The United States Declaration of Independence inspired many other similar documents in other countries, with its ideas gaining adherence in the Low Countries, as well as in the Caribbean, Spanish America, the Balkans, West Africa, and Central Europe in the decades up to 1848.
RELATIVE. One connected with another by blood or affinity; a relation, a kinsman or kinswoman. In an adjective sense, having relation or connexion with some other person or thing; as relative rights, relative powers. 1  Facebook. 2  Twitter.
The 2006 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Law: The part of the law that deals with such aspects of relationships between individuals that are of no direct concern to the state. It includes the law of property and trust, family law, the law of contract, mercantile law and the law of tort. Similarly, Jowitt's Dictionary of English Law suggests that the term civil law is synonymous with private law: Private or civil law deals with those relations between individuals with which the state is not directly concerned: as in the relations between husband and wife, parent and child, and the various kinds of property, contracts, torts, trusts, legacies, the right recognized by the rules of admiralty, etc.