Common Law

The Common Law is a predominant in many English-speaking countries legal system that is not on laws but on relevant court decisions of the past - so-called precedents - based ( case law) and is further developed by judicial interpretation ( judge-made law ). In this sense it is the opposite of the so-called Civil Law of the continental European countries, based on codified laws of the respective legislatures and in which the judge-made law plays a minor role.

Within the Anglo-American common law right is used on the one hand as opposed to statute law, that is, the Acts of Parliament, codified laws. Secondly, it refers within this second meaning the opposite of equity, that is, rules supplementing the common law to compensate for hardships that would cause this with consistent interpretation, in accordance with judicial discretion ( similar to the concept of fairness ).

Demarcation

The term common law has its origin comune in the French- coined term ley (Latin lex communis ). This was meant as opposed to the existing well into the Middle Ages, various rights of the individual Germanic tribes ( Angles, Saxons, Jutes, etc.), the English, based on unwritten customs, judicial decisions continuously formed by common law. The concept of Common Law is doing now defined in the literature in two ways: Under the prevalent today, broad concept of the common law is understood the entire English law, including the equity and of the statute law, in distinction to the concept of Civil Law featuring the continental European law. The other, close -understood concept of common law marks as antonym of equity, the common law, which ( itinerant justices or justices in eyre ) formed the royal court to Westminster was by traveling judges.

History of English law

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