Mauritius has a hybrid legal system. The basic material content of part of Mauritian law derives from the French codes: the Civil Code, the Commercial Code and the Penal Code. The law of procedure and evidence is derived from English law, but the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure are still in force. The Mauritian legal system is a reflection of the history of Mauritius over time. Mauritius has a hybrid legal system which is the direct result of its two successive colonizations by France and Great Britain respectively. Our legal system has been shaped and continues to be guided by the laws inherited from the two colonial powers. The French Napoleonic Code and the Commercial Code still largely govern many aspects of our civil, contractual, patrimonial and commercial rights; The Code of Civil Procedure still regulates, to some extent, procedural matters relating to the enforcement of these rights, and our criminal law is largely inspired by the French Penal Code. Post-independence laws and modern economic laws such as company law, banking laws and financial services laws are Anglo-Saxon in inspiration and, in addition, many laws have been enacted taking into account the evolution of laws in England and France and the interpretation of these laws by the English and French courts. The end result is the unique hybrid legal system, where, simply put, our substantive law is generally based on French and our procedural law is based on English.
The Mauritian judicial system is largely based on the British system of adversarial litigation. It consists of the Supreme Court, the Intermediate Court and the District Courts, all of which have jurisdiction in civil and criminal matters, as well as the Labour Court. The Supreme Court has unlimited jurisdiction to hear and decide on civil or criminal proceedings. With the emergence of Mauritian law as a unique hybrid, a jury of judges and academics concluded that Mauritian law and its legal history deserve to be examined for themselves. Later, there was the Faculty of Law of the University of Mauritius and the Council for Legal Education, which was established for academic and professional training. Two documents worth reading would be: This chapter begins with an overview of the extent to which the number of documents published since the beginning of the 19th century has occurred since the beginning of the 19th century. Mauritius is a municipality in the Municipality of Mauritius in the United Kingdom. It then describes a number of difficulties encountered and encountered in the application of these provisions and the rules of competence to define and assess environmental damage. Finally, the chapter focuses on the emergence of a specific legal regime of liability and compensation, which includes a posteriori comprehensive elements for the assessment of environmental damage and contains elements for a definition of this regime, although this regime has only limited applicability.
The banking sector is essential to the financial services sector and operates in a business-friendly environment. Mauritius has a hybrid legal system and its banking regime imports common law and civil law concepts. Some of the common law laws such as the Banking Act, the Bank of Mauritius Act, the Borrowers Protection Act 2007 and the Financial Intelligence and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2002 (FIAMLA). Concepts inspired by civil law refer to both the general contractual regime of debt and the assumption of guarantees, whether movable or immovable property. Personal guarantees are also inspired by civil law, and while the concept of fixed and variable fees is borrowed from English law, it is codified in the relevant provisions of the Mauritian Civil Code. The judiciary plays a leading role in the emergence of Mauritian law, as judges are fully aware of its mixed legal heritage and the need to preserve it. On the other hand, the judges of the Supreme Court of Mauritius will not hesitate to find solutions and jurisprudence more compatible with the Mauritian context. The Mauritian legal system is considered to be a mixed or more often hybrid legal system. The two former colonial powers, France and Great Britain, have both marked the Mauritian legal system. The coexistence of French and British law has been harmoniously merged into an independent system, which is now recognized as “Mauritian Law”. Mauritius had originally inherited its laws from its two successive colonial administrators, France and Great Britain. However, the Mauritian legal system is neither civil nor customary, although it has the characteristics of both.
Through a kind of osmosis, the system has mixed elements of its inherited traditions and, in their fusion, has developed its own corpus of Mauritian law. This article examines the historical developments during the colonial period that led to the emergence of the Mauritian legal system as a mixed or hybrid legal system: how mixing came about, why it did it. Mauritius is a good example of a mixed legal system in which civil and customary law complement each other. The legal system has evolved over the years to become a unique system of Mauritian law through the enactment of laws adapted to the socio-economic environment of Mauritius, while retaining its roots in civil and customary legal traditions. Which jurisdictions are used in your jurisdiction and what are they used for (e.g. English law for project development, New York law for high-yield issues) Commentators who want to use a word to describe Mauritius` legal system usually call it hybrid. Because before our island was taken over by the British in 1810 and given the name of Mauritius that the Dutch had given it earlier, Mauritius was a French colony called “Isle de France” for nearly a century. During this period, certain laws had been promulgated, and in the act of surrender signed by the commander of the French armed forces, he generously agreed to insert an article 8 which read as follows: “The inhabitants of Isle de France may preserve their laws, customs and religion.” Most of these laws dealt with criminal law and procedure, which is why, in the early nineteenth century, only the Civil Code, the Commercial Code, and the Code of Civil Procedure were extended to the French colony when the five Napoleonic codes were published in France. Most of the laws enacted in Mauritius between 1810 and 1840 were listed in two columns, one in French and one in English, the most notable being the Penal Code Decree of 1838, which is now our penal code. The British occupiers argued that the word “loix” in the act of surrender referred to substantive law, so that they felt free to legislate on the English model of their colony in civil and criminal proceedings, including the law of evidence, with the exception of the provisions of the Civil Code on the limitation of oral testimony (art.
1341 et seq.) were retained.
