Lawyer Law Rule

posted by on May 22

The Canadian legal system in every province except for Quebec is based on the British common law system. The Quebec province retains a civil system for issues of private law, however both of these legal systems are subject to the Constitution of Canada. Inside the commonwealth system everything is divided into areas like criminal law or civil law. It this article we will examine the Civil Law area and the Common Law area in Canada.

Canada belongs to a group of common law countries, so Canadian law adheres to the doctrine of stare decisis. In this system all the lower courts are bound by the decisions of higher courts and must follow it. But this works only inside one province, lower courts from two different provinces are not bound by each others decisions. The decisions made by a province’s highest court like the Court of Appeal, nevertheless are considered as “persuasive” even though they are not binding on other provinces. There is also the Supreme Court of Canada that authority to bind all courts in the country with a single ruling.

In Canada Civil Law also includes a growing sphere called Administrative Law, which deals with things like federal and provincial administrative tribunals, including labour boards, human rights tribunals, and workers’ compensation appeal tribunals. These decisions still can be reviewed by superior courts like the Federal Court Trial Division or the Federal Court of Appeal. Also Civil Law contains the Municipal Law area that covers jurisdiction of the provincial legislatures (that naturally varies from province to province).

posted by on May 12

In the area of Private International Law, Comity is a courtesy, amity, and reciprocity by U.S. courts towards court decision issued in other nations.  Such a consideration by U.S. courts does not entail an obligation to agree with the rulings of foreign judgments. There is therefore a distinction between the doctrine of comity and law.

Public International Law can become part of the national law when the country has its signature on that law, Private international Law however, does not have the same level of recognition by U.S. Courts. The issue of comity is raised in Islamic divorce cases when a person who resides legally in the United States travels to a foreign country and obtain a certificate of divorce from a religious court.

Generally, a judgment of divorce for example issued in a foreign country is recognized in the U.S. on the basis of comity, provided both parties to the divorce received adequate notice, i.e. service of process and, generally, provided one of the parties has a domicile in the foreign nation at the time of divorce, and the foreign court has given opportunity to both parties to present their case, and the trial was conducted upon regular proceedings after due citation or voluntary appearance of the litigants, and under a system of jurisprudence likely to secure an impartial administration of justice between the citizens of its own country, and those of other countries, an no prejudice towards either party and should not violate a strong U.S. principle of law, and the parties were present in court.