Codification (law)

In law, codification is the process of collecting and restating the law of a jurisdiction in certain areas, usually by subject, forming a legal code, i.e. a codex (book) of law. Codification is the defining feature of civil law jurisdictions.

History

Ancient Sumer's Code of Ur-Nammu was compiled circa 2100-2050 BC, and is the earliest known surviving civil code. Three centuries later, the Babylonian king Hammurabi enacted the set of laws named after him.

Besides religious laws such as the Torah, important codifications were developed in the ancient Roman Empire, with the compilations of the Lex Duodecim Tabularum and much later the Corpus Iuris Civilis. These codified laws were the exceptions rather than the rule, however, as during much of ancient times Roman laws were left mostly uncodified.

The first permanent system of codified laws could be found in China, with the compilation of the Tang Code in AD 624. This formed the basis of the Chinese criminal code, which was then replaced by the Great Qing Legal Code, which was in turn abolished in 1912 following the Xinhai Revolution and the establishment of the Republic of China. The new laws of the Republic of China were inspired by the German codified work, the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch. A very influential example in Europe was the French Napoleonic code of 1804.

Law (disambiguation)

Law is a set of norms, which can be seen both in a sociological and in a philosophical sense.

Law, LAW, or laws may also refer to:

Media and entertainment

Anime and Manga

Games

Literature and publications

Canon law

Canon law is the body of laws and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority (Church leadership), for the government of a Christian organization or church and its members. It is the internal ecclesiastical law governing the Catholic Church (both Latin Church and Eastern Catholic Churches), the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, and the individual national churches within the Anglican Communion. The way that such church law is legislated, interpreted and at times adjudicated varies widely among these three bodies of churches. In all three traditions, a canon was originally a rule adopted by a church council; these canons formed the foundation of canon law.

Etymology

Greek kanon / Ancient Greek: κανών,Arabic Qanun / قانون, Hebrew kaneh / קנה, "straight"; a rule, code, standard, or measure; the root meaning in all these languages is "reed" (cf. the Romance-language ancestors of the English word "cane").

Canons of the Apostles

The Apostolic Canons or Ecclesiastical Canons of the Same Holy Apostles is a collection of ancient ecclesiastical decrees (eighty-five in the Eastern, fifty in the Western Church) concerning the government and discipline of the Early Christian Church, incorporated with the Apostolic Constitutions which are part of the Ante-Nicene Fathers In the fourth century the First Council of Nicaea (325) calls canons the disciplinary measures of the Church: the term canon, κανὠν, means in Greek, a rule. There is a very early distinction between the rules enacted by the Church and the legislative measures taken by the State called leges, Latin for laws.

Law (band) (disambiguation)

Law (band) may refer to:

Accounting Standards Codification

In US accounting practices, codification is the current single source of United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

FASB Accounting Standards Codification

The codification is effective for interim and annual periods ending after September 15, 2009. All existing accounting standards documents are superseded as described in FASB Statement No. 168, The FASB Accounting Standards Codification and the Hierarchy of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. All other accounting literature not included in the Codification is nonauthoritative.

The Codification reorganizes the thousands of U.S. GAAP pronouncements into roughly 90 accounting topics and displays all topics using a consistent structure. It also includes relevant U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), guidance that follows the same topical structure in separate sections in the Codification.

To prepare constituents for the change, the FASB has provided a number of tools and training resources.

Codification (linguistics)

In linguistics, codification is the process of standardizing and developing a norm for a language.

Codifying a language can vary from case to case and depends on the stage of standardization that already exists. It typically means to develop a writing system, set up official rules for grammar, orthography, pronunciation, syntax and vocabulary as well as publishing grammar books, dictionaries and similar guidelines. Several variants exist for a specific aspect, e.g. different ways of spelling a word, decisions on which variant is going to be the standard one have to be made.

In some countries such codification is done by a body constituted by the state, such as the Académie française. Codification often happens due to new inventions, changes in values or other cultural influences. After the process of decolonialization, many African states had to decide whether they wanted to keep the colonial language or chose one (or more) of their indigenous language varieties as official languages, which made language planning necessary.