This approach to the subject is based on geography, where legal families are established on a territorial basis, but other elements such as language or religion can also be taken into account. Of particular note are the most recent treatments of the subject and especially those that include non-European legal systems as an independent subject of research. An example of such an approach is the discussion on the delimitation and characterization of a Far Eastern (East Asian) legal system. Here there is only room for an example of the latest trends and discussions, paying particular attention to the “non-Western” indigenous view of the doctrine of legal systems. Similar discussions can be found in the context of the debate on the possibility of establishing an African legal system. This article is not a treatise on the family laws of the world (which would require at least one volume), but a general overview of the general legal problems associated with the family. This division into different legal systems is not a fixed constant, but is best understood as a flexible taxonomy in which different criteria exert a dominant influence at different times. It is even possible for legal systems to “switch” from one legal system to another. The division into different legal systems is also subject to the principle of “temporal relativity”.18 While the initial development of this classification was influenced by the systematic thinking that prevailed at the time, the results of these period-specific considerations no longer reflect changes in the understanding of this issue.
In this sense, the claim that there are “rights of civilized peoples” has an apologetic character: in addition to the immediately obvious geographical context, a legal system in the Far East or Southeast Asia, composed mainly of Japan and China, but also of Korea, was considered extrajudicially constituted because of its origins in the common Confucian tradition. However, this consideration has recently been considerably reduced. Despite their geographical proximity, the different legal systems are all rooted in very different political systems—a long-standing communist regime in China and a monarchical Japan that succumbed to various Western influences in the early twentieth century—and, as such, are increasingly distinguished by comparative jurists. There is also intense debate as to whether it is possible to situate the diversity of legal systems in sub-Saharan Africa, which have been the subject of comparative law, sociology of law and legal anthropology for some time, in a single “African” legal system.29 This controversy is fuelled by the existence of considerable divergences between the different nations that are part of this supposed family with regard to concerns Aboriginal rights, the influence of religion and relations between the two countries. to the former colonial legal systems. Thus, legal families that had been the subject of intensive research, but from a colonial point of view, were now also included in this more comprehensive approach to legal history. Thus, the consideration of the Latin American legal sphere, which has long served only as an example of the extra-European influence of Romanesque law, now pursues the question of the influence of the colonial periphery on Europe in a reversal of perspective. Examining the relationship between colonial law and the legal system of the metropolis, missionary law and the legal effects of the colonial experience in Europe have not only led to new perspectives, but also to the generation of new perspectives on these legal families, are particularly interesting and no less beneficial.
Examples of this change in interest were the new treatment of legal documents in the Spanish and Portuguese colonial archives or the papal archives on Latin America. The attribution of moral and ethical qualities to certain positions in legal policy debates that went beyond the level of pragmatic positivism often led to an (unconscious) demarcation of distant non-Western legal systems. For example, attitudes towards the death penalty within a society or legal system have often been seen as a measure of the degree of social or political development.