Law, Culture and Civil Codification in a Mixed Legal System

Comparatists usually describe mixed legal systems as being built upon dual foundations of Romano-Germanic civil law and Anglo-American common law. This widely accepted description examines mixed systems from a formal internally legal perspective. My paper offers a new yardstick for investigating mixed systems by posing an external perspective for examining the complex interplay between law and culture in a mixed jurisdiction. The case study is the codification of private law in the mixed system of Israel. A civil code does not reflect the inner logic or history of the Israeli legal system, as this system has been mostly shaped along Anglo-Saxon lines which generally discourage the enactment of codes. But seen from a cultural perspective, a civil code is not alien to Israeli society because its perception as a symbol of legal independence and modernization is inherent in the European political culture that most Israelis are familiar with. The story of civil codification in Israel demonstrates that beyond the common-law-civil-law “mixedness” in Israeli law, the Israeli legal system is also mixed in a more profound sense: while the country's law is primarily (though not exclusively) influenced by the Anglo-Saxon tradition, its political culture is mainly inspired by ideas embedded in continental Europe which were imported to Israel by Jewish immigrants.