We have a grave difference in our understanding of socialism!
and a parliament is just an elected king- it mixes too much the executive and legislative powers. Further giving it judicial powers- which the civil law does- is foolish. (Of course the civil law does not mandate a parliament).
Slavery was outside of the law here, although there were some laws regulating their treatment- as there were for animals. A man who is free to own other men as slaves is a very free man, paradoxically.
"Kilograms... pounds"
It's not the unit of measure, but who does the measuring and what they measure.
The Napoleonic "finder of fact" is inferior to the two adversaries of the English system. I see from a quick search that advances in law seem to come from the "common law" systems, not the civil law ones. They do adopt those advances- but they don't make them.
As long as someone else is working to improve the law through common law systems the civil code can be kept useful by adopting the advances they make. But OTOH common law countries can clean up their precedential rulings through legislation- whatever other countries do (a relationship very like that of capitalism vs socialism) .
Obviously I'm no expert on civil law, and am fqmiliar with common law only in the American system. Perhaps one of the lawyers will wander by and give a more detailed debate.
This is one of the "paradoxes" of the common law.
Obviously I'm no expert on civil law
I am not either, but I know that in Poland it is not only "civil law"/civil codex, there is also ciminal/penal codex, codex of criminal proceedings, banking law, labor codex etc ...
For example criminal codex lists and defines all crimes and recommends penalty for each. It quite thin books and so lucid that average citizen can get familiar with few laws applying to his case in half hour!
You can view ALL Polish codices on this page:
http://prawo.interia.pl/kodeksy?aid=7717
Penal codex is in upper part, look up the drop down box "kodeks karny". Other laws are below. It is in Polish but you can get the idea of simple clarity of these laws by looking at their format.