GENERAL LAW OF THE SOCIETY – ALL SHOULD KNOW
General law means territorial law of a country. It consists of all persons, things, acts and events within the territory of a country which are governed by it. General law consists of those legal rules of which the courts take judicial notice. Common law, also known as case law, is a body of unwritten laws based on legal precedents established by the courts. Common law draws from institutionalized opinions and interpretations from judicial authorities and public juries. Common laws sometimes prove the inspiration for new legislation to be enacted
In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent or judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law derived from judicial decisions of courts and similar tribunals.[1][2][3][4][5][6] The defining characteristic of “common law” is that it arises as precedent. In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, a common law court looks to past precedential decisions of relevant courts, and synthesizes the principles of those past cases as applicable to the current facts. If a similar dispute has been resolved in the past, the court is usually bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior decision (a principle 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\”), and legislative statutes are either silent or ambiguous on the question, judges have the authority and duty to resolve the issue (one party or the other has to win, and on disagreements of law, judges make that decision).[7] The court states an opinion that gives reasons for the decision, and those reasons agglomerate with past decisions as precedent to bind future judges and litigants. Common law, as the body of law made by judges,[3][8] stands in contrast to and on equal footing with statutes which are adopted through the legislative process, and regulations which are promulgated by the executive branch (the interactions among these different sources of law are explained later in this article). Stare decisis, the principle that cases should be decided according to consistent principled rules so that similar facts will yield similar results, lies at the heart of all common law systems.[9]
The common law—so named because it was \”common\” to all the king\’s courts across England—originated in the practices of the courts of the English kings in the centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066.[10] The British Empire spread the English legal system to its colonies, many of which retain the common law system today. These \”common law systems\” are legal systems that give great weight to judicial precedent, and to the style of reasoning inherited from the English legal system.
The first definition of \”common law\” given in Black\’s Law Dictionary, 10th edition, 2014, is \”The body of law derived from judicial decisions, rather than from statutes or constitutions; [synonym] CASELAW, [contrast] STATUTORY LAW.\”[2] This usage is given as the first definition in modern legal dictionaries, is characterized as the “most common” usage among legal professionals, and is the usage frequently seen in decisions of courts.[1][4][5][20] In this connotation, \”common law\” distinguishes the authority that promulgated a law. For example, the law in most Anglo-American jurisdictions includes \”statutory law\” enacted by a legislature, \”regulatory law\” (in the U.S.) or “delegated legislation” (in the U.K.) promulgated by executive branch agencies pursuant to delegation of rule-making authority from the legislature, and common law or \”case law\”, i.e., decisions issued by courts (or quasi-judicial tribunals within agencies).[21] This first connotation can be further differentiated into(a) general common lawarising from the traditional and inherent authority of courts to define what the law is, even in the absence of an underlying statute or regulation. Examples include most criminal law and procedural law before the 20th century, and even today, most contract law[22] and the law of torts.[23][24](b) interstitial common lawcourt decisions that analyze, interpret and determine the fine boundaries and distinctions in law promulgated by other bodies. This body of common law, sometimes called \”interstitial common law\”, includes judicial interpretation of the Constitution, of legislative statutes, and of agency regulations, and the application of law to specific facts.[1]
Publication of decisions, and indexing, is essential to the development of common law, and thus governments and private publishers publish law reports.[25] While all decisions in common law jurisdictions are precedent (at varying levels and scope as discussed throughout the article on precedent), some become \”leading cases\” or \”landmark decisions\” that are cited especially often.
Common law legal systems as opposed to civil law legal systems [edit]
Black\’s Law Dictionary 10th Ed., definition 2, differentiates \”common law\” jurisdictions and legal systems from \”civil law\” or \”code\” jurisdictions.[11][12] Common law systems place great weight on court decisions, which are considered \”law\” with the same force of law as statutes—for nearly a millennium, common law courts have had the authority to make law where no legislative statute exists, and statutes mean what courts interpret them to mean.[26]
By contrast, in civil law jurisdictions (the legal tradition that prevails, or is combined with common law, in Europe and most non-Islamic, non-common law countries), courts lack authority to act if there is no statute. Civil law judges tend to give less weight to judicial precedent, which means that a civil law judge deciding a given case has more freedom to interpret the text of a statute independently (compared to a common law judge in the same circumstances), and therefore less predictably.[citation needed] For example, the Napoleonic code expressly forbade French judges to pronounce general principles of law.[27] The role of providing overarching principles, which in common law jurisdictions is provided in judicial opinions, in civil law jurisdictions is filled by giving greater weight to scholarly literature, as explained below.
Common law systems trace their history to England, while civil law systems trace their history through the Napoleonic Code back to the Corpus Juris Civilis of Roman law. BE HONOR AND RESPECT TO GENERAL LAW.