Common law and civil law

As we have seen, the phrase common law is sometimes used generally to mean judge-made law as distinct from statute law, and sometimes more specifically to mean that part of judge-made law which originated in the King’s courts, as distinct from that part of judge-made law known as equity.

A fundamentally different contrast may be made between common law and civil law. The contrast in this context is between the English legal system (together with those countries whose legal systems are derived from it, such as Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America) on the one hand, and the legal systems of the states of continental Europe on the other, whose legal systems are derived from Roman Law.

One of the most important functional distinctions between common law and civil law systems is that the latter have no doctrine of binding precedent. (The doctrine of binding precedent is discussed in Chapter 7.)

Finally, it is important to notice that the use of the term civil law discussed here has nothing whatsoever to do with the distinction between civil law and criminal law which is discussed in Chapter 1.