The most common use of the term is to refer to civil law legal systems.

Many states in the world have comprehensive legal systems called civil law jurisdictions, largely inspired by Roman law, the primary feature of which was that laws were written into a collection; codified, and not determined, as is common law, by judges. Germany and France sustained the bridge between Roman law and civil law (old French law book cover pictured). Civil law jurisdictions purport to provide all citizens with an accessible and written collection of the laws which apply to them and which judges must follow. The primary feature of civil law (since the 450 BC Twelve Tables) is that law has to be set in ink and published before it can apply to the people; to thus avoid the discretionary and insular justice imposed from time to time by judges in their written decisions (and which, in a common law jurisdiction, becomes law until it is changed by yet another decision or by statute). These documents - nothing more than a very large statute - are called civil codes. Most common law jurisdictions have taken to codifying much of their law in subject-specific statutes. A term first adopted in France with the adoption of the first modern law code derived from but distinct from Roman law and Justinian's 533 A.D. codification. Enacted in France in 1804, later known also as the Code Napoleon, to honor the French political leader who vigorously promoted the Code. It is also known by the French title which simply inverts the words to Code Civil. At the time it was published, the first Code Civil was clearly - and proudly by the French - distinguishable from the English common law system, the latter thought of as a disorganized, remote and elitist law, purporting to come from tribal customs yet the tribes themselves had long vanished, and thus abandoned to the whims of judicial interpretation; thus vulnerable to the irregular tugs of a strong social class system in England. Those jurisdictions that purport to prefer codification - the comprehensive publication of applicableprivate law - are called civil law jurisdictions, such as Quebec and Louisiana, most of Europe and all of South America. The primary document that they publish, as a core statute, is called theCivil Code, and if often accompanied by a more technical document related to procedure, a code of civil procedure (code de procedure civile).