What are the main features of common law and statute law?

krollohare2

The common law comes from decisions of higher courts on issues which are not governed by any statutory or codified law.

The basis of the common law is a maxim shared by the law and equity courts of pre-Revolutionary War England.

The maxim is: "For every wrong there must be a remedy".

Therefore, the very first common law claims were trespass de son tort, trespass quare clausem fregit, trespass ab initio, accounting of profits, and so forth.

The problem was there arose a dichotomy in the common law. The magistrates that held regular court usually only awarded money damages. But some things were not monetary in nature such as divorce when it arose, the issue of orders preventing people from doing things or commanding them to do things (injunctions), and dealing with frauds of all kinds.

The King often turned to the Catholic Church (prior to the reformation), which through the acts of conscience did what is called "equity". In this manner, the penalty for failing to follow the ecclesiastic court's orders meant ex-communication and possibly worse.

Eventually, the King developed a special office called the Court of Chancery, where the Court would do equity and set aside fraud or compel others to do acts to do equity.

This process of having a law side and an equity side continued until modern times, first in England and then the United States in the 20th Century where courts became courts of general jurisdiction.

Today there are a number of common law claims which may be a mix of law and equity.

The whole point is that where there was no specific law, equity would base its rulings on what was right, to avoid people back-dooring the intent of the law. This necessarily meant devising specific claims to be made in courts to obtain civil relief.

On the flip side, courts have developed remedies in criminal proceedings such as confessions obtained through torture, fraud, or violations of the 4th Amendment and so forth. This was done to punish the police and hamstring prosecutions where the police or prosecution acted improperly or overreached.

Courts are limited though by other principles and constitutions so that certain kinds of relief may not be awarded even though it might seem "fair".

The advent of booking more statutes and codes did not change the common law, but many statutes tried to adopt or abrogate certain common law principles or modify them.

Rebel Yell

Much of statutory law is derived from common law. Common laws are historically accepted norms--many dating back to English common laws long before America came to be.

Statutes are synonymous to laws.

flika

Common law is law created and refined by judges: a decision in a currently pending legal case depends on decisions in previous cases and affects the law to be applied in future cases.

When there is no authoritative statement of the law, judges have the authority and the duty to make law by creating, "precedence." The body of precedence is called, "Common Law," and it binds future decisions. Common law systems are in widespread use, particularly in those nations which trace their legal heritage to England, including the US.

Statute or statutory law, is a body of written laws passed by legislature on a state or federal level. A statute begins as a bill proposed or sponsored by a legislator. If a bill survives the legislative process it becomes law.

Once a law, the various provisions of the bill are called statutes. State and federal statutes are compiled in, "statutory codes," that group the statutes by subject matter.

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