Common Law Assignments

456 Words2 Pages
The English law that has developed in England from approximately 1066 to the present. Law is defined by Sir John Salmond as ‘the body of principles recognised and applied by the state in the administration of justice’. The body of English law includes legislation, Common Law, and a host of other legal norms established by Parliament, the Crown, and the judiciary. It is the fountain from which flowed nearly every facet of U.S. law during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The main sources of law in the United Kingdom consist of legislation, common law and European Union law. Legislations are those laws passes by Parliament, which include the Queen, the House of Lords and the House of Common. While the common law are laws made by decisions of judges in the court hearing. Due to Parliamentary Sovereignty, Parliament is known as the supreme law-maker in the United Kingdom. The courts on the other hand existed before Parliament is said under the Rule of Law and the separation of powers doctrine that it remains essential to the constitutional structure of the English legal system. European Union law are laws from outside the United Kingdom that gives effect to citizens governed under the English law. Before the development of the common law which only took place after the Norman Conquest back in 1066, England and Wales were governed by different system of law according to location. Customs are rules of behaviour that develop in a community without being deliberately invented. They can broadly be divided into general customs and local customs. General customs are said to be the basis of the Common Law. Local customs only operate in a particular area. The common law had been romantically and inaccurately described as the law of the common people of England. In fact, the common law emerged as the product of a particular struggle for political power.
Open Document