Most of the major legal systems in the world are divided by scholars of compara­tive law into two great ‘families’ of legal systems.

One of these, the Common Law family, will be considered briefly below. It is derived ultimately from medieval English law. The other major family is the Civil Law family, which has its roots in Roman law.^{[290] [291] The process by which Roman law was received into medieval and later legal systems is called the Reception of Roman law (or just the Reception), and is the subject matter of this chapter.}

A.