Common Law

Common Law

A Common law legal system is a system of law characterized by case law which is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals. Common law systems also include statutes enacted by legislative bodies, though those statutes typically either codify judicial decisions or fill in areas of the law not covered by case law. In contrast to common law systems, civil law (codified/continental law) systems are founded on a set of legal codes, which are organized laws that attempt to cover exhaustively the various legal domains, and are characterized by an absence of precedent in the judicial application of those codes. In the modern period, both systems tend to include administrative regulations which may also be codified.

A common law system is a legal system that gives great potential precedential weight to common law, on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different occasions. The body of precedent is called "common law" and it binds future decisions. In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, a common law court looks to past precedential decisions of relevant courts. If a similar dispute has been resolved in the past, the court is usually bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior decision (this principle is known as stare decisis). If, however, the court finds that the current dispute is fundamentally distinct from all previous cases (called a "matter of first impression"), judges have the authority and duty to make law by creating precedent. Thereafter, the new decision becomes precedent, and will bind future courts.