SundanceKid wrote:Aren't judges too empowered since they are not bound to a written paragraph?
This is not true. At least in the United States (at both the state and federal level), the normal role of a judge in interpreting a law is to effectuate the intent of the legislature. Judicial interpretation of any given law is bound by both the text and purpose of the statute in question. Furthermore, judges are bound by the precedent set by higher courts. If a court ignores binding precedent, then it will be reversed on appeal.
SundanceKid wrote:Doesn't it make your legal system confusing with the hundreds of thousands of court decisions from hundreds of years ago, therefore outdated, unintelligible for the population?
Court decisions from before the 20th century have mostly been overruled or built upon by more recent precedents or statutes. Very old cases rarely come up in actual litigation unless they are particularly noteworthy for some reason - usually because they are the foundational case for some well-developed body of law.
Statutes and court decisions, regardless of which country they come from or how old they are, are unintelligible to most people. Civil law jurisdictions do not differ from common law jurisdictions in that regard.