The form of reasoning used in common law is called casuistry or case-based thinking. The common law, as applied in civil matters (as opposed to criminal matters), is designed to compensate someone for illegal acts known as torts, including intentional tort and tort liability caused by negligence, and as a development of the whole law that recognizes and governs contracts. The type of procedure practised in common law courts is called the adversarial system; It is also a further development of the common law. According to Montesquieu`s theory of the “separation of powers”, only parliament has the power to legislate; But in the event that a law is ambiguous, the courts have the exclusive power to decide its true meaning by applying the principles of interpretation of the law. Since the courts do not have the power to legislate, the “legal fiction” is that they “explain” the common law (rather than “create” it). The House of Lords took this “declaratory power” a step further in DPP v Shaw,[35] where Viscount Simonds, in creating the new crime of “conspiracy to corrupt public morality,” asserted that the court had “residual authority to protect the moral welfare of the state.” [36] [37] As Parliament became more established and influential, parliamentary legislation gradually moved beyond judicial legislation, so that today`s judges can only innovate in certain very narrowly defined areas. Unlike the legal codification of the common law, some statutes replace the common law, for example, to create a new cause of action that did not exist at common law or to legally prevail over the common law. One example is the offence of wrongful death, which allows certain persons, usually a spouse, child or estate, to bring an action for damages on behalf of the deceased. There is no such tort under English customary law; [70] Therefore, any jurisdiction that does not have an unlawful death law will not allow prosecution for the unlawful death of a loved one. If there is a law on unlawful death, compensation or any other remedy is limited to the remedy provided for in the law (usually a limit greater than the amount of damages). Courts generally interpret laws that create new means of law narrowly, that is, limited to their specific conditions – because courts generally recognize that the legislature is at the forefront of deciding the scope of judicial law, unless such a law violates a “second-rate” constitutional provision (see Judicial Activism). This principle is applied more strongly in areas of commercial law (contracts and others) where predictability is of relatively higher value, and less so in offences where courts recognize greater responsibility for “justice”.
[71] English law is the common law system of England and Wales, which consists mainly of criminal and civil law, with each branch having its own courts and procedures. [1] [2] [3] Judges create the common law by rendering written judgments on cases pending before them. For example, if the Magistrates` Courts of England and Wales were able to create and follow their own precedent, this would lead to a great variation in local and regional customs, which could mean that local regimes are barely recognizable from each other. The role of the Law Academy represents an important “cultural” difference between the common law (connotation 2) and civil law jurisdictions. In both systems, treaties compile decisions and establish general principles that (in the author`s view) explain the outcome of cases. In neither system are treaties considered a “law”, but the weight attached to them is still very different. English law is based on a common law system, as opposed to a civil law system based on laws and certain texts. .