Editing Precedent (section)

===Role of academics in civil law jurisdictions===

Law [[professor]]s in [[common law]] traditions play a much smaller role in developing case law than professors in [[civil law (legal system)|civil law]] traditions. Because court decisions in civil law traditions are brief and not amenable to establishing precedent, much of the exposition of the law in civil law traditions is done by academics rather than by judges; this is called [[doctrine]] and may be published in treatises or in journals such as ''[[Recueil Dalloz]]'' in France. Historically, common law courts relied little on legal scholarship; thus, at the turn of the twentieth century, it was very rare to see an academic writer quoted in a legal decision (except perhaps for the academic writings of prominent judges such as [[Edward Coke|Coke]] and [[William Blackstone|Blackstone]]). Today academic writers are often cited in legal argument and decisions as [[persuasive authority]]; often, they are cited when judges are attempting to implement reasoning that other courts have not yet adopted, or when the judge believes the academic's restatement of the law is more compelling than can be found in precedent. Thus common law systems are adopting one of the approaches long common in civil law jurisdictions.{{cn|date=May 2022}}