Foundations of Law

Foundations of Law

First Lecture: General Introduction to the Law

A country’s political economy refers to its political, economic and legal systems. These systems are independent and interact and influence each other. A country’s economic policy decides how that society finances itself: what it produces, how and from whom. 3 main types of economic system:

1. Planned: decisions and choices are made by the government – how natural resources in the country are to be used and what prices should be paid for them
2. Market: decisions and choices are left to market forces of supply and demand – the price is set by how much will be paid for the resources and how much of it is needed. If a particular resource is rare, the price will usually be high.
3. Mixed: mixture of the two types (the proportion makes the difference).

The Greek economic system is based on the market economy with certain state interventions (of different extent at different times). Ownership, freedom of contract and the right of inheritance are basically respected.  

Politics refers to how countries are managed: Dictatorship or democracy. The nature of the political system affects the way that laws are made and the way that economies are run.

Law is the body of rules that exists in a society, under which its members operate.

3 types of legal systems:

1. Common law (UK, US): Case law serves to a certain degree as a direct source of law. The basis of law is tradition, past practices, and legal precedents set by courts via interpretation of statutes, legislation, and past rulings. Judges have much power to interpret laws based on the circumstances of individual cases. Thus, common law is relatively flexible.
2. Civil law (France, Germany, Greece): is the law historically developed from Roman law, based on codes or written law. A key difference between civil law and common law is that common law is mainly judicial in origin and based on court decisions, whereas civil law is mainly legislative in origin and based on laws passed by legislatures.
3. Sharia Law (Iran): is law based in the religion of Islam. Judges in Sharia law are generally clerics, given the religious nature of the law. Islamic law spells out norms of behavior regarding politics, economics, banking, contracts, marriage, and many other social and business issues.

Separation of powers: constitutional principle. Different powers involved in the government of a state should be separate from one other. There are three powers: Legislature to make the law, executive to implement it, and a judiciary to interpret it in case of dispute. What varies is how the principles are applied.

The modern Greek state was founded after the Greek revolution of 1821. From 1833 to 1923 and again from 1935 to 1974 Greece was a kingdom. Between 1923 and 1935 and since the referendum of 8 December 1974 (held after the fall of the 1967-1974 dictatorship) it has been and is now a republic. The state is centralized and not federal. According to the Constitution currently in force (of 1975, as amended in 1986, 2001 and 2008) Greece is a “presidential parliamentary democraty”. The Constitution safeguards the value of man, individual freedoms and rights (personal liberty, the free development of the personality, right to information, freedom of expression, individual property, the right to judicial protection, etc.).