English Law Vs Common Law

Not all systems are the same, and they don 't use the same modus operandi to solve the same cases or even different ones. To go in depth we have the Anglo-Saxon system (Common Law), completely different to the Spanish system (Civil Law), where the Common Law System has a lack of things that the latter doesn 't, and vice versa, like a written Constitution, for example.

First of all, I 'm going to explain what the Anglo-Saxon (Common Law) system means and how it is used.

Common Law has two different meanings, one of them is the part of the English legal system contrasted to Equity, and the other one is the Case Law derived from English Law, contrasted to Civil Law as Continental Law (which is a legal system directly derived from Roman Law and

As I said before, the Act would be the most important source of the law, while the Constitution would the most important codified system.

On the other part, we have the Anglo-Saxon system which is applied in some countries that were part of the English colonies, including the United States. In the United Kingdom, for example, it is only used in Northern Ireland, England, and Wales, while Scotland has a Mixed Civil/Common Law System.

This system in the United Kingdom is based on some different characteristics like not having a written Constitution, or not having either a basic rule that determines how the other rules must be done. Their system is mostly based on Case Law, where they use it to solve their legislation problems, which is actually a consequence of not having a written Constitution as Spain does. Meanwhile, in Spain, Case Law is mostly used just as a complementary way of solving cases.

Now that we know the meaning of the Anglo-Saxon system and its characteristics, we can compare this one to the Spanish system of sources of law and the force of the

There was a judge called Federico de Castro who defined the concept "sources of law" as this:

"We can only call the source of law to the power of dictating a binding regulation for everybody".

Even though this definition is completed at all, Federico de Castro had to deal with the idea of the force of the precedent thanks to it. He explained that the doctrine of the Superior had to act like a guide and a model when interpreting the law, the custom and the general principles of the law; the three principal division of sources of law.

Another important thing it has to be mentioned is that the concept jurisprudence isn 't at all a source of law but it complemented the legal system.

The last trait we 're going to mention is the perception that we have of the Common Law because plenty of times there 's a confusion between the concepts Case Law, the principle of stare decisis and the doctrine of the strong attachment to the precedent. It 's a huge mistake to confuse them or even relate them because they have no possible correlation between them, they 're different concepts that shouldn 't be confused. Case Law is the law based on individual decisions, it doesn 't have to include the principle of stare decisis, which pretends to be a rational action, to keep the same opinion, not changing it