Common Law

That this right of resistance was recognized as a common law right, when the ancient and genuine trial by jury was in force, is not only proved by the nature of the trial itself, but is acknowledged by history.

The author claims the copyright of this book in England, on Common Law principles, without regard to acts of parliament;

It is perfectly apparent from these statutes, and from the oath administered to the justices, that it was a matter freely confessed by the king himself, that his statutes were of no validity, if contrary to the common law, or “common right.

Only one law, the Common Law, has ever gone forth into the world beyond the narrow seas under or in company with the British flag;

Therefore our lady the Common Law takes, as matter of course, whatever other jurisdictions have left for whatever reason, and keeps it with very little chance of losing it again.

Thus far we have spoken of the Common Law militant, striving with troubles at home and opposed to hostile powers without.

Consider, again, the nature of one only of the many irrational restrictions placed by the common law upon the admissibility of evidence.

If they demurred to the introduction of wide reforms, their hesitation was due in part to the sound conviction that fixity of law is the necessary condition for the maintenance of individual rights and of personal liberty.

Landowners, for example, made free use of spring-guns and man-traps;

The same policy had a further result in facilitating the growth of a body of common law, uniform throughout the length and breadth of England, opposed to the varying usages of localities and individual baronial courts.

Neither parks nor warrens were protected by the forest law, but by that part of the common law which related to theft and trespass.

The operation of the common law is, of course, no longer excluded from their confines, the old antithesis between forest law and the law of England being a thing of the past.

The customary law of all countries which have not included their law in Codes, and specially the English Common law, have often had an origin claimed for them independently of the Sovereign, and theories have been propounded on the subject which Austin scouts as mysterious and unintelligible.

The great maxim by which objections to it are disposed of is, as I have so often said before, ‘What the Sovereign permits, he commands.

Whereas, if the Common Law rights of inventors were acknowledged, it would be the duty of courts to recognize the sufficiency of a specification, if it described the invention with such general accuracy, as to put second persons reasonably on their guard against infringing it.

But I mean that there has existed in England a self-constituted, and unconstitutional legislative power, which has arbitrarily assumed the prerogative of setting aside the Common Law, or law of nature, and setting up its own will in its stead.

Now, I do not cite these opinions of judges as any proof at all, that the Common Law recognizes a man’s right of property in his inventions.

But, though much is obscure in the beginnings of what we Englishmen call the Common Law, it was undoubtedly in the main a version of Germanic usage, generalised by the King’s courts and justices.

Whence follows the taking Commissions in their own Courts and Consistories, and where else they sit in matters determinable of right at Common Law, the putting of ministers upon parishes, without the patron’s and people’s consent.

Nay more, I would fain sum up in this slight token the brotherhood that subsists, and we trust ever shall, between all true followers of the Common Law here and on your side of the water;

These lie wholly outside the common law forms of action and all classifications founded upon them.

A tort is an act or omission giving rise, in virtue of the common law jurisdiction of the Court, to a civil remedy which is not an action of contract.