Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: When did common law originate?
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 historical colonies, many of which retain the common law system today. These "common law systems" are legal systems that give great precedential weight to common law, and to the style of reasoning inherited from the English legal system.[11][12][13][14]
Common law originated from England and has been inherited by almost every country once tied to the British Empire (except Malta, Scotland, the U.S. state of Louisiana, and the Canadian province of Quebec). In medieval England, the Norman conquest the law varied-shire-to-shire, based on disparate tribal customs. The concept of a "common law" developed during the reign of Henry II during the late 12th century, when Henry appointed judges that had authority to create an institutionalized and unified system of law "common" to the country. The next major step in the evolution of the common law came when King John was forced by his barons to sign a document limiting his authority to pass laws. This "great charter" or "Magna Carta" of 1215 also required that the King's entourage of judges hold their courts and judgments at "a certain place" rather than dispensing autocratic justice in unpredictable places about the country. A concentrated and elite group of judges acquired a dominant role in law-making under this system, and compared to its European counterparts the English judiciary became highly centralized. In 1297, for instance, while the highest court in France had fifty-one judges, the English Court of Common Pleas had five. This powerful and tight-knit judiciary gave rise to a systematized process of developing common law.
To illustrate, if preference heterogeneity is limited, civil law is more technologically efficient being unbiased as common law but also certain. If preferences are sufficiently diverse instead, the distance between the biased civil law and the technologically efficient legal rule, which is the social optimal rule that will prevail in a perfectly homogenous society, becomes wider the higher preference heterogeneity is and the lower the quality of the political process is. Thus, civil law loses its technological primacy when preferences are sufficiently diverse and/or the political institutions are sufficiently inefficient (Guerriero, 2016b). Consistent with this prediction, a proxy for preference and, in particular, genetic diversity interacted with a measure of the degree to which the transplant legal system in 2000 was nearer to a perfect common law tradition has a positive and significant impact on the stock market development, the extent of private credit, and the employment level. The estimates also imply that reforms towards a pure common law tradition in developing transplants with smaller than average preference heterogeneity will significantly brake stock market development and the extent of private credit, whereas reforms towards a pure common law tradition in developing transplants with larger than average preference heterogeneity will significantly foster stock market development. Finally, the two legal traditions fare equally well when compared with self-reported managers’ beliefs on how much the legal system is able to hit its efficiency targets and their satisfaction with the law. This last patterns squares with the idea that legal traditions have a tendency towards optimality and so should not differ when compared through a proxy for social welfare. "This evidence delivers conclusions quite different from those drawn by the legal origins project and raises several concerns for the recent waves of reforms that, inspired by the legal origins literature, have introduced in developing countries institutions typical of a pure common law legal tradition (World Bank, 2004). This is particularly worrisome nowadays given the increasing demand for regulation created by the recent global economic crisis" [Guerriero 2016, p. 16].
Many states in the southwest that were originally Mexican territory have inherited several unique features from the civil law that governed when they were part of Mexico. These states include Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas. For example, these states all have a community property system for the property of married persons (Idaho, Washington, and Wisconsin have also adopted community property systems, but they did not inherit them from a previous civil law system that governed the state). Another example of civil law influence in these states can be seen in the California Civil Code, where the law of contracts is treated as part of the law of obligations (though the rules actually codified are clearly derived from the common law).
White examined the common law rule on this matter and its rationale. At common law, it was perfectly legitimate for law enforcement personnel to kill a fleeing felon. At the time when this rule was first created, most felonies were punishable by death, and the difference between felonies and misdemeanors was relatively large. In modern American law, neither of these circumstances existed. Furthermore, the common law rule developed at a time before modern firearms, and most law enforcement officers did not carry handguns. The context in which the common law rule evolved was no longer valid. White further noted that many jurisdictions had already done away with it, and that current research has shown that the use of deadly force contributes little to the deterrence of crime or the protection of the public.
Traditionally Oxford and Cambridge did not see common law as worthy of study, and included coursework in law only in the context of canon and civil law (the two 'Laws' in the original Bachelor of Laws, which thus became the Bachelor of Civil Law when the study of canon law was barred after the Reformation) and for the purpose of the study of philosophy or history only. The apprenticeship program for solicitors thus emerged, structured and governed by the same rules as the apprenticeship programs for the trades. The training of solicitors by a five-year apprenticeship was formally established by the Attorneys and Solicitors Act 1728. William Blackstone became the first lecturer in English common law at the University of Oxford in 1753, but the university did not establish the program for the purpose of professional study, and the lectures were very philosophical and theoretical in nature. Blackstone insisted that the study of law should be university based, where concentration on foundational principles can be had, instead of concentration on detail and procedure had through apprenticeship and the Inns of Court.
However, while the interim Bill of Rights did not apply directly to horizontal cases, it did have indirect application. The Bill of Rights applied to “all law in force,” including all pre- and post-1994 legislation and the uncodified common law (provisions of the common law which had not been incorporated into legislation). Even if individuals were not directly bound by the Bill of Rights, the courts had to interpret legislation, and develop the common law, so that the ordinary law recognised and protected the rights in the Bill of Rights. In Du Plessis v Klerk, the Constitutional Court held that the Bill of Rights in the Interim Constitution “may and should have an influence on the development of the common law as it governs relations between individuals.” This was provided for in section 35(3) of the interim Constitution: “In the interpretation of any law and the application and development of the common law and customary law, a court shall have due regard to the spirit, purport and objects of” the Bill of Rights. “In private litigation,” held the court, “any litigant may nonetheless contend that a statute (or executive act) relied on by the other party is invalid as being inconsistent with the limitations placed on legislature and executive under Chapter 3.” Accordingly, “as Chapter 3 applies to common law, governmental acts or omissions in reliance on the common law may be attacked by a private litigant as being inconsistent with Chapter 3 in any dispute with an organ of government.”
Two are the justifications given by the "legal origins" scholars for the alleged superiority of common law. First, historical events in England and in France built into the common law a stronger emphasis on the independence of the judiciary, private ordering, and human capital. Second, judge-made law would make common law more adaptable to the contracting needs of the economy.
Section 17(5) of PACE 1984 abolished all powers of a Constable to enter under the common law with the specific exception (subsection 6) when dealing with or preventing a common law breach of the peace. This "offence" definition and power of arrest are contained under the common law definition of "breach of the peace". Breach of the peace powers are unusual in the fact they originate from the laws Alfred the Great consolidated into the common law approximately 1,000 years before the modern Constable was thought up. The first legislative reference to the common law breach of the peace was under the Justice of the Peace Act 1361. As a result, when a Constable uses their breach of the peace powers, they are acting as 'any person' and not fully as a sworn officer.
Ameliorative waste is an improvement to an estate that changes its character even if the change increases the land's value. Under English common law, when ameliorative waste occurs, the interested party can recover from the tenant the cost of restoring the land to its original condition. This is based on traditional common law jurisprudence presuming that the grantor intended the property to be kept in its original condition.
Within academic theories of trust law, there have been at least three main strands of discussion that have preoccupied authors in recent years. First, because trust law derived from the Lord Chancellor and courts of equity, separate from the common law (at least notionally) there has been a persistent debate over the extent that common law and equity should be "fused". Before the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873 and 1875, influential judges and authors, such as Edward Coke, and William Blackstone, had disapproved the notion that equitable jurisdiction was in some way distinct from the law. In the 19th century, Charles Dickens' books had heaped enough ridicule on the Victorian Chancery judges to impel reform. The court systems were merged, and if there was a conflict the precedents deriving from equity would prevail. But there remained disagreement about whether this was meant to achieve fusion in "substance", rather than merely a fusion of "procedure". The minority view, particularly well represented in Australia, is that equity represents a distinctive set of principles and its own logic, as manifested in the institutions it created, such as the trust. The majority view, however, is that there is no good reason why, as Andrew Burrows has written "We do this at common law but that in equity" when the situations are functionally identical, to treat like cases alike. If rules in equity, including trust law, did one thing and common law did another, either the common law was wrong or equity was wrong. One of the rules should be changed. Since the House of Lords and the Supreme Court declared it would overrule previous judgments that did not meet the evolving requirements of contemporary justice, the notional primacy of equity over common law was effectively obsolete. Even if a precedent in equity did still prevail over common law, either or both could be overruled in the interests of justice. In practice, the debate about the fusion of law and equity has waned in importance compared to discussion of how to fuse interpretation of judge made law with statutory regulation (for instance in the context of pensions or investment), and how to fuse national law with international norms, in an emergent system of global justice.
When "Donaldson v Beckett" reached the House of Lords in 1774 only one Lord, Thomas Lyttelton, spoke in favour of common law copyright. But a majority of the judges spoke in favour of common law copyright. Lord Camden was most strident in his rejection of the common law copyright, warning the Lords that should they vote in favour of common law copyright, effectively a perpetual copyright, "all our learning will be locked up in the hands of the Tonsons and the Lintots of the age". Moreover, he warned that booksellers would then set upon books whatever price they pleased "till the public became as much their slaves, as their own hackney compilers are". He declared that "[t]his perpetuity now contended for is as odious and as selfish as any other, it deserves as much reprobation, and will become as intolerable. Knowledge and science are not things to be bound in such cobweb chains." The House of Lords ultimately ruled that copyright in published works was subject to the durational limits of the statute. The reasoning behind the decision is disputed, though most scholars agree that the House did not rule against common-law copyright.
IIED was created in tort law to address a problem that would arise when applying the common law form of assault. The common law tort of assault did not allow for liability when a threat of battery was not imminent. A common case would be a future threat of harm that would not constitute common law assault, but would nevertheless cause emotional harm to the recipient. IIED was created to guard against this kind of emotional abuse, thereby allowing a victim of emotional distress to receive compensation in situations where he or she would otherwise be barred from compensation under the common law form.
The court started by analyzing and rejecting Atwater's argument that the common law did not grant authority to police officers to execute warrantless arrests for misdemeanors that did not involve a breach of the peace. The court, recognizing the lack of unanimity of a common law rule, found that the historical common law had a "decided, majority view that the police did not need to obtain an arrest warrant merely because a misdemeanor stopped short of violence or threat of it" and hence the argument had failed.
During the seventeenth century, when settlers started establishing permanent settlements in North America, decisions concerning how the new legal system would work needed to be decided. The people who established the New England colonies came to the new world so that they could create a new society that fashioned itself on the rules and teachings of their religion. The Puritans who founded the colonies of Connecticut and Massachusetts created many rules that had basis in the Puritan faith. However, differences occurred within each colony as to the application of the law. For example, laws created in Massachusetts or Connecticut differed from laws created in Pennsylvania. Some of the differences in the rules within colonies came from the fact that different groups with different ideological backgrounds founded each colony. The Puritans founded the New England colonies, while the Quakers led by William Penn founded the colony of Pennsylvania. Due to the strong religious background of these colonies, colonists sought changes and improvements to the English common law. In many situations, the colonists would use a particular aspect of common law to build the foundation of a legal principle, but the details, such as the wording, implementation, and enforcement of said law fell to the colonists. The colonists did not want a carbon copy of English common law, as many of them left England and Europe in dispute of those laws, nor did the colonists decide upon a single, unified set of laws to govern the colonies as a large group. The colonies sought the means to create a legal system that looked out for each individual colony’s interests. If English common law coincided with what the colonists wanted, then the law remained unaltered. However, if the common law did not represent all of what the colonists wanted, they sought the freedom to change laws to something that best suited them.
Equity is a concept of rights distinct from legal (that is, common law) rights; it is (or, at least, it originated as) "the body of principles constituting what is fair and right (natural law)". It was "the system of law or body of principles originating in the English Court of Chancery and superseding the common and statute law (together called 'law' in the narrower sense) when the two conflict". In equity, a judge determines what is fair and just and makes a decision as opposed to deciding what is legal.
In common law legal systems, the common law is crucial to understanding almost all important areas of law. For example, in England and Wales, in English Canada, and in most states of the United States, the basic law of contracts, torts and property do not exist in statute, but only in common law (though there may be isolated modifications enacted by statute). As another example, the Supreme Court of the United States in 1877,[63] held that a Michigan statute that established rules for solemnization of marriages did not abolish pre-existing common-law marriage, because the statute did not affirmatively require statutory solemnization and was silent as to preexisting common law.
Rogers v. Tennessee, 532 U.S. 451 (2001), was a U.S. Supreme Court case holding that there is no due process violation for lack of fair warning when pre-existing common law limitations on what acts constitute a crime, under a more broadly worded statutory criminal law, are broadened to include additional acts, even when there is no notice to the defendant that the court might undo the common law limitations, so long as the statutory criminal law was made prior to the acts, and so long as the expansion to the newly included acts is expected or defensible in reference to the statutory law. The court wrote, 
In the context of common law doctrines... Strict application of "ex post facto" principles... would unduly impair the incremental and reasoned development of precedent that is the foundation of the common law system." The decision did not affect the requirement of fair warning placed on statutes passed by legislatures - "The Constitution's "Ex Post Facto" Clause... 'is a limitation upon the powers of the Legislature, and does not of its own force apply to the Judicial Branch of government'... a judicial alteration of a common law doctrine of criminal law [only] violates the principal of fair warning... where it is 'unexpected and indefensible by reference to the law which had been expressed prior to the conduct in issue.
Although the legal implications of the judgement are unclear when analysed by lawyers, the judgement was generally taken at the time to have determined that slavery did not exist under English common law and was thus prohibited in England. 
As a result, by 1774, between 10,000 and 15,000 slaves gained freedom in England.
The decision did not apply to British overseas territories; e.g. the American colonies had established slavery by positive laws. Somersett's case became a significant part of the common law of slavery in the English-speaking world and it helped launch the movement to abolish slavery.
The territory now forming Ontario was originally part of Quebec and so was under the civil law. When Quebec was divided into the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada by the Constitutional Act of 1791, the first Act passed by the Legislature of Upper Canada was to adopt the law of England for all purposes, replacing the civil law. That statute adopted both the English common law and English statute law. The foundation for the operation of the common law in Ontario traces back to that reception statute.
The Court of Appeal was of the opinion that customary international law cannot be incorporated into the meaning of the word "law" in Article 9(1) of the Constitution. Customary international law rules do not have any status in domestic law until they are first accepted and adopted as part of domestic law. This can occur when a rule is incorporated into a statute (in which case it is no longer a customary international law rule but is regarded as domestic law), or when it is judicially declared to be part of the common law of Singapore. However, customary international law can only be incorporated into the common law when it is not inconsistent with existing domestic laws. Given the existence of the mandatory death penalty in several Singapore statutes, the Court was of the opinion that it could not treat the alleged customary international law rule prohibiting inhuman punishment as part of Singapore common law. Also, even if a rule has been incorporated in this manner, it may be overridden by subsequent inconsistent statutory provisions. Moreover, the Court did not accept the contention that customary international law should be conferred constitutional status by being read into the meaning of "law" in Article 9(1) as this is clearly not in accordance with the normal hierarchy of Singapore law.
The idea of a trust originated during the Crusades of the 12th century, when noblemen travelled abroad to fight in the Holy Land. As they would be away for years at a time it was vital that somebody could look after their land with the authority of the original owner. As a result, the idea of joint ownership of land arose. The common law courts did not recognise such trusts, and so it fell to equity and to the Court of Chancery to deal with them, as befitting the common principle that the Chancery's jurisdiction was for matters where the common law courts could neither enforce a right nor administer it. The use of trusts and uses became common during the 16th century, although the Statute of Uses "[dealt] a severe blow to these forms of conveyancing" and made the law in this area far more complex. The court's sole jurisdiction over trusts lasted until its dissolution.
After "Donaldson v Beckett", disagreement continued over whether the House of Lords affirmed the existence of common law copyright before it was superseded by the Statute of Anne. The Lords had traditionally been hostile to the booksellers' monopoly and were aware of how the doctrine of common law copyright, promoted by the booksellers, was used to support their case for a perpetual copyright. The Lords clearly voted against perpetual copyright, and eventually an understanding was established whereby authors had a pre-existing common law copyright over their work, but that with the Statute of Anne parliament had limited these natural rights in order to strike a more appropriate balance between the interests of the author and the wider social good. According to Patterson and Livingston there remains confusion about the nature of copyright ever since. Copyright has come to be viewed both as a natural law right of the author and as the statutory grant of a limited monopoly. One theory holds that copyright's origin occurs at the creation of a work, the other that its origin exists only through the copyright statute. In 1834 the US Supreme Court ruled in Wheaton v. Peters, a case similar to the British Donaldson v Beckett of 1774, that although the author of an unpublished work had a common law right to control the first publication of that work, the author did not have a common law right to control reproduction following the first publication of the work.
The Inns of Court continued but became less effective and admission to the bar still did not require any significant educational activity or examination, therefore in 1846 the Parliament examined the education and training of prospective barristers and found the system to be inferior to the legal education provided in the United States. Therefore, formal schools of law were called for, but not finally established until later in the century, and even then the bar did not consider a university degree in admission decisions. When law degrees were required by the English bar and bar associations in other common law countries, the LL.B. became the uniform degree for lawyers in common law countries.
Outside of confederation, the Territory of Guam does not recognise common law marriage.[25] The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands also does not recognise common law marriage but might recognise customary marriage. In Santos v. Commonwealth, Petitioner argued that common law marriage was sufficiently similar to Carolinian customary marriage that it should be recognised as the same. The Court ruled that, while CNMI statute provides that (English) common law provides the rule of decision in the absence of statutory law or customary law to the contrary, Petitioner did not argue that her marriage was a marriage under customary law but a marriage under common law; thus, whereas a validly contracted marriage under Carolinian or Chamorro customary law might be held a valid marriage, a common law marriage could not be.[26]