The Market in History (Routledge Revivals) by B.L. Anderson & A.J.H. Latham

Author:B.L. Anderson & A.J.H. Latham [Anderson, B.L. & Latham, A.J.H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317231981
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-04-05T22:00:00+00:00

The common law was the combined wisdom of all men in all ages. It was ‘tried reason, the quintessence of reason’.17

As England was formed into one single, centralised kingdom, much law became common to the entire realm; it became common law. As the king’s judges presided over courts throughout the kingdom, they recognised provincial and customary laws that were common to all the realm, and so made the law common, without in any way making the law itself. Any custom that was common to the whole realm was common law. The rule was, ‘A custome cannot be alleged generally within the kingdom, for that is the common law.’18

Customs, then, came to be one set of laws by which men lived, and the common laws another. Statutes enacted in Parliament framed ‘by the authority of that highest court’, and so ‘the highest and most binding laws’, made up a third set. But these three sets were parts of a whole. In the words agreed by the whole bench of judges,

The law consists of three parts: firstly, common law; secondly, statute law, which corrects, abridges and explains the common law; the third, custom, which takes away the common law: but the common law corrects, allows and disallows both statute law and custom, for if there be repugnancy in statute or unreasonableness in custom, the common law disallows and rejects it.

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