Comparison

Read two legal systems against each other

Because every portal follows the same fifteen-section outline, the comparison is genuinely like-for-like rather than a collage of whatever each government happens to publish.

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Comparison of selected legal systems
Attribute	Equatorial GuineaIndexed	HaitiReviewed
Legal family	Civil law (Spanish tradition)	Civil law
System of government	Unitary presidential republic	Unitary semi-presidential republic
Constitution	Fundamental Law of Equatorial Guinea	Constitution de la République d'Haïti
In force since	1991	1987
Capital	Malabo	Port-au-Prince
Official languages	Spanish, French, Portuguese	French, Haitian Creole
Currency	Central African CFA franc (XAF)	Haitian gourde (HTG)
Population	1,700,000	11,600,000
Division of powers	Presidential system with a Vice-President and Prime Minister, a bicameral Parliament of Chamber of Deputies and Senate, and a judiciary headed by the Supreme Court of Justice.	Unitary with constitutionally recognised decentralisation to 10 departments, arrondissements and communes, and to the communal section as the smallest territorial unit. In practice the elected local bodies are largely unfilled and replaced by appointed interim commissions.
How law is made	Bills pass the Chamber of Deputies and Senate and are promulgated by the President, who may return a text for reconsideration.	Under the 1987 Constitution bills pass both chambers and are promulgated by the President, who may return a text once for reconsideration. With Parliament not sitting, measures have been issued as executive decrees since 2020 — a practice widely criticised as lacking constitutional foundation, and a key reason to check the current status of any recent instrument before relying on it.
Legal profession	Abogados admitted through the Ilustre Colegio de Abogados; practice requires competence in both Spanish codes and French-language OHADA texts.	Advocates are admitted to one of the departmental bars (Ordre des avocats), most prominently the Port-au-Prince bar, after a law degree and a period of pupillage. Notaries hold a separate public office with exclusive competence over authentic acts including land transfers, which matters greatly given widespread informality in land title.

A comparison table flattens nuance by design. Where a difference matters to a decision you are making, open both portals and read the section in full — the constitutional detail behind a one-line summary is often the part that governs the outcome.