Administrative divisions:
195 countries, 72 dependent areas and other entities
Legal system:
the legal systems of nearly all countries are generally modeled upon elements of five main types: civil law (including French law, the Napoleonic Code, Roman law, Roman-Dutch law, and Spanish law); common law (including English and US law); customary law; mixed or pluralistic law; and religious law (including Islamic law); an additional type of legal system - international law - governs the conduct of independent nations in their relationships with one another
International law organization participation:
all members of the UN are parties to the statute that established the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or World Court; 61 countries have accepted jurisdiction of the ICJ as compulsory with reservations and 11 countries have accepted ICJ jurisdiction as compulsory without reservations; states parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICCt) are those countries that have ratified or acceded to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the Court; a total of 123 (effective 2 January 2015) countries have accepted jurisdiction of the ICCt (see Appendix B for a clarification on the differing mandates of the ICJ and ICCt)
Flag description:
note: the flags of 13 nations: Austria, Botswana, Jamaica, Japan, Laos, Latvia, Macedonia, Micronesia, Nigeria, Switzerland, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Kingdom have no top or bottom and may be flown with either long edge on top without any notice being taken