law
- This is a preview of the essay.
To view the full text you must login!
English law stems from four main sources varying a great deal in terms of importance. The case law is the basic of our law, a bulk of judge-made decisions, which lays down rules to be, followed in future court cases. It is a main form of law for many centuries and it is still very important today. However, Statute or Act of Parliament is the most important form of law in the sense that it prevails over most of the others, which today is the source of most major changes in the law. As well as being a source of law in their own right, statutes contribute to case law, since the courts sometimes have to construe statutory provision, and such decisions lay down detailed rules made to implement the broader provisions of statutes.
Because different areas of England were governed by different systems of law, and the Royal Court want to uniform the system of law, so about 1250, a common law had been produced, this common law ruled the whole country, would be applied consistently and could be used to predict what the courts might decide in particular case. Our common law was originally from the judicial precedent of the old courts law and it contained many of what are now basic points of English law.
The principles behind this common law are still used today in creating case law (which is in fact often known as common law). From the basic idea of stare decisis, a hierarchy of precedent grew up, in line with the hierarchy of the modern court system, so that, in general, a judge must follow decisions made in courts which are higher up the hierarchy than his or her own. This process was made easier by the establishment of a regular system of publication of reports of cases in the higher courts...