Law of Belgium

Belgian law is a civil law system inspired by Roman law and shaped in large part by the French legal tradition, particularly the French Civil Code of 1804, whose Napoleonic codes were applied in Belgium from 1795 and remained in force unchanged when the country gained independence from the Netherlands in 1830. Belgium is a federal state with a constitutional monarchy and three official languages, French, Dutch and German, and its constitution, adopted in 1831, can be amended only with a two thirds vote in both houses of Parliament. Legislation is the primary source of law, with case law and academic writing playing a lesser role since Belgium has no formal doctrine of binding precedent. The Court of Cassation sits at the top of a judiciary organized into five judicial areas subdivided into twenty six districts and two hundred nine cantons, and Belgian law also incorporates European Union law and the European Convention on Human Rights, which the country ratified in 1955.