Common law common law or case law refers to unwritten law system in great britain which is generally derived from cases decided by courts and not from a statute. common law has been administered in the courts of england since the middle ages; it is also found in canada the us and in most of the british commonwealth. the common law is based on the principle of deciding cases by the reverence to previous judicial decisions rather than written statutes drafted by legislative bodies. the main principle of that system is to consider unfair to treat similar facts differently on different occasions. general rules or precedents are guidelines for judges deciding similar cases. common law system can be contrasted to the civil-law system, based on ancient roman law, found in the continental europe. civil- law judges decide cases by referring statutory principles, common- law judges focus on the facts of specific case and similar previous cases. these case-by-case decisions are used again and again in similar cases and become customary, or common to all people living under the authority of the court of law. however, sometimes judges may reveal new and different facts, such as changing social technology conditions. a common- law judge is then free to depart from precedent and establish a new rule or decision, which sets a new precedent and will be used judges in other cases. so, judge continue to shape guide the future development of english law, drawing on the flexibility of principles of common law tradition.
