A History of English Common Law

A History of English Common Law

The origin of English Common in the 12th century was sparked by the death of King Henry I in 1135. The nephew of Henry I was Stephen, and he was acknowledged to be the rightful king, but the magnates and such had sworn loyalty to Henry’s daughter, Matilda. The entire reign of Stephen, which lasted from 1135 to 1154, was spent fighting with Matilda and her French husband. Upon Stephen’s death the son of Matilda, Henry II, became king in 1154. It was from here on that the King started to take noticeable interest in the dealings of the court system, and put in to place a royal system instead of allowing the lords to deal with all matters in feudal courts.1 According to F. W. Maitland,

…The reign of Henry II is of supreme importance in the history of our law, and its importance is due to the action of the central power, to reforms ordained by the king. …He was forever busy with new devices for enforcing the law.

The term “common” is used because the laws established are just that, common to every jurisdiction and administered through a central court.2 When Innocent III ruled, the term was used in the church as well as in the royal courts to distinguish ordinary law from the law applicable to particular provincial churches.3 The term “common” also stems from the fact that the law was “characterized by processes of categorization and routinization, in particular the routine royal treatment of a wide range of cases.”4

Arthur Hogue sums up the common law by using two opposite views. What the common law is not, and what it is. He says

The common law is not a written code. …the principles of common law have always eluded complete embodiment in any code or collection of writings. Judicial decision recorded on the plea rolls of the common-law courts, declaratory statures, and learned treatises on the common law may all express the principles of the common law, but these writings never comprise its totality.5

Another rule that does not apply to the common law is that the common law does not apply to a single group, for example the church. Therefore it is unlike the canon law. Third, the common law is not local custom for everyone, and it is not identified along with the rules of any of the local courts. Specialized rules are not part of common law. Rogue goes on to explain what the common law is by using five simple explanati...

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...f Stare Decisis is still intact however, and every case is not considered solely on the rules in the books.30 Judge Baron Parke stated the modern theory of case law:

Our Common Law system consists in the applying to new combinations of circumstances those rules of law which we derive from legal principles and judicial precedents; and for the sake of attaining uniformity, consistency, and certainty, we mush apply those rules, where they are not plainly unreasonable and inconvenient, to all cases which arise; and we are not at liberty to reject them, and to abandon all analogy to them, in those to which they have not yet been judicially applied, because we think that the rules are not as convenient and reasonable as we ourselves could have devised. It appears to me to be of great importance to keep this principle of decision steadily in view, not merely for the determination of the particular case, but for the interests of law as a science.31

In conclusion, the common law of England went through many barriers to officially be

the legal system, and as it developed it worked out its own kinks, only to be threatened by war and economic troubles, and finally by the monarch himself.