As distinguished from law created by the enactment of legislatures, the common COMMON LAW 227 COMMON PLEAS law comprises the body of those principles and rules of action, relating to the government and security of persons and property, which derive their authority solely from usages and customs of immemorial antiquity, or from the judgments and decrees of the courts recognizing, affirming, and enforcing such usages and customs; and, in this sense, particularly the ancient unwritten law of England. Western Union Tel. Co. v. Call Pub. Co., 181 U. S. 92, 21 Sup. Ct. 5G1, 45 L. Ed. 7G5; State v. Buchanan, 5 Har. & J. (Md.) 3G5, 9 Am. Dec. 534; Lux v. Ilaggin, G9 Cal. 255, 10 Pac. G74; Barry v. Port Jervis, 64 App. Div. 268, 72 N. Y. Supp. 104. 3.
As distinguished from equity law, it is a body of rules and principles, written or unwritten, which are of fixed and immutable authority, and which must be applied to controversies rigorously and in their entirety, and cannot be modified to suit the peculiarities of a specific case, or colored by any judicial discretion, and which rests confessedly upon custom or statute, as distinguished from any claim to ethical superiority. Klever v. Seawall, 65 Fed. 395, 12 C. C. A. 661. 4.
As distinguished from ecclesiastical law, it is the system of jurisprudence administered by the purely secular tribunals. 5. As concerns its force and authority in the United States, the phrase designates that portion of the common law of England (including such acts of parliament as were applicable) which had been adopted and was in force here at the time of the Revolution. This, so far as it has not since been expressly abrogated, is recognized as an organic part of the jurisprudence of most of the United States. Browning v. Browning, 3 N. M. 371, 9 Pac. 677; Guardians of Poor v. Greene, 5 Bin. (Pa.) 557; U. S. v. New Bedford Bridge, 27 Fed. Cas. 107. 6.
“Every citizen & freeman is endowed with certain rights & privileges to enjoy which no written law or statute is required. These are the fundamental or natural rights, recognized among all free people.“ U.S. v. Morris, 125 F 322, 325.
“This law of nature, being coeval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.” Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769) at number 41,Sir William Blackstone
“When in the Course of human events, itbecomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” US Declaration of Independence (1776)