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Common law, also known as case law, arises when new decisions are made by judges in courts.
On the other hand Statutory Law, also known as written law, is the one which is set down
by a legislature. Common law tend to be instructive in nature while Statutory Law is prescriptive.
In the case of Common law a judge refers to similar cases in the past and makes a decision.
In some cases, the judgment passed by the judge becomes the new law. Hence you can have
pure common law, where the judgment passed becomes the new law, provided there are no
existing statutes applicable. On other hand you can also have interstitial common law
where the judge interprets the existing law and determines distinctions and boundaries.
Precedent is a key factor in common law. The English common law originated in the Middle
Ages. Currently one third of the world's population, that's about 2 and half billion people, live
in common law jurisdictions. I should also mention here that even though
Statutory Laws are passed by the legislature, they are subjected to the higher constitutional
laws. One other point I should mention here is about
civil law legal systems, which are based on Roman law. Here, codes and statutes are designed
to cover all possibilities and judges have a more restricted role of applying the law.
So to summarize -- Common law relies on judgments passed by judges and statutory law deals with
statutes passed by legislature. A Common law system gives significant importance to judges
and their judgments; while Civil law system relies on codes that are framed to cover all
cases. Though many people live in common law jurisdictions, according to the CIA World
Fact book 150 countries follow civil law system and 80 follow common law systems.
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