Speakur

Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

common law

Word Rarity Common

Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.01 in modern English

Syllables
com-mon law
IPA
18
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

Law developed by judges, courts, and agency adjudicatory tribunals, through their decisions and opinions (also called case law) (as opposed to statutes promulgated by legislatures, and regulations promulgated by the executive branch).

Uncountable

noun

Legal system mainly in England and its former colonies with a heavy emphasis on judge-made law, doctrines deduced by casuistry rather than from general principles, and law distributed among judicial decisions rather than codified statutes (as opposed to civil law).

Uncountable

noun

Body of law and procedure administered in certain courts (known as law courts) in England and its former colonies characterized by a rigid system of writs, with a limited set of remedies (as opposed to equity or admiralty).

Uncountable

noun

Law of general application throughout a country, province, or state as opposed to law having only a special or local application

Uncountable

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English comun lawe, comune lawe (“general law, common law”), from comun (“shared, universal”) + lawe (“law”), referring to the law's uniform nature throughout a jurisdiction. Compare Medieval Latin lex commūne, iūs commūne and Anglo-Norman commune lei.

Origin

Word Breakdown

Usage

Inflected Forms

common-law (alternative, attributive)

Phrases

common-law marriage

Frequently Paired Words

admiralty canon law civil law constitutional law delegated legislation ecclesiastical law equity regulatory law

Synonyms

case law decisional law judge-made law jus commune precedential law precedent

Questions

What does common law mean?
Law developed by judges, courts, and agency adjudicatory tribunals, through their decisions and opinions (also called case law) (as opposed to statutes promulgated by legislatures, and regulations promulgated by the executive branch).
Where does common law come from?
It is traced to Middle English.

How to pronounce common law

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