Common law's great – where would we be without all those tort and contract cases no one can ever remember (apart from the one about the snail in the lemonade)? But when statute speaks, common law shuts up.
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I'd say it's only great because codification in the UK lost steam some time ago and the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel has never been large enough to attempt to codify it all. In certain parts of the common law world, for example, contract law is mostly if not entirely statutory.
aug 27, 2025, 9:39 am • 1 0 • view
I was using "great" in a very particular sense ("I was baffled and overwhelmed by the common law elements of my law degree, but I like a challenge"). In all seriousness, I suspect some of the fondness people express for the common law springs from this kind of nostalgic esprit de corps.
aug 27, 2025, 9:51 am • 1 0 • view
That, and having read Lon Fuller at an impressionable age (to which I'd also plead guilty). But in reality, yes, there's scope for rationalisation!
aug 27, 2025, 9:52 am • 0 0 • view