8 Concept and Origin of Legal System

A legal system is the totality of a jurisdiction's law in operation: its rules and principles, sources and hierarchy, institutions (courts, professions, administration), procedures, and the legal culture — the shared understandings that animate it. The origin of legal systems in general: custom's crystallization into law; the legislator's codifications; religion's law-making; the great receiving movements (Roman law's medieval reception; the common law's spread by empire; the civil code's export by Napoleon's armies and admiration). No legal system is pure — every one a sediment of borrowings on a native base.