Common law

Common law authority

Law that comes from the accumulated decisions of judges over time, rather than from a statute passed by a legislature.

Technical: The body of law derived from judicial decisions and custom, developed case by case and bound by precedent (stare decisis), as distinct from statutory law enacted by a legislature or regulations issued by an agency.

Founding-era note: At the Founding, 'the common law' meant the received English common law that each colony, and then each state, adopted (subject to its own reception statute and date). The United States later developed a distinctly American common law in the state courts; the federal courts held in Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938), that 'there is no federal general common law.'

Sources: Cornell LII — Common law · Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938)

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