The first requirement of a sound body of law is, that it should correspond with the actual feelings and demands of the community, whether right or wrong.
Common Law Quotes
As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of “self-defense.” In a sense this is a false issue, for the right to defend one’s home and one’s person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.
The common law is nothing else but statutes worn out by time.
The unwritten law – the “common law.”
Things which restrict the common are to be interpreted rigidly.
We ourselves of the present age, chose our common law, and consented to the most ancient Acts of Parliament, for we lived in our ancestors 1,000 years ago, and those ancestors are still living in us.
Churchill never minded contemplating the mystery of death. Once a friend inquired: “What makes you think you will reach the bar of Heaven?” He interjected with solemn assurance: “Surely the Almighty must observe the principles of English common law and consider a man innocent until proven guilty.”
Its (The common law’s) origin… is as undiscoverable as the Head of the Nile.
(Common law) stands as a monument slowly raised, like a coral reef, from the minute accretions of past individuals, of whom each built upon the relics which his predecessors left, and in his turn left a foundation upon which his successors might work.
