Article by Symeon C. Symeonides
Cyprus—a country with a recorded history that spans eight millennia, the last two of which are marked by long periods of foreign occupation—has a legal system whose diversity reflects that history. Because the United Kingdom was Cyprus's most recent foreign ruler, Cyprus has received and retained most of the essential elements of the English common law tradition, especially in the areas of procedure and methodology. However, Cyprus has also retained significant elements of Roman-Byzantine law and Ottoman land law, and, since winning its independence in 1960, has borrowed heavily from Greek and French administrative law, and public law in general. With accession to the European Union scheduled for May 2004, Cyprus has also harmonized its public and private law with that of the Union. Thus, in the course of the last four decades, the Cypriot legal system has gradually moved closer to the Continental civil law tradition, although it remains very much a “mixed” system not unlike many of the other systems discussed in this issue of the Review. This Article provides a brief historical background and a basic introduction to this system.
About the Author
Symeon C. Symeonides. Dean and Professor of Law, Willamette University College of Law; LL.B. (Private Law), LL.B. (Public Law), University of Thessaloniki (Greece); LL.M., S.J.D., Harvard Law School.
Citation
78 Tul. L. Rev. 441 (2003)