Common Laws

An awareness of the various issues that can be raised by the ins and outs of the American legal system should be a closely held tool for guiding the behavior and life of all ordinary American citizens, even and especially those who are reliably law-abiding and have no desire or intention to break the law. An awareness of what the laws allows and does not allow, in fact, should be especially well-known to people who hold the adherence to these rules to be an essential aspect of life. One aspect of the legal system that is particularly important as a subject that deserves close study and comprehension by law-abiding citizens is that of the legal area referred to as common law. This concept applies to the practice of giving weight in the administering of law to the body of past precedents formed by decisions of courts and other tribunal bodies rather than legislature passed by statute or by decisions handed down by a chief executive. The principle upon which the use of common laws is based rests in the idea that the cases which may come before a court for judgment will differ in a wide variety of ways and can be better treated with the flexibility based on past experience from which a common law is derived rather than adherence to preconceived regulations.

As a concept, common laws are used in many areas of the world at least as one tool in the legal toolkit of a country’s system but can also be limited in their utility due to the inherent limitations of the common law concept. The implementation can be found with particular consistency in countries that have been heavily influenced in their governmental infrastructure by the historic policies of the British Empire. Such countries that have been at the least influenced by the ideas expressed by the use of common laws include many of the British Empire’s former colonies, which include nations established by British settlers, such as the United States and Australia, and cultures that were formerly subject to British rule, such as India, Ghana, and Hong Kong.

The historic basis of common law as a usable concept in legal system derives from the history of England during the Middle Ages, prior to its period of substantial international influence, when common laws arose from the existence of various regional law courts that derived their power from various sources of authority, whether religious, political or otherwise, and were to order for different kinds of populaces. The common laws used in different districts were then subsumed under the larger authority of the crown, but remained influences on the decisions made by the King and Parliament. In seeing how a common law may operate in the legal system which you are governed by, it may be useful to look at the origins of the common law concept throughout history, and, as a related matter, to understand the limits that may be attached to how freely common laws are allowed to function.