It was the Justinian Code, Corpus Juris Civilas that led to what we know today as Continental Law. Written in latin it was a stoccato that encompassed the entirety of Roman Law in such a manner that it could be applied by magistracies. It was derived from the Roman system where magistrates were executive positions and consequently came with the idea of imperium. The English system of common law derived somewhat, but not entirely, separately and led to a greater separation of powers and independent judiciary.

The Continental System requires well trained magistrates as well as lawyers. The Byzantine system had sufficient magistrates to make the system to work, but with the proliferation of the legal system into Europe it was not until law schools in the 1100s pumped out enough magistrates and lawyers that it sufficiently sustainable. Even today students at law school in France and Germany have to choose to specialize early on as either an attorney or magistrate. Cantor writes:

There was no jury in the Justinian-type court, no half dozen or dozen representatives of soceity to consider the facts of the case and decide on guilt or innocence. In modern times some continental countries added a jury to give a more democratic mien to the court system. But the jury deliberates with the magistrates and has none of the independence of a common-law type jury.

Continental Law systems are effective in civil and criminal cases; they were also good in ensuring social order; however they are overly reliant on well trained judges to operate efficiently and are susceptible to corruption as executive policy can quickly become judicial policy; for instance during the Napoleonic years.

Central to liberalism is that politics - the bartering of power in a public and social situation - is conducted through the mechanisms of debate, deliberation, consensus and the reaching of a point of least dissatisfaction between parties, faction and special interest groups such as minorities. Liberalism replaces violence through this process. Lintott compares the meeting of violence, cohesion and legislation in Athens to Rome:

Cohen [writing on Athens] argues that social cohesion was (and is) far more a product of the regulation and modification of conflicts between individuals and families through shared assumptions and understandings than the effects of rules imposed from above: the law at Athens merely provided new channels in which feuds, rivalries, and tensions played themselves out.

This is an important corrective to the traditional positive approach to law which tends to be held by lawyers but is itself no more than a half-truth.

The cohesion of Athenian democratic society was maintained to a great extent by Athenian social attitudes and political ideology, whereas there was a major division in Roman society even in the politically stable period of the middle republic.

Athenian and Roman constitutional practice grew in response to political crisis. Athens became a democracy at the hands of crisis, and increasingly democratic forms of Roman governance were also in response to constitutional failure - a good example being the plebians quieted with the creation of the constitutional position of Tribune.

Westminster has a muddly constitutional practice as well which only changes after each new crisis and in some cases does not learn at all from it. Australia has had numerous crisis with our form of Westminster including two over-throws of democratically elected executives, in the 30s and 70s, yet little in modification to solve those issues.

Canada is now having their own version of the same crisis where a weak Governor-General has allowed governance to hibernate - or prorogue - while the current minority government tries to shore up its control of the legislative. Something that will most likely end up in failure.

Westminster at the national, NSW and Qld level has most likely survived as the crisis was amongst political elites, and the majority was only affected as much as having to go to the ballot boxes to determine which elites get to win for the next three years.