This global approach to the study of legal systems in various parts of the world is designed to enable students to recognize and analyze legal problems that might confront lawyers dealing with matters involving application of foreign law. The course focuses on the fundamental historical, institutional, and procedural differences between the common law and the civil law systems, with an emphasis on the code systems of continental Europe, and on their use as models for law reform in developing countries. References are also made to legal systems based on religious principles or socialist legal principles.