The Legal System of England and Wales

The Legal System of England and Wales

The legal system of England and Wales is the basis of the common law legal system, and stand in opposition to civil law or pluralist systems in other countries.

The development of common law has had a great impact on the English legal system. The English legal system is the original common law system. The common law of England has come out of hundreds of years of development and it was based on the handiwork of the judges. Beginning with the Anglo-Saxon custom (up to 1066), and the impact of the Norman rationalization and centralization of authority.

In the English legal system there are three main sources of law: Case law, national statute law and transnational law. Case law is substantive and procedural rules that have been created by the judiciary through the decisions in the cases they have heard. Statute law refers to law that has been created by the parliament in the form of legislation. Transnational law is the law of European Union, and other international conventions and treaties.

The lack of a written constitution may be the reason for the inconsistency in the English legal system. However, Van Caenegem stated in 1987 that the English legal system is very clear and consistent, because of the simple rule that the Parliament is sovereign. He argued that the parliament was an absolutely sovereign legislature, built on two pillars, firstly no parliament can bind a future parliament, or be bound by a previous one and more importantly that no judge can condemn a law and refuse to apply it on the ground that it is incompatible with the constitution or the fundamental principles of the common law.

It is more usual today to admit that the courts create law, although there are jurisprudential scholars such as Ronald Dworkin who made the argument more complex, by stating that judges evolve the law out from existing principles and constructive interpretation.

Obviously judges will sometimes formulate a new principle, but in most cases this is presented as an outgrowth or clarification of a former principle, rather than a new constitution. In the famous case of Donoghue v Stevenson (1932), the court chew up older cases to articulate the principles of duty of care, which became the foundation of the