Civil law is perhaps one of the most important and comprehensive branches of law since it is the one that groups all the rules, regulations and laws that exist around the relationships and ties that citizens and civil figures can contract through throughout your life as part of a society.
It is essential for the ordering and organization of a community since it establishes numerous regulations related to, for example, family ties, marriage, work, etc., its limits and its prerogatives.
It could be understood in other words as the type of regulations and norms that are interested in the person as a social being that is part of a more complex group of people and with whom they establish different types of links.
Due to the complexity of many of these social ties, the main objective of civil law is to establish an order that makes these ties as logical, organized and sensible as possible in order to control society and legislate in cases of need. .
The origin of civil law is found in the Roman civilization of antiquity, since it was the Romans who coined the concept of ius civile, a legal regulation that exclusively referred to the citizens of Rome and that was in opposition to the ius naturale , which referred to Roman citizens but also foreigners. The ius civile initially comprised both the rules of Public Law and the rules of Private Law. Subsequently, the ius civile was dismembered in other legal branches and civil law was confined exclusively to the private sphere of social relations.
This branch of law deals with the relations between individuals and, at the same time, with their relations with the state.
Regarding its content, the jurists affirm that it has a residual content, in the sense that it includes everything that is not specifically regulated by a special order, which means that everything that is not included in another branch of law, is found within the framework of civil law.
Civil law also deals, for example, with the responsibilities, freedoms and powers of the parents of a family, the rights of people who marry, the rights of the child or of people considered incapable of fending for themselves, etc. . Another possible axis that civil law deals with is everything concerning inheritance and the transfer of assets, data necessary to establish an organization regarding the possessions or legacies of people who have died.
With regard to its manifestations, there are four different areas:
1) personality, which refers to the individual as a subject of law,
2) the family, which refers to the responsibility of individuals within the family (for example, matters regarding parental authority, guardianship or the economic regime of marriage),
3) heritage, which refers to movable and immovable property, economic relations between individuals or intellectual rights and
4) inheritance, which includes issues related to the will in its various forms or the legitimate succession of the heirs.
At the same time, civil law allows man to organize himself in the sphere of society by carrying out lucrative and non-profit activities and creating different types of societies.
Civil law seeks to protect the human will within the framework of legality
A legal act is understood as the study of the human will oriented towards what is lawful. In other words, for the human will to be legally recognized, a set of laws is necessary to protect it, otherwise said will remains within men.