Eastern, Islamic, Hindu); the modern maps adding mixed jurisdictions (Palmer's school) and Chthonic/indigenouslaw (Glenn's Legal Traditions of the World — the tradition-based map: chthonic, talmudic, civil, islamic, common, hindu, confucian).