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IN THE summer of 2013 British royalists were eagerly awaiting the birth
of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s first child. If the couple had had
a girl instead of bonny Prince George, she would have been the first
daughter to be able to accede to the throne ahead of any younger brothers.
That is thanks to a law enacted in 2011 that changed the rules of royal
succession. The previous law that sons took precedence over older sisters
was never written down, but was instead part of English common law, the
basis of the country’s legal system. But just what is common law, and how
does it differ from the civil-law system used in some other countries?
Today the difference between common and civil legal traditions lies in the
main source of law. Although common-law systems make extensive use of
statutes, judicial cases are regarded as the most important source of law,
which gives judges an active role in developing rules. For example, the
elements needed to prove the crime of murder are contained in case law
rather than defined by statute. To ensure consistency, courts abide by
precedents set by higher courts examining the same issue. In civil-law
systems, by contrast, codes and statutes are designed to cover all
eventualities and judges have a more limited role of applying the law to the
case in hand. Past judgments are no more than loose guides. When it
comes to court cases, judges in civil-law systems tend towards being
investigators, while their peers in common-law systems act as arbiters
between parties that present their arguments.
This first two lines of this piece were updated on December 2nd 2015 to
change tenses and reflect the birth of Prince George.