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Common law   /kˈɑmən lɔ/   Listen
Common law

noun
1.
(civil law) a law established by following earlier judicial decisions.  Synonyms: case law, precedent.
2.
A system of jurisprudence based on judicial precedents rather than statutory laws.  Synonyms: case law, precedent.






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"Common law" Quotes from Famous Books



... have become almost inaccessible to the great mass of the community. They also exhibit much of the incongruity and imperfection of hasty legislation. As it seems to be generally conceded that there is no "common law" of the United States to supply the defects of their legislation, it is most important that that legislation should be as perfect as possible, defining every power intended to be conferred, every crime intended to be made punishable, and prescribing the punishment to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore

... to do with either military or ecclesiastical affairs. What power each of them had, it is not easy to determine; but they were all obliged to have some knowledge of the law. In the Saxon times, the bishop and ealderman sat together to try causes; the one proceeded by the canons, the other by the common law. Part of the ealderman's jurisdiction was to examine the arms, and to raise the militia within such a district, in order to suppress riot and execute the sentence of a court of justice. He had likewise ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various

... that according to the Declaration of Independence, and the address of the Continental Congress, the nation was dedicated to 'Liberty' and the 'rights of human nature'; that according to the principles of common law, the Constitution must be interpreted openly, actively, and perpetually for Freedom; that according to the decision of the Supreme Court, it acts upon slaves, not as property, but as persons; that at the first organization of the national government under Washington, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... that you can easily measure, a small group of dark bodies, which you have called planets, all apparently governed by a common law, in obedience to which they are circling around a large body of quite different character, which gives them light and heat. Of these dark bodies, which shine in the sky only by reflected light, the ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... declaration was but a prelude to the Statute of Heresy which was passed at the opening of 1401. By the provisions of this infamous Act the hindrances which had till now neutralized the efforts of the bishops to enforce the common law were utterly taken away. Not only were they permitted to arrest all preachers of heresy, all schoolmasters infected with heretical teaching, all owners and writers of heretical books, and to imprison them even if they ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... fit, perhaps, from the supposed improbability that the crime would be attempted, to make your offence a felony. Its grade and punishment have been left to the provisions of the common law, which treats it as a misdemeanor, and punishes it with fine and imprisonment in the common jail. The court are of opinion that your liberty ought to be made to answer for the liberty of Morgan: his person was restrained by force; and the court, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... his "divine right"); and sharply reprimanded him for having spoken irreverently of Sir Thomas Crompton, a civilian; asserting, that Crompton was as good a man as Coke. The fact is, there then existed a rivalry between the civil and the common lawyers. Coke declared that the common law of England was in imminent danger of being perverted; that law which he has enthusiastically described as the perfection of all sense and experience. Coke was strenuously opposed by Lord Bacon and by the civilians, and was at length committed to the Tower (according to a MS. letter of the day, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... action at common law was maintainable against a person who by his wrongful act, neglect or default caused the immediate death of another person, and an Act (known as Lord Campbell's Act), "for compensating the Families of Persons ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... privately, at the beginning, when he thought of petitioning for a divorce; and what he had learned had made him prudent: his marriage in America was valid beyond a doubt. He was well and duly married, whether he liked it or not. By the common law, two wives meant bigamy; and bigamy meant prison, which was the last thing he wanted, as he himself said. But, so long as there was no scandal, he ran no great risk. He had lived on tenter-hooks at first, in Germany. Chance might have brought ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... by some unpardonable flaw, Temptation isn't recognized by Britain's Common Law; Men found him out by some peculiarity of touch, And WILLIAM got a "lifer," which ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... she had been brought up in a camp, instead of a first-rate boarding-school. I do think, Judge Temple, that such dangerous amusements should be suppressed, by statute; nay, I doubt whether they are not already indict able at common law. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... dividing among themselves the inheritance of the dispossessed inhabitants.[280] Strongbow and his companions became the feudal sovereigns of the island, holding their estates under the English crown. The common law of England was introduced; the king's writ passed current from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear;[281] and if the leading Norman families had remained on the estates which they had conquered, or if those who did remain had retained the character which they ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... consent?" asks the Chief Justice. "I say it is impossible in law, as Sir R. Phillimore, 1 Phill., International Law, vol. 1, p. 316, has said in a passage I read with the most respectful concurrence, but too long for full quotation." "It is unnecessary for me to trace how it became the Common Law of England that whosoever breathes the air of England cannot be a slave." After reference to notable decisions on the part of England's highest authorities as to the unlawfulness of slavery; to the claim that slavery was secured to the Chinese residents ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell

... opprobrious words he muttered to himself as he passed out of earshot. The beneficent common law does not condemn a man merely on his own confession unless circumstances in evidence lend probability to his self-accusation. Before we coincide in Mr. Hunt's opinion of himself, let us ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... customs of our own legislative bodies, and our people have thus been educated under a system of parliamentary law which is peculiar to this country, and yet so well established as to supersede the English parliamentary law as the common law ...
— Robert's Rules of Order - Pocket Manual of Rules Of Order For Deliberative Assemblies • Henry M. Robert

... to be tried in the Court of Common Pleas, a division in which Serjeants-at-Law had the exclusive right to practise. At this time, 1827, and indeed up till 1873, every common law judge was turned into a Serjeant, if he were not one ere he was promoted to the Bench. It was a solemn kind of ceremony. The subject of the operation was led out of the precincts of the Inns of Court; the church bell ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood

... thought about this curious question, the more probable it appeared to me that the irregular series of the Three-pronged Osmia and the regular series of the other Osmiae and of the Bees in general were all traceable to a common law. It seemed to me that the arrangement in a succession first of females and then of males did not account for everything. There must be something more. And I was right: that arrangement in series is only ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... Rudolph of Hapsburg. The last great work undertaken by Alfonso was a kind of code known as "Las Siete Partidas," or The Seven Parts, from the divisions of the work itself. This is the most important legislative monument of the age, and forms a sort of Spanish common law, which, with the decisions under it, has been the basis of Spanish jurisprudence ever since. Becoming a part of the Constitution of the State in all Spanish colonies, it has, from the time Louisiana and Florida were added to the United States, become in some cases ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... the passing of the first statute respecting literary property in 1710, whether by certain of its provisions this perpetual copyright at common law was extinguished for the future. The question was solemnly argued before the Court of King's Bench, when Lord Mansfield presided, in 1769. The result was a decision in favour of the common-law right as unaltered by the statute, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... involuntary servitude, or the relation of master and servant, was known to and recognized by the laws of every State in the Union except Massachusetts, and the legal right of recaption by the master existed in all, AS A PART OF THE CUSTOMARY OR COMMON LAW OF THE WHOLE CONFEDERACY." Hence, instead of shocking the convention, a clause recognizing such right would have been merely declaratory of the "customary or common law," which then universally prevailed. The "history of the times" confirms this ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... whatever but by his permission, at least tacit. She can acquire no property but for him; the instant it becomes hers, even if by inheritance, it becomes ipso facto his. In this respect the wife's position under the common law of England is worse than that of slaves in the laws of many countries: by the Roman law, for example, a slave might have his peculium, which to a certain extent the law guaranteed to him for his exclusive use. The higher classes ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... in a design upon the crown of Scotland, he was challenged by the latter to make good his assertion by single combat.[65] It had been at first the intention of the government to try the case by the common law, but Ramsay thought he would stand a better chance of escape by recurring to the old and almost exploded custom, but which was still the right of every man in appeals of treason. Lord Reay readily accepted the challenge, and both were confined in the Tower until they found security ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... of common law and common sense, would you or could you do if my pleasure led me to a ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... very reasonable rule that a State Constitution shall be understood and construed in the light, and by the assistance of the common law, and with the fact in view that its rules are ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... Willie, he would see that Delight encountered this Don Giovanni but seldom, at least until he gave a more trustworthy account of himself than he had vouchsafed up to the present moment. Contrary to the common law, the guest must be rated as guilty until he had proved himself innocent. Yet as he darted a glance at the earnest young face bending over the workbench Willie's conscience smote him and he questioned whether he might not be doing his comrade a dire injustice. The thought caused him ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... of copyright in a work that portrays a useful article as such, any greater or lesser rights with respect to the making, distribution, or display of the useful article so portrayed than those afforded to such works under the law, whether title 17 or the common law or statutes of a State, in effect on December 31, 1977, as held applicable and construed by a court in an action ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America: - contained in Title 17 of the United States Code. • Library of Congress Copyright Office

... bodies within the "Turkish Federated State of Cyprus," which was renamed the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" in 1983; a new Constitution for the Turkish area passed by referendum in May 1985 Legal system: based on common law, with civil law modifications National holiday: Independence Day, 1 October (15 November is celebrated as Independence Day in the Turkish area) Political parties and leaders: Greek Cypriot: Progressive Party of the Working People (AKEL; Communist Party), Dimitrios CHRISTOFIAS; ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... left, but keeping our eyes fixed ever upon one great object—a South Africa in which there shall never again be strife, and in which Boer and Briton shall enjoy the same rights and the same liberties, with a common law to shield them and a common love of their own fatherland to weld them into ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... pleaded in Defence of all those Hardships which fall on particular Persons in particular Occasions, which could not be foreseen when a Law was made. To remedy this however as much as possible, the Court of Chancery was erected, which frequently mitigates and breaks the Teeth of the Common Law, in Cases of Men's Properties, while in Criminal Cases there is a Power of pardoning still lodged in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... least two, and I think four or five, English rulings that cover the case. Let me show them to you." He did so and I went no further with the business, quite agreeing with Mr. Blaine, and nothing further came of it. To a recent date the Associated Press has relied on these decisions under the common law of England. Curiously enough, quite a number of newspapers in whose actual service I was engaged, opened fire upon me ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... Jesus College, Cambridge, published an edition of Justin Martyr, and, I think, wrote something against Middleton. He communicated several notes to Theobald for his Shakspeare, and in the latter part of his life, took to study the common law. He lived chiefly for his last years with Sir Edward Walpole, who had procured for him a small place in the Custom house, and to whom he left his papers: he had lost his intellects some time before his death. [He died a martyr to intemperance, in 1751, in his sixty-first year. Mr. Nichols ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... Toleration Act, even if it accounts for itself as a loyal following of the English precedent of 1689. Although it had always been understood that the colonies should make no laws repugnant to the organic or to the common law of England, Connecticut was determined to protect as much as possible her own approved church, to keep it free from the contamination not only of infidels and heretics, but also from Church-of-England dissenters and from all others. Accordingly she placed side by side upon ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... a peculiar and local character, and intended for the government of a distinct class of persons in the community, they were bound to conform their proceedings to its provisions, which depart in many essential features from the principles of the common law and some of the settled rules of evidence. The court, however, determined to adopt those rules, whenever they were not repugnant to nor expressly excepted by that statute, nor inconsistent with the local situation and policy of the State; and laid down for their own government ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... his name in common appellation this syllable "Sir," which is the title whereby we call our knights in England. His wife also of courtesy so long as she liveth is called "my lady," although she happen to marry with a gentleman or man of mean calling, albeit that by the common law she hath no such prerogative. If her first husband also be of better birth than her second, though this latter likewise be a knight, yet in that she pretendeth a privilege to lose no honour through courtesy yielded to her sex, she will ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... common law," I said. "You rebel against the voice of God, which He has made so winning to convince, so imperious to command. Hear it, and how it speaks between us! Your hand clings to mine, your heart leaps at my touch, the unknown elements of which we are compounded awake and run together at a look; the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sufficient time has elapsed to allow for the partisan origin to be forgotten, and for it to become assimilated to the habits of thought and manner of life of the people that it is deeply respected. The English reverence is not for statute law, but for the common law which is the slow accretion of ages. A new enactment is treated like the new boy at school. He must submit to a period of severe hazing before he is given ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... profession. Sir, you will have noticed that the Law Courts are congested. Look through the daily list (this you can do when term recommences), and you will find, that although Chancery is doing fairly well, there is scarcely a movement in Common Law. The reason for this is obvious. Nearly all the Common Law Judges are away, and business is simply at a standstill. Now, Sir, I am very reluctant to give their Lordships more trouble than necessary, but I do think, for all our sakes, that increased facility should be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 12, 1890 • Various

... Choate. His orations on "Bunker Hill Monument," the "Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers," the "Death of Adams and Jefferson," are among the really sublime passages in the history of eloquence. In the Girard College case Webster established the point that Christianity is a part of the common law of the land. Criminal lawyers quote Webster's argument in the great Knapp murder trial, that the voice of conscience is the voice of God, as the world's best statement of the moral imperative, and the automatic judgment seat God has set up in the ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... and nothing omitted that might inflame the corrupt Passions of the Youth of the Nation! What was the Encouragement for Men to dare giving such an Affront not only to the common Sense, but to the common Law of the Country? Was it not the quick Sale these Pictures and these Books had? And is not this a deplorable Circumstance, and sad Instance of the corrupt Disposition of many ...
— A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London, to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; On Occasion of the Late Earthquakes • Thomas Sherlock

... the nature of the service which they render and the privileges they enjoy. This principle was overlaid in many cases by the human desire to punish the railroads as the cause of economic distress, but it was visible in all the laws. It is an old rule of the common law that the ferryman, the baker, and the innkeeper are subject to public control, and railways were now classified with these. In Wisconsin, the "Potter" Law established a schedule with classified rates, superseding all rate-cards ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... generally. Stage "law" may not be quite the most fearful and wonderful mystery in the whole universe, but it's near it—very near it. We were under the impression at one time that we ourselves knew something—just a little—about statutory and common law, but after paying attention to the legal points of one or two plays we found that we were mere ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome

... to about 39 deg., instead of obeying the common law of becoming heavier by cooling, it forms a remarkable exception to it, and becomes lighter until it freezes. Were it not for this admirable provision of Nature, all our ponds and rivers would, in the Winter, become solid ice from the surface ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... Butler also said, on the same occasion: "Upon this so great trial, I pray let us not belittle ourselves with the analyses of the common law courts, or the criminal courts, because nothing is ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... to the wives and mothers of the present generation? Is there not some relaxation of the law necessary in vindication of the civilization of the age, against the legal barbarisms still remaining on the statute books, and adhered to by the common law, in regard to wives and mothers? Is the current of progress to flow by them for ever, bearing no reforms which shall affect them? Do not misunderstand me. I am no advocate of the practices of the 'strong-minded women,' who hold their ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... merchant service martial law is not permitted; the bye-laws relative to shipping, and the common law of the country, are supposed to be sufficient; and certainly the present system is more advisable than to vest such excessive power in the hands of men, who, generally speaking, neither require nor are fit to be entrusted ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... competence and power would soon be confounded, and no law be left but the will of a prevailing force. On this principle, the succession of the crown has always been what it now is, an hereditary succession by law: in the old line it was a succession by the Common Law; in the new by the statute law, operating on the principles of the Common Law, not changing the substance, but regulating the mode and describing the persons. Both these descriptions of law are of the same force, and are derived from an equal authority, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of estates of villages have a feeling of permanent interest in them, an assurance of an hereditary right of property which is liable only to the payment of a moderate Government demand, descends undivided by the law of primogeniture, and is unaffected by the common law, which prescribes the equal subdivision among children of landed as well as other private property, among the Hindoos and Muhammadans; and where the immediate cultivators hold the lands they till by no other law than that of common ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... was resentful because George Grey had put her in a position where she had been embarrassed by intense sectional sense of duty and by kindly personal regard for a man who not being criminal was to be deprived of all the safeguards against injustice provided by the common law. There were other and minor causes which helped to content her with what she well knew she had done to disappoint Mr. Woodburn of his prey. George Grey was really a bore of capacity to wreck the social patience ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... the Act of 1887 are too well known to need any recital here. In a word, it was partly declaratory of the common law, its essential features being that railroad charges must be reasonable; that there must be no discriminations between persons and no preference between localities; railroads were prohibited from charging less for a long haul than for a shorter haul, "included within it under ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... system: a highly complex mixture of English common law, Roman-Dutch, Muslim, Sinhalese, and customary law; has ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... from the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) period, royal decrees, and acts of the legislature, with influences of customary law and remnants of communist legal theory; increasing influence of common law in recent years ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... extreme for the perfect man; and the perfect man would be the monk, subjected to rules which professed to realize the gospel ideal. It is certain that this ideal, if only on account of the celibacy and poverty it imposed, could not become the common law. The monk would be thus, in one sense, the only true Christian. Common sense revolts at these excesses; and if we are guided by it, to demand the impossible, is a mark of weakness and error. But common sense is a bad judge where great matters are in question. To obtain little ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... citizen, (that is, according to Condorcet's calculation, six months on an average,) not to pass for an usurper upon the national property. This is what the serjeants-at-law of the rights of man will say to the puny apprentices of the common law of England. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... may bring a bill in Chancery against him, and force him upon oath to give an account. He has not, however, given them light enough or afforded them sufficient ground for a fishing bill in Chancery. Yet he says, "If you call upon me in a Chancery way, or by Common Law, I really will abdicate all forms, and give you some account." In consequence of this the Company did demand from him an account, regularly, and as fully and formally as if they had demanded it in a court of justice. He positively refused to give them any account whatever; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... directed under the advice of the attorney general, who was of opinion, that persons of this description were punishable for having violated subsisting treaties, which, by the constitution, are the supreme law of the land; and that they were also indictable at common law, for disturbing the peace of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... military law prevails, and not the code of Justinian. It is my duty to protect your treasure and my own, and ensure that each man shall receive his share. After the division you may do what you please with the money, for you will then be under the common law, and I should not presume even to advise concerning ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... precautions against martial law can be effective if a division of authority, or even obedience to authority, is once admitted. Gracchus, therefore, pronounced that criminal proceedings should be possible against the magistrate who had exercised the jurisdiction now pronounced illegal.[594] The common law of Rome went even further, and pronounced every individual responsible for illegal acts done at the bidding of a magistrate. The crime which the magistrate had committed by the exercise of this forbidden jurisdiction was ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... company's charter. As an instance of this Captain Pepperell, in charge of one of the company's ships, seized an interloper called the "William" and "Jane" off the coast of New Callabar in Guinea. When Pepperell appeared at Barbadoes with his prize, one of the owners of the captured ship brought suit in a common law court against the company's commander for damages to the extent of 500,000 pounds of sugar. The company's factors at once went bail for Pepperell. Ordinarily the case would have been tried by a jury of planters from whom the company's agents could expect no consideration. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... of the peace I try'd a little, by attending a few courts, and sitting on the bench to hear causes; but finding that more knowledge of the common law than I possess'd was necessary to act in that station with credit, I gradually withdrew from it, excusing myself by my being oblig'd to attend the higher duties of a legislator in the Assembly. My election to this trust was repeated every ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... very notion of such a work may seem in the highest degree preposterous; if not indicative of a degree of presumptuous irreverence on the part of the author little short of literary high treason, if not commensurate, in point of moral delinquency, with the same crime as defined by the common law of England. It is out of consideration for the praiseworthy, though perhaps erroneous, feelings of such respectable personages, that we proceed to make the following preliminary remarks; wherein it will be our object, by demonstrating the necessity ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh

... unaffectedly at the wondering circle. He, too, was an officer, and appreciated their sentiments. They were unfeignedly sorry for him, a man so brave and modest, such a splendid type of the soldier and gentleman, yet, by their common law, an outcast. Nor could they wholly understand his demeanor. There was a noble dignity in his candor, a conscious innocence that disdained to shield itself under a partial truth. He spoke, not as a wrong-doer, but as one ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... repossession of the thing opignorated, or pledged, or laid in wad. Voetius, Vinnius, Groenwigeneus, Pagenstecherus,—all who have treated de Contractu Opignerationis, consentiunt in eundem,—gree on the same point. The Roman law, the English common law, and the municipal law of our ain ancient kingdom of Scotland, though they split in mair particulars than I could desire, unite as strictly in this as the three strands of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... we remember no such, and yet if there be any such, it is but according to the common law of the Church, and also to your Grace's law, which determine and decree that every person spiritual or temporal condemned of heresy shall forfeit his moveables or immoveables to your Highness, or to the lord spiritual or temporal that by law hath ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... sometimes allowed, and a unanimous vote by a jury was not always required. Growing wealth and the consequent multiplication of litigants necessitated an increase in the number of judges in most courts. Efforts were made, with some success, by combining common law with equity procedure, and in other ways, to render lawsuits ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... manufactures objects of barter. Now is the happy literary epoch, when to be intellectual and omniscient is the public and private duty of every man. To read newspapers by the billion and books by the million is now the common law. We can conceive of Disraeli moaning that the Titan interests of the earth have overthrown the celestial hierarchy,—that the realm of genius has been stormed by worldly workers,—that literature, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... relations, and provides for it. Society moves on lines he laid down for it; his plans underlie all. Thus, when Jesus is challenged on the question of marriage and divorce, with that clear thought and eye of his, he goes right back to God's intent—not to man's usage, not to the common law and practice of nations, but to God's intent and God's meaning. God ordained marriage; he thought it out (Matt. 19:4). Marriages will be better, if we think of them in this way. God gave men their food, does still, and all things that he gives are clean (Luke 11:41). We cannot ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... English common law, Islamic law, and Napoleonic codes; judicial review by Supreme Court and Council of State (oversees validity of administrative decisions); accepts compulsory ICJ ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... ought to be. As to the Religious Orders, they shall have full liberty to constitute themselves, to educate children, to care for the sick and infirm, so long as they keep within the limits of the common law. All property in mortmain shall be suppressed. A community of teachers, for instance, may own the college necessary for the students, but not a forest ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... as it is now shaping itself, in comparison with its conditions and methods twenty or thirty years ago. The railroads have always existed by virtue of charters which gave them a quasi-public character, and have always been theoretically subject to certain old principles of English common law under which the public or common carrier, like the innkeeper, performs a function not wholly private in its nature. Nevertheless, in its earlier stages the railroad system of this country was in large part constructed and ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw

... of you is clearly entitled to one hundred pounds a year by common law": such had been the important whisper made by Finney into the ears of Abel Handy, and by him retailed ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... of the Irish State trials will constitute a conspicuous and mortifying event in the history of the times. A gigantic conspiracy for the dismemberment of the empire was boldly encountered at its highest point of development by the energy of the common law of the land, as administered in the ordinary courts of justice. That law, itself certainly intricate and involved, had to deal with facts of almost unprecedented complication and difficulty; but after a long and desperate struggle, the law triumphed over every obstacle that could be opposed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... lessen what He taught, Or make the gospel Jesus brought Less precious, that His lips retold Some portion of that truth of old; Denying not the proven seers, The tested wisdom of the years; Confirming with his own impress The common law of righteousness. We search the world for truth; we cull The good, the pure, the beautiful, From graven stone and written scroll, From all old flower-fields of the soul; And, weary seekers of the best, We come back laden from our quest, To find that all the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... proceed to try the merits of their fellow citizens' causes. A lawyer must eat his way to the bar, labouring most voraciously through his commons dinners in the Temple or Lincoln's Inn Halls, before he has any chance of success in common law, common pleas, or common causes in the court of King's Bench or Chancery. The Speaker's parliamentary dinners are splendid spreads for poor senators; but sometimes the feast is infested with rats, whom his majesty's royal rat-catcher immediately ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... it had the right to propose directly to the King anything which it deemed necessary to the development and organization of American commerce; and as a tribunal it possessed an absolute competence over all crimes under the common law, and over all infractions of the ordinances governing the trade of the Indies, to the exclusion of every ordinary court. Its jurisdiction began at the moment the passengers and crews embarked and the goods were put on board, ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... according to the order of nature are between us and God; and therefore according to the common law not only human affairs are administered by them, but also all corporeal matters. But holy men even after this life are of the same nature with ourselves; and hence according to the common law they do not administer human affairs, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... "3. Should the common law remedies fail, resort may perhaps be had to the powers in Chancery under Talfourd's Act, but on this point I should like to confer with an equity counsel before giving a decided opinion. It has been decided under this Act that ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... sir, in the name of common sense and common law, did you bring us into this out-of-the-way place, among these dirty, ragged, unshaven scoundrels? It is abominable! ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... 1463, we learn that the rule was, when the degree of serjeant-at-law was to be conferred, for the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, with the consent of the other justices, to nominate for the purpose seven or eight of the most experienced professors of the common law. Thereupon the Lord Chancellor issued a writ to each of them, summoning them to appear under a heavy penalty, and take upon themselves the state and degree of serjeant-at-law. On duly presenting themselves they affirmed on oath that ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... diseases is not clearly established and is difficult to act upon, but it is certainly just that those who have been contaminated and injured in this way should easily be able to obtain reparation. Although it is admitted in principle that the communication of syphilis is an offence even under common law he is in agreement with those who would treat it as a special offence, making a new and more practical law.[248] Heavy damages are even at the present time obtained in the French courts from men who have infected young women in sexual intercourse, and also from the doctors as well as the mothers ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... to be found in your own prize law to this effect. In other words, this is one of the recognised modes of commissioning a ship of war, which has grown out of the convenience of the thing, and become a sort of naval common law, as indisputable as the written law itself. The only difference between the commission of such a ship and that of a ship commissioned by the sovereign authority at home is that the word "tender" appears in the former commission ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... Sir E. Grey that the provision conflicts with the principle of the English common law that an enemy subject is not entitled to bring an action in the courts to sustain a contract, commerce with enemy ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim

... brought against Vesalius. It was hoped by his persecutors that the latter charge would be brought before the Inquisition, and result in more rigorous punishment than any that would be inflicted by the judges of the common law. The King of Spain, however, interfered and saved him, on condition that he should make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Accordingly he set out from Madrid for Venice, and thence to Cyprus, from which place ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae

... This monstrous expression of imperfect civilization, which for one hundred and fifty years has been cashiered by cultivated Englishmen as attorneys' English, and is absolutely frightful unless in a lease or conveyance, ought (we do not scruple to say) to be made indictable at common law, not perhaps as a felony, but certainly as a misdemeanour, punishable by fine ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... sunk to the apathy engendered by experience and familiarity. She adjudged the case on its merits, as it would be handled by an administrator of the law—the common law we all must keep. She did not imagine a network of exculpatory conditions or go squinting round corners to draw it into line as an act for which circumstances rather than the culprit were responsible; she gazed straight and honestly and saw ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... cases concerning children in which an action for damages has been brought under the Common Law or under Lord Campbell's Act, the money awarded as compensation is paid over to the Public Trustee, unless the judge otherwise directs. A large part of the Women Visitors' work consists of supervising ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... things at the present time. The principle of compulsory military service, obligatory upon every able-bodied male between the ages of sixteen and sixty, is still the fundamental principle of English Law, both Common Law and Statute Law. It has been obscured by the pernicious voluntary principle, which, in the much-abused name of Liberty, has shifted a universal national duty upon the shoulders of the patriotic few. But it has never been ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw

... delightful Handbook of London, says that when the New Temple "passed to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the Inner and Middle Temple were leased to the Students of the Common Law; and the OUTER TEMPLE to Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter:" and in describing Essex House, by which name it {326} was afterwards known, he repeats the same statement; as if the Outer Temple was part of the original ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various

... privilege of the nobility to the great offices and honours of their country; and that order having usurped one unjust advantage over the rest of their fellow-citizens, lest their poverty should render it ridiculous, it is thought reasonable that they should have another. The common law of England, indeed, is said to abhor perpetuities, and they are accordingly more restricted there than in any other European monarchy; though even England is not altogether without them. In Scotland, more than one fifth, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... Type: dependent territory of the UK Capital: The Valley Administrative divisions: none (dependent territory of the UK) Independence: none (dependent territory of the UK) Constitution: 1 April 1982 Legal system: based on English common law National holiday: Anguilla Day, 30 May Executive branch: British monarch, governor, chief minister, Executive Council (cabinet) Legislative branch: unicameral House of Assembly Judicial branch: High Court Leaders: ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the common law of England remained in force, as it does to this day save where modified by statute. British and colonial statutes made prior to the Revolution continued also in force unless expressly repealed. The system of civil and criminal courts, the remedies in common law and equity, the forms of writs, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... [Footnote: Ibid, 620.] The Lords had various privileges and constitutional rights of their own: as individuals, of trial by peers, of being represented by proxies, of entering individual protests, of audience with the sovereign, of certain advantages of procedure in the courts of common law; as a body, of trying impeachments brought by the House of Commons, and of acting as a final court of appeal for all lower courts whether of law or equity. [Footnote: Pike, Constitutional History of the House of Lords, ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... oldness &c. adj[obs3].; age, antiquity; cobwebs of antiquity. maturity; decline, decay; senility &c. 128. seniority, eldership, primogeniture. archaism &c. (the past) 122; thing of the past, relic of the past; megatherium[obs3]; Sanskrit. tradition, prescription, custom, immemorial usage, common law. V. be old &c. adj.; have had its day, have seen its day; become old &c. adj.; age, fade, senesce. Adj. old, ancient, antique; of long standing, time-honored, venerable; elder, eldest; firstborn. prime; primitive, primeval, primigenous[obs3]; paleolontological, paleontologic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... intelligent man and chose the other kind. When our Anglo-Saxon ancestors fought for the right of trial by jury, and got it, they passed down to us a sword with two edges. Their idea, which was embodied in the common law, was that a man should be tried by a jury of his peers. But the way things have worked out, the man of average intelligence is apt to have to face a dozen jurors who are chosen partly for their lack of intelligence, ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... endowments and culture. Scott spent a year under his tutelage at Richmond, and entered, in 1805, William and Mary College. Here he gave special attention to the study of civil and international law, besides chemistry, natural and experimental philosophy, and common law. At about the age of nineteen he left William and Mary College and entered the law office of Judge David Robinson in ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... Great Britain. It was the prevailing opinion that interest, or usury, as it was then called, was unjust gain, forbidden by divine law, and which a good Christian could neither receive nor pay. In common law the practice of taking increase was classed among the lowest crimes against public morals. So odious was it among Christians that the practice was confined almost wholly to the Jews, who did not exact usury of ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... nearly the whole encampment. It was well known that when Carson and Shunan should meet on the hostile field, there was to be no vulgar rough and tussle fight, but a decisive conflict which would settle forever the question, whether the one or the other was to be master. The common law of the wilderness demanded only, that the parties should be left to settle the question ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... baronial privilege of pit and gallows; and therefore, if the lad was to be executed on my estate, (which I consider as an unhandsome thing, seeing it is in the possession of females, to whom such tragedies cannot be acceptable,) he ought, at common law, to have been delivered up to my bailie, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... they embodied in the book of the Law, that constituted the Magna Charta of the Reformation, a development of a gracious usage of the people. From immemorial antiquity there had been a recognized right of the populace to the natural yield of the soil in every seventh year. This common law they formally re-enacted, in the name of Jehovah, and added to it a provision for the release of ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... Ben Jonson were vagrants, deserving of the stocks; poetry was foolishness; law, politics, and money-making the sole occupations worthy of a masculine and vigorous mind. "For a profound knowledge of the common law of England," says the biographer, "he stands unrivaled. As a judge he was above all suspicion of corruption; yet most men," adds Lord Campbell, "I am afraid, would rather have been Bacon than Coke." We participate in his Lordship's fear. Aware of the lax period ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... gentleman, the English Statutes of Lunacy are famous monuments of legislatorial incapacity: and indeed, as a general rule, if you want justice and wisdom, don't you go to Acts of Parliament, but to the Common Law of England." ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... illustration of the way in which an old vice may become such a great evil in altered circumstances that stern measures have to be taken. Stealing was reprehended in the Ten Commandments, and so was covetousness. Theft was always punishable at common law; but, soon after company promotion became a feature of our commercial life in the latter part of the nineteenth century, firm action had to be taken by the Legislature to protect the public from the effects of a ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.

... quote you against yourself, Bacon, or rather the instinct which taught Bacon, teaches you to discern the invisible common law under the deceitful phenomena ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... In jure continetur, ne quis in administratione constitutus aliquid compararet. Cod. Theod. l. viii. tit. xv. leg. l. This maxim of common law was enforced by a series of edicts (see the remainder of the title) from Constantine to Justin. From this prohibition, which is extended to the meanest officers of the governor, they except only clothes and provisions. The purchase within five years may be recovered; after which on information, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... or vicar had not only an office in the church, but a freehold for life, by the common law, ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... only one of the family who possesses any. She thinks of binding me down to a besotting work," continued he, "but I won't have it. I know what I want! It is independence of thought, bent on the solution of great problems—that is, a wide field to apply my discoveries. But a fixed rule, common law, I could not ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... through any of the intermediate steps, which in late times hath been the constant practice, and little skilled[36] in the nature of government, or the true interests of princes, further than the municipal or common law of England; his abilities, as to foreign affairs, did not equally appear in the council. Some former passages of his life were thought to disqualify him for that office, by which he was to be the guardian of the Queen's ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... ought to restrain and change the course of inheritance by the law of the land; and that he cannot do, no more than if the King wished to (p. 044) give or grant to a man that he should hold his lands after he has entered upon a monastic life, and professed; for such grant would be contrary to the common law of the land, and therefore would be altogether void. So also in this case." To this argument Horton replied, among other points, "I take it that the Apostle may grant to a man to hold three bishoprics ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... become a feminist revolt, for many have not thought out the situation and have not recognized the source of their restrictions. The statutes of some of the Southern States, moreover, still contain many of the old common law restrictions upon women's independence of action. More and more women are asserting themselves, however, and are demanding the right to guide themselves. The negro woman has been held up as the reason for denying the vote to the white woman, but this excuse no longer is accepted willingly. ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson

... known to himself, and in 1842 Judge Irwin came up to hold it. He arrived at Fort Snelling, and found himself in a country which indicated that disputes were more frequently settled with tomahawks than by the principles of the common law. The officers of the fort could give him no information, but in his wanderings he found Mr. Norman W. Kittson, who had a trading house near the Falls of Minnehaha. Kittson knew Clerk Brown, who was then living on ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... prowlers and evil-doers with hang-dog mien who seem to issue from the earth in times of trouble were very much in evidence in the streets. At the Prison of La Force, in the Rue Saint Antoine, the common law criminals had begun a revolt by locking up their keepers. To what public force could appeal be made? The Municipal Guard had been disbanded, the army was confined to barracks; as to the police, no one would have known ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... and a half; It's common to all and fed off by nineteen cows, six ponies, three horses, five asses, two foals, seven pigs, and a calf! Besides a pond in the middle, as is held by a similar sort of common law lease, And contains twenty ducks, six drakes, three ganders, two dead dogs, four drowned kittens, and twelve geese. Of course the green's cropt very close, and does famous for bowling when the little village boys play at cricket; Only some horse, or pig, or cow, or great jackass, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... understood that a man's property cannot be used without his consent. This is an old established principle in common law ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... in London (except one in each University); and no book was to be printed until first seen and perused by the Archbishop of Canterbury or Bishop of London; with an exception in favour of the queen's printer, and books of the common law, which were to be allowed by the Chief Justices and Chief Baron, or one of them. Extensive and arbitrary powers of search for unlicensed books and presses were also given to the wardens of the Stationers' Company. (Strype's Life of Archbishop Whitgift, 222.; Records, No.XXIV.) On the 1st July, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various

... beladied so before. Would evidence of having been called lady More than so many times make me a lady In common law, I wonder." ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost

... the common law,' I said. 'You rebel against the voice of God, which he has made so winning to convince, so imperious to command. Hear it, and how it speaks between us! Your hand clings to mine, your heart leaps at my touch, the unknown elements of which we are compounded awake ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of obesity, is the fact that farinacious and feculaferous matter is the basis of our daily food. We have already said that all animals that live on farinaceous substances become fat; man obeys the common law. ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... 1006. THE COMMON LAW OF ENGLAND has a maxim, that goods, in which no person can claim any property, belong, by his or her prerogative, to the king or queen. Accordingly, those animals, those ferae naturae, which come under the denomination ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... universally beneficent. That a Northern man visiting the South commercially should suppress his convictions adverse to 'the peculiar institution,' and profess to regard it with approval and satisfaction, was a part of the common law of trade—if one were hostile to Slavery, what right had he to be currying favor with planters and their factors, and seeking gain from the products of slave-labor? So queried 'the South;' and, if any answer were possible, that answer would ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... longe dime, now here, in Bennsylfanien's Shtate, All in der down of Horrisburg dere rosed a vierce depate, 'Tween vamilies mit cooses, und dose vhere none vere foundt- If cooses might, by common law, go squanderin' aroundt? ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland

... which may be useful to both of us by and by. The lawyer says also that he does not think that the Court of Chancery would interfere, having no power to do so as far as the will is concerned, and not being able to make a ward of a person like myself who is over age and has the protection of the common law of the country. So it seems to me that the only thing to do is to be patient, and wait until ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... saw, yet they gave the pattern of all that is most enduring in our country to-day. They brought to the wilderness the thinking mind, the printed book, the deep-rooted desire for self-government and the English common law that judges alike the king and the subject, the law on which rests the whole ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller

... feared to use in his writings, lest they should remain forever unknown to all but the inhabitants of a relatively unimportant insular kingdom, is now the speech of two continents. The Common Law which Coke jealously upheld in the southern half of a single European island, is now the law of the land throughout the vast regions of Australasia, and of America north of the Rio Grande. The names of the plays that Shakespeare ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... delighted with academical gratifications; he liked at Cambridge neither the mode of life nor the fashion of study, and lived sullenly on to the time when his attendance on lectures was no longer required. As he intended to profess the common law, he, took no degree. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... "at the first trial, there was no colony or provincial law against witchcraft in force. The statute of James the First must therefore have been considered as in force in the province, witchcraft not being an offence at common law. Before the adjournment, the old colony law, which makes witchcraft a capital offence, was revived with the other local laws, as they were called, and made a law of the province." The General Court, which thus revived the law making witchcraft a capital offence, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... counter theory was that slaves were property not by moral, natural, or common law, but only by state law, that hence freedom, not slavery, was the heart and universal presupposition of our government, and that slavery, not freedom, was bound to show reasons for its existence anywhere. This being so, while Calhoun and Taney ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... under heavens that means," protested Evarts, "I do not know, but it is within the common law of courtesy in the judgment ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... indeed probably, this constitution may be that of the primitive tribe which Romans left to go one way, and Greeks to go another, and Teutons to go a third. The tribe took it with them, as the English take the common law with them, because it was the one kind of polity which they could conceive and act upon; or it may be that the emigrants from the primitive Aryan stock only took with them a good aptitude—an excellent ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... "the male citizens of said state, twenty-one years old and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition, ... except such as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion or for felony at common law." This was the death knell to the idea that the leaders of the Confederacy and their white supporters might be permitted to share in the establishment of the new order. Power was thus arbitrarily thrust into the hands ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... ideas more manifest than in the law of contract. Among other things, here again the so-called primary rights and duties are invested with a mystic significance beyond what can be assigned and explained. The duty to keep a contract at common law means a prediction that you must pay damages if you do not keep it—and nothing else. If you commit a tort, you are liable to pay a compensatory sum. If you commit a contract, you are liable to pay ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... jurisdiction over felonies. Its separate criminal control came to an end in 1777, Such was Bishop Wilson's position as last and sole Baron of Man. Then as head of the Church he had powers over offences which were once called offences against common law. Irregular behaviour, cursing, quarrelling, and drinking, as well as transgressions of the moral code, adultery, seduction, prostitution, and the like, were punishable by the Church and the Church courts. The censures of Bishop Wilson on such ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine

... English common law; for Muslims, Islamic Sharia law supersedes civil law in a number of areas; has ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... is an arbitrary democracy, having no common law, and nothing that we should call a judiciary. Their only laws are made and unmade at the caprice of the legislature, and are as variable as the legislature itself. They pass through the form of sending representatives to the congress ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... Nature is resolved on expressing an encompassing limit; and marking a unity in the whole tree, caused not only by the rising of its branches from a common root, but by their joining in one work, and being bound by a common law. And having ascertained this, let us turn back for a moment to a point in leaf structure which, I doubt not, you must already have observed in your earlier studies, but which it is well to state here, as connected with the unity of the branches in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... the testimony of such a writer as conclusive, though as credulity is sometimes found to be bounded by geographical limits, and to possess something of a national character, it may be prudent to refer certain readers, who dwell in the other hemisphere, to the Common Law of England, on this interesting subject, as it is ingeniously expounded by Keeble and approved by the twelve judges of that highly civilized and enlightened island. With this brief reference to so grave authorities, in support of what we have now to offer, we shall ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... Lord Chancellor, fought Curran, afterwards Master of the Rolls. So much for equity; but common law also sustained its reputation. Clonmel, afterwards Chief Justice, fought two Lords and two Commoners,—to show his impartiality, no doubt. Medge, afterwards Baron, fought his own brother-in-law, and two others. Toler, afterwards ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... otherwise in the matter; for my object was to pay into an office, and not to any official; neither if I had known the fact, could I have seen its bearing upon the receipt of my money. For the King's Exchequer is, meseemeth, of the Common Law; while Chancery is of Equity, and well named for its many chances. But the true result of the thing was this—Lord Jeffreys being now head of the law, and almost head of the kingdom, got possession of that money, and was ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... of Lord Northington, where he praised the House of Lords for "very properly rejecting the bill passed by the Commons declaring general warrants to be illegal, leaving this question to be decided (as it was, satisfactorily) by the Courts of Common Law."] ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... are past, the Gypsies are no longer the independent people they were of yore, - dark, mysterious, and dreaded wanderers, living apart in the deserts and heaths with which England at one time abounded. Gypsy law has given place to common law; but the principle of honour is still recognised amongst them, and base indeed must the Gypsy be who would continue pazorrhus because Gypsy law has become too weak to force him to liquidate a debt ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... condition of married women under the laws of all countries has been essentially that of slaves, until modified in some respects, within the last quarter of a century, in the United States." And again they said: "The change from the old common law of England, in regard to the civil rights of women, from 1848 to the advance legislation in most of the Northern States in 1880, marks an era both in the status of woman as a citizen and in our American system of jurisprudence. ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... and fed with men's flesh, for it devours all that come within the mazes of it and have not a clue to find the way out again. He has as little kindness for the Statute Law as Catholics have for the Scripture, but adores the Common Law as they do tradition, and both for the very same reason; for the Statute Law being certain, written and designed to reform and prevent corruptions and abuses in the affairs of the world (as the Scriptures ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... interposition, the faithful Vaudois were granted the rights of free citizens. But legislation had not yet touched the extraordinary privileges arrogated to itself by the Church. One of these, the Foro ecclesiastico, a special court for the judgment of ecclesiastical offenders against the common law, it was now proposed to abolish. It was a test measure—like throwing down the gauntlet. Cavour had been re-elected when the king dissolved Parliament by what is known as the Proclamation of Moncalieri, and in the debates on the Foro ecclesiastico for the ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... any votes to give. He fixes a standard period of time in his own imagination, (not what the law defines, but merely what the convenience of his client suggests,) by which he would cut off at one stroke all those freedoms which are the dearest privileges of your corporation,—which the Common Law authorizes,—which your magistrates are compelled to grant,—which come duly authenticated into this court,—and are saved in the clearest words, and with the most religious care and tenderness, in that very act of Parliament which was made to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... inheritance, whether a woman was entitled to dower, and the like. The general precepts laid down by canon law in the case of a wife have already been noted. These rules need now to be supplemented by an account of the position of women in marriage under the common law. ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... in Middlesex, Esq; was educated under Dr. Nicholas Grey, in Merchant-Taylor's School, became a gentleman commoner in Pembroke-College in the beginning of 1629, was soon after translated to St. John's College, and after he had taken a degree in arts, to Grey's-Inn, where he studied the common law several years, but other learning more[1]. Mr. Langbaine says, that he could recover no other memoirs of this gentleman, but that he lived in the reign of King Charles the First, and obliged the World with a translation of a play out of Latin called, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... of us who live in Chicago are obliged to confess that last year there were arrested and brought into court fifteen thousand young people under the age of twenty, who had failed to keep even the common law of the land. Most of these young people had broken the law in their blundering efforts to find adventure and in response to the old impulse for self-expression. It is said indeed that practically the whole machinery of the grand jury and of the criminal courts ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... Again, as these laws are contained in a great variety of books, the statutes which relate to the office of a justice of peace making of themselves at least two large volumes in folio; and that part of his jurisdiction which is founded on the common law being dispersed in above a hundred volumes, I cannot conceive how this knowledge should by acquired without reading; and yet certain it is, Mr. Thrasher never read ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... "Pleasant dreams to you always. But what I have quoted was the common law, and so remained until altered by the Revised Statutes, with which no doubt you are ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... as it is necessary to irrigate the soil, unless the season, which is rarely the fact, is favorable in furnishing rains to them. There are no fences to divide one man's possessions from another's; but, by common law, they furnish shepherds to guard their flocks and cattle and keep them from trespassing. The climate is very severe during the winter season, but in the summer it is delightful. The health of this community is ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... to any of the solid elements of his chemistry. The probable answer received will be very little calculated to solve the world's perplexity; since, all hypotheses to the contrary notwithstanding, cometary matter does not appear to possess even the common law of adhesion or of chemical affinity. The reason for it is very simple. And the truth ought long ago to have dawned upon the experimentalists, since our little world (though so repeatedly visited by the hairy and bearded travelers, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various



Words linked to "Common law" :   civil law, case law, jurisprudence, service, law



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