The Common Law

Beverley McLachlin was the first woman to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Joining the Court while it was establishing its approach to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, McLachlin aided the court in weathering the public backlash against controversial decisions during her tenure. Controversies in the Common Law explores Chief Justice McLachlin’s approach to legal reasoning, examines her remarkable contributions in controversial areas of the common law, and highlights the role of judicial philosophy in shaping the law. Chapters in this book span thirty years, and deal with a variety of topics – including tort, unjust enrichment, administrative and criminal law. The contributors show that McLachlin had a philosophical streak that drove her to ensure unity and consistency in the common law, and to prefer incremental change over revolution. Celebrating the career of an influential jurist, Controversies in the Common Law demonstrates how the common law approach taken by Chief Justice McLachlin has been successful in managing criticism and ensuring the legitimacy of the Court.

'The Common Law' is a book that was written by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., 21 years before Holmes became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The book is about common law in the United States, including torts, property, contracts, and crime. It is written as a series of lectures. One of the most famous aphorisms to be drawn from this book occurs on the first page: "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience."

For centuries, courts across the common law world have developed systems of law by building bodies of judicial decisions. In deciding individual cases, common law courts settle litigation and move the law in new directions. By virtue of their place at the top of the judicial hierarchy, courts at the apex of common law systems are unique in that their decisions and, in particular, the language used in those decisions, resonate through the legal system. Although both the common law and apex courts have been studied extensively, scholars have paid less attention to the relationship between the two. By analyzing apex courts and the common law from multiple angles, this book offers an entry point for scholars in disciplines related to law - such as political science, history, and sociology - who are seeking a deeper understanding and new insights as to how the common law applies to and is relevant within their own disciplines.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of the differences between common law and civil law systems from various theoretical perspectives. Written by a global network of experts, it explores the topic against the background of a variety of legal traditions.Common law and civil law are typically presented as antagonistic players on a field claimed by diverse legal systems: the former being based on precedent set by judges in deciding cases before them; the latter being founded on a set of rules intended to govern the decisions of those applying them. Perceived in this manner, common law and civil law differ in terms of the (main) source(s) of law; who is to create them; who is (merely) to draw from them; and whether the law itself is pure each step of the way, or whether the law’s purity may be tarnished when confronted with a set of contingent facts. These differences have deep roots in (legal) history – roots that allow us to trace them back to distinct traditions. Nevertheless, it is questionable whether the divide thus depicted is as great as it may seem: international and supranational legal systems unconcerned by national peculiarities appear to level the playing field. A normative understanding of constitutions seems to grant ever-greater authority to High Court decisions based on thinly worded maxims in countries that adhere to the civil law tradition. The challenges contemporary regulation faces call for ever-more detailed statutes governing the decisions of judges in the common law tradition. These and similar observations demand a structural reassessment of the role of judges, the power of precedent, the limits of legislation and other features often thought to be so different in common and civil law systems. The book addresses this reassessment.

It adopts an approach which explains the historical development of the common law institutions and procedures whilst also setting them in perspective through a comparative outlook. Aspects of the common law are contrasted on occasions with structural o

Explains why lawyers seeking gender progress from primary legal materials should start with the common law.