Roman-Dutch law

Roman-Dutch law (Dutch: Rooms-Hollands recht, Afrikaans: Romeins-Hollandse reg) is an uncodified, scholarship-driven, judge-made legal system based on Roman law as applied in the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries. As such, it is a variety of the European continental civil law or ius commune. While Roman-Dutch law was superseded by Napoleonic codal law in the Netherlands proper as early as the beginning of the 19th century, Roman-Dutch law is still applied by the courts of South Africa (and its neighbours Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe), Guyana, Indonesia, East Timor, and Sri Lanka. It was largely drawn upon by Scots law. It also had some negligible impact on New York state, especially in introducing the office of prosecutor (schout-fiscaal).