title: Common law

text: Under the modern view, "common law" is not grounded in "custom" or "ancient usage", but rather acquires force of law instantly (without the delay implied by the term "custom" or "ancient") when pronounced by a higher court, because and to the extent the proposition is stated in judicial opinion. From the earliest times through the late 19th century, the dominant theory was that the common law was a pre-existent law or system of rules, a social standard of justice that existed in the habits, customs, and thoughts of the people. Under this older view, the legal profession considered it no part of a judge's duty to make new or change existing law, but only to expound and apply the old. By the early 20th century, largely at the urging of Oliver Wendell Holmes (as discussed throughout this article), this view had fallen into the minority view: Holmes pointed out that the older view worked undesirable and unjust results, and hampered a proper development of the law. In the century since Holmes, the dominant understanding has been that common law "decisions are themselves law, or rather the rules which the courts lay down in making the decisions constitute law". Holmes wrote in a 1917 opinion, "The common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky, but the articulate voice of some sovereign or quasi sovereign that can be identified." Among legal professionals (lawyers and judges), the change in understanding occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (as explained later in this article), though lay (non-legal) dictionaries were decades behind in recognizing the change.


title: Common law

text: The reality of the modern view, and implausibility of the old "ancient unwritten universal custom" view, can be seen in practical operation: under the pre-1870 view, (a) the "common law" should have been absolutely static over centuries (but it evolved), (b) jurisdictions could not logically diverge from each other (but nonetheless did and do today), (c) a new decision logically needed to operate retroactively (but did not), and (d) there was no standard to decide which English medieval customs should be "law" and which should not. All five tensions resolve under the modern view: (a) the common law evolved to meet the needs of the times ("e.g.", trial by combat passed out of the law very early), (b) the common law in different jurisdictions may diverge, (c) new decisions may (but need not) have retroactive operation, and (d) court decisions are effective immediately as they are issued, not years later, or after they become "custom", and questions of what "custom" might have been at some "ancient" time are simply irrelevant.


title: Common law

text: People using pseudolegal tactics and arguments have frequently claimed to base themselves on common law; notably, the radical anti-government sovereign citizens and freemen on the land movements, who deny the legitimacy of their countries' legal systems, base their beliefs on idiosyncratic interpretations of common law. "Common law" has also been used as an alibi by groups such as the far-right American Patriot movement for setting up kangaroo courts in order to conduct vigilante actions or intimidate their opponents.


title: Common law

text: In a common law jurisdiction several stages of research and analysis are required to determine "what the law is" in a given situation. First, one must ascertain the facts. Then, one must locate any relevant statutes and cases. Then one must extract the principles, analogies and statements by various courts of what they consider important to determine how the next court is likely to rule on the facts of the present case. Later decisions, and decisions of higher courts or legislatures carry more weight than earlier cases and those of lower courts. Finally, one integrates all the lines drawn and reasons given, and determines "what the law is". Then, one applies that law to the facts.


title: Common law

text: In practice, common law systems are considerably more complicated than the simplified system described above. The decisions of a court are binding only in a particular jurisdiction, and even within a given jurisdiction, some courts have more power than others. For example, in most jurisdictions, decisions by appellate courts are binding on lower courts in the same jurisdiction, and on future decisions of the same appellate court, but decisions of lower courts are only non-binding persuasive authority. Interactions between common law, constitutional law, statutory law and regulatory law also give rise to considerable complexity.


title: Common law

text: Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. cautioned that "the proper derivation of general principles in both common and constitutional law ... arise gradually, in the emergence of a consensus from a multitude of particularized prior decisions." Justice Cardozo noted the "common law does not work from pre-established truths of universal and inflexible validity to conclusions derived from them deductively", but "[i]ts method is inductive, and it draws its generalizations from particulars".


title: Common law

text: The common law is more malleable than statutory law. First, common law courts are not absolutely bound by precedent, but can (when extraordinarily good reason is shown) reinterpret and revise the law, without legislative intervention, to adapt to new trends in political, legal and social philosophy. Second, the common law evolves through a series of gradual steps, that gradually works out all the details, so that over a decade or more, the law can change substantially but without a sharp break, thereby reducing disruptive effects. In contrast to common law incrementalism, the legislative process is very difficult to get started, as legislatures tend to delay action until a situation is intolerable. For these reasons, legislative changes tend to be large, jarring and disruptive (sometimes positively, sometimes negatively, and sometimes with unintended consequences).


title: Common law

text: One example of the gradual change that typifies evolution of the common law is the gradual change in liability for negligence. The traditional common law rule through most of the 19th century was that a plaintiff could not recover for a defendant's negligent production or distribution of a harmful instrumentality unless the two were in privity of contract. Thus, only the immediate purchaser could recover for a product defect, and if a part was built up out of parts from parts manufacturers, the ultimate buyer could not recover for injury caused by a defect in the part. In an 1842 English case, "Winterbottom v. Wright", the postal service had contracted with Wright to maintain its coaches. Winterbottom was a driver for the post. When the coach failed and injured Winterbottom, he sued Wright. The "Winterbottom" court recognized that there would be "absurd and outrageous consequences" if an injured person could sue any person peripherally involved, and knew it had to draw a line somewhere, a limit on the causal connection between the negligent conduct and the injury. The court looked to the contractual relationships, and held that liability would only flow as far as the person in immediate contract ("privity") with the negligent party.


title: Common law

text: A first exception to this rule arose in 1852, in the case of "Thomas v. Winchester", when New York's highest court held that mislabeling a poison as an innocuous herb, and then selling the mislabeled poison through a dealer who would be expected to resell it, put "human life in imminent danger". "Thomas" relied on this reason to create an exception to the "privity" rule. In 1909, New York held in "Statler v. Ray Mfg. Co." that a coffee urn manufacturer was liable to a person injured when the urn exploded, because the urn "was of such a character inherently that, when applied to the purposes for which it was designed, it was liable to become a source of great danger to many people if not carefully and properly constructed".


title: Common law

text: Yet the privity rule survived. In "Cadillac Motor Car Co. v. Johnson" (decided in 1915 by the federal appeals court for New York and several neighboring states), the court held that a car owner could not recover for injuries from a defective wheel, when the automobile owner had a contract only with the automobile dealer and not with the manufacturer, even though there was "no question that the wheel was made of dead and 'dozy' wood, quite insufficient for its purposes." The "Cadillac" court was willing to acknowledge that the case law supported exceptions for "an article dangerous in its nature or likely to become so in the course of the ordinary usage to be contemplated by the vendor". However, held the "Cadillac" court, "one who manufactures articles dangerous only if defectively made, or installed, e.g., tables, chairs, pictures or mirrors hung on the walls, carriages, automobiles, and so on, is not liable to third parties for injuries caused by them, except in case of willful injury or fraud,"


title: Common law

text: Finally, in the famous case of "MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co.", in 1916, Judge Benjamin Cardozo for New York's highest court pulled a broader principle out of these predecessor cases. The facts were almost identical to "Cadillac" a year earlier: a wheel from a wheel manufacturer was sold to Buick, to a dealer, to MacPherson, and the wheel failed, injuring MacPherson. Judge Cardozo held:


title: Common law

text: Cardozo's new "rule" exists in no prior case, but is inferrable as a synthesis of the "thing of danger" principle stated in them, merely extending it to "foreseeable danger" even if "the purposes for which it was designed" were not themselves "a source of great danger". "MacPherson" takes some care to present itself as foreseeable progression, not a wild departure. Cardozo continues to adhere to the original principle of "Winterbottom", that "absurd and outrageous consequences" must be avoided, and he does so by drawing a new line in the last sentence quoted above: "There must be knowledge of a danger, not merely possible, but probable." But while adhering to the underlying principle that "some" boundary is necessary, "MacPherson" overruled the prior common law by rendering the formerly dominant factor in the boundary, that is, the privity formality arising out of a contractual relationship between persons, totally irrelevant. Rather, the most important factor in the boundary would be the nature of the thing sold and the foreseeable uses that downstream purchasers would make of the thing.


title: Common law

text: The example of the evolution of the law of negligence in the preceding paragraphs illustrates two crucial principles: (a) The common law evolves, this evolution is in the hands of judges, and judges have "made law" for hundreds of years. (b) The reasons given for a decision are often more important in the long run than the outcome in a particular case. This is the reason that judicial opinions are usually quite long, and give rationales and policies that can be balanced with judgment in future cases, rather than the bright-line rules usually embodied in statutes.


title: Common law

text: All law systems rely on written publication of the law, so that it is accessible to all. Common law decisions are published in law reports for use by lawyers, courts and the general public.


title: Common law

text: After the American Revolution, Massachusetts became the first state to establish an official Reporter of Decisions. As newer states needed law, they often looked first to the Massachusetts Reports for authoritative precedents as a basis for their own common law. The United States federal courts relied on private publishers until after the Civil War, and only began publishing as a government function in 1874. West Publishing in Minnesota is the largest private-sector publisher of law reports in the United States. Government publishers typically issue only decisions "in the raw," while private sector publishers often add indexing, including references to the key principles of the common law involved, editorial analysis, and similar finding aids.


title: Common law

text: In common law legal systems, the common law is crucial to understanding almost all important areas of law. For example, in England and Wales, in English Canada, and in most states of the United States, the basic law of contracts, torts and property do not exist in statute, but only in common law (though there may be isolated modifications enacted by statute). As another example, the Supreme Court of the United States in 1877, held that a Michigan statute that established rules for solemnization of marriages did not abolish pre-existing common-law marriage, because the statute did not affirmatively require statutory solemnization and was silent as to preexisting common law.


title: Common law

text: In almost all areas of the law (even those where there is a statutory framework, such as contracts for the sale of goods, or the criminal law), legislature-enacted statutes or agency-promulgated regulations generally give only terse statements of general principle, and the fine boundaries and definitions exist only in the interstitial common law. To find out what the precise law is that applies to a particular set of facts, one has to locate precedential decisions on the topic, and reason from those decisions by analogy.


title: Common law

text: In common law jurisdictions (in the sense opposed to "civil law"), legislatures operate under the assumption that statutes will be interpreted against the backdrop of the pre-existing common law. As the United States Supreme Court explained in "United States v Texas", 507 U.S. 529 (1993):


title: Common law

text: For example, in most U.S. states, the criminal statutes are primarily codification of pre-existing common law. (Codification is the process of enacting a statute that collects and restates pre-existing law in a single document—when that pre-existing law is common law, the common law remains relevant to the interpretation of these statutes.) In reliance on this assumption, modern statutes often leave a number of terms and fine distinctions unstated—for example, a statute might be very brief, leaving the precise definition of terms unstated, under the assumption that these fine distinctions would be resolved in the future by the courts based upon what they then understand to be the pre-existing common law. (For this reason, many modern American law schools teach the common law of crime as it stood in England in 1789, because that centuries-old English common law is a necessary foundation to interpreting modern criminal statutes.)


title: Common law

text: With the transition from English law, which had common law crimes, to the new legal system under the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited "ex post facto" laws at both the federal and state level, the question was raised whether there could be common law crimes in the United States. It was settled in the case of "United States v. Hudson", which decided that federal courts had no jurisdiction to define new common law crimes, and that there must always be a (constitutional) statute defining the offense and the penalty for it.


title: Common law

text: Still, many states retain selected common law crimes. For example, in Virginia, the definition of the conduct that constitutes the crime of robbery exists only in the common law, and the robbery statute only sets the punishment. Virginia Code section 1-200 establishes the continued existence and vitality of common law principles and provides that "The common law of England, insofar as it is not repugnant to the principles of the Bill of Rights and Constitution of this Commonwealth, shall continue in full force within the same, and be the rule of decision, except as altered by the General Assembly."


title: Common law

text: By contrast to statutory codification of common law, some statutes displace common law, for example to create a new cause of action that did not exist in the common law, or to legislatively overrule the common law. An example is the tort of wrongful death, which allows certain persons, usually a spouse, child or estate, to sue for damages on behalf of the deceased. There is no such tort in English common law; thus, any jurisdiction that lacks a wrongful death statute will not allow a lawsuit for the wrongful death of a loved one. Where a wrongful death statute exists, the compensation or other remedy available is limited to the remedy specified in the statute (typically, an upper limit on the amount of damages). Courts generally interpret statutes that create new causes of action narrowly—that is, limited to their precise terms—because the courts generally recognize the legislature as being supreme in deciding the reach of judge-made law unless such statute should violate some "second order" constitutional law provision ("cf". judicial activism). This principle is applied more strongly in fields of commercial law (contracts and the like) where predictability is of relatively higher value, and less in torts, where courts recognize a greater responsibility to "do justice."


title: Common law

text: Where a tort is rooted in common law, all traditionally recognized damages for that tort may be sued for, whether or not there is mention of those damages in the current statutory law. For instance, a person who sustains bodily injury through the negligence of another may sue for medical costs, pain, suffering, loss of earnings or earning capacity, mental and/or emotional distress, loss of quality of life, disfigurement and more. These damages need not be set forth in statute as they already exist in the tradition of common law. However, without a wrongful death statute, most of them are extinguished upon death.


title: Common law

text: In the United States, the power of the federal judiciary to review and invalidate unconstitutional acts of the federal executive branch is stated in the constitution, Article III sections 1 and 2: "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. ... The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority..." The first landmark decision on "the judicial power" was "Marbury v. Madison", . Later cases interpreted the "judicial power" of Article III to establish the power of federal courts to consider or overturn any action of Congress or of any state that conflicts with the Constitution.


title: Common law

text: The interactions between decisions of different courts is discussed further in the article on precedent. Further interactions between common law and either statute or regulation are discussed further in the articles on "Skidmore" deference, "Chevron" deference, and "Auer" deference.


title: Common law

text: The United States federal courts are divided into twelve regional circuits, each with a circuit court of appeals (plus a thirteenth, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which hears appeals in patent cases and cases against the federal government, without geographic limitation). Decisions of one circuit court are binding on the district courts within the circuit and on the circuit court itself, but are only persuasive authority on sister circuits. District court decisions are not binding precedent at all, only persuasive.


title: Common law

text: Most of the U.S. federal courts of appeal have adopted a rule under which, in the event of any conflict in decisions of panels (most of the courts of appeal almost always sit in panels of three), the earlier panel decision is controlling, and a panel decision may only be overruled by the court of appeals sitting "en banc" (that is, all active judges of the court) or by a higher court. In these courts, the older decision remains controlling when an issue comes up the third time.


title: Common law

text: Other courts, for example, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and the Supreme Court, always sit "en banc", and thus the "later" decision controls. These courts essentially overrule all previous cases in each new case, and older cases survive only to the extent they do not conflict with newer cases. The interpretations of these courts—for example, Supreme Court interpretations of the constitution or federal statutes—are stable only so long as the older interpretation maintains the support of a majority of the court. Older decisions persist through some combination of belief that the old decision is right, and that it is not sufficiently wrong to be overruled.


title: Common law

text: In the jurisdictions of England and Wales and of Northern Ireland, since 2009, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has the authority to overrule and unify criminal law decisions of lower courts; it is the final court of appeal for civil law cases in all three of the UK jurisdictions but not for criminal law cases in Scotland. From 1966 to 2009, this power lay with the House of Lords, granted by the Practice Statement of 1966.


title: Common law

text: Canada's federal system, described below, avoids regional variability of federal law by giving national jurisdiction to both layers of appellate courts.


title: Common law

text: The reliance on judicial opinion is a strength of common law systems, and is a significant contributor to the robust commercial systems in the United Kingdom and United States. Because there is reasonably precise guidance on almost every issue, parties (especially commercial parties) can predict whether a proposed course of action is likely to be lawful or unlawful, and have some assurance of consistency. As Justice Brandeis famously expressed it, "in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right." This ability to predict gives more freedom to come close to the boundaries of the law. For example, many commercial contracts are more economically efficient, and create greater wealth, because the parties know ahead of time that the proposed arrangement, though perhaps close to the line, is almost certainly legal. Newspapers, taxpayer-funded entities with some religious affiliation, and political parties can obtain fairly clear guidance on the boundaries within which their freedom of expression rights apply.


title: Common law

text: In contrast, in jurisdictions with very weak respect for precedent, fine questions of law are redetermined anew each time they arise, making consistency and prediction more difficult, and procedures far more protracted than necessary because parties cannot rely on written statements of law as reliable guides. In jurisdictions that do not have a strong allegiance to a large body of precedent, parties have less "a priori" guidance (unless the written law is very clear and kept updated) and must often leave a bigger "safety margin" of unexploited opportunities, and final determinations are reached only after far larger expenditures on legal fees by the parties.


title: Common law

text: This is the reason for the frequent choice of the law of the State of New York in commercial contracts, even when neither entity has extensive contacts with New York—and remarkably often even when neither party has contacts with the United States. Commercial contracts almost always include a "choice of law clause" to reduce uncertainty. Somewhat surprisingly, contracts throughout the world (for example, contracts involving parties in Japan, France and Germany, and from most of the other states of the United States) often choose the law of New York, even where the relationship of the parties and transaction to New York is quite attenuated. Because of its history as the United States' commercial center, New York common law has a depth and predictability not (yet) available in any other jurisdictions of the United States. Similarly, American corporations are often formed under Delaware corporate law, and American contracts relating to corporate law issues (merger and acquisitions of companies, rights of shareholders, and so on.) include a Delaware choice of law clause, because of the deep body of law in Delaware on these issues. On the other hand, some other jurisdictions have sufficiently developed bodies of law so that parties have no real motivation to choose the law of a foreign jurisdiction (for example, England and Wales, and the state of California), but not yet so fully developed that parties with no relationship to the jurisdiction choose that law. Outside the United States, parties that are in different jurisdictions from each other often choose the law of England and Wales, particularly when the parties are each in former British colonies and members of the Commonwealth. The common theme in all cases is that commercial parties seek predictability and simplicity in their contractual relations, and frequently choose the law of a common law jurisdiction with a well-developed body of common law to achieve that result.


title: Common law

text: Likewise, for litigation of commercial disputes arising out of unpredictable torts (as opposed to the prospective choice of law clauses in contracts discussed in the previous paragraph), certain jurisdictions attract an unusually high fraction of cases, because of the predictability afforded by the depth of decided cases. For example, London is considered the pre-eminent centre for litigation of admiralty cases.


title: Common law

text: This is not to say that common law is better in every situation. For example, civil law can be clearer than case law when the legislature has had the foresight and diligence to address the precise set of facts applicable to a particular situation. For that reason, civil law statutes tend to be somewhat more detailed than statutes written by common law legislatures—but, conversely, that tends to make the statute more difficult to read (the United States tax code is an example).


title: Common law

text: The common lawso named because it was "common" to all the king's courts across Englandoriginated in the practices of the courts of the English kings in the centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066. Prior to the Norman Conquest, much of England's legal business took place in the local folk courts of its various shires and hundreds. A variety of other individual courts also existed across the land: urban boroughs and merchant fairs held their own courts, as did the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and large landholders also held their own manorial and seigniorial courts as needed. The degree to which common law drew from earlier Anglo-Saxon traditions such as the jury, ordeals, the penalty of outlawry, and writs all of which were incorporated into the Norman common law is still a subject of much discussion. Additionally, the Catholic Church operated its own court system that adjudicated issues of canon law.


title: Common law

text: The main sources for the history of the common law in the Middle Ages are the plea rolls and the Year Books. The plea rolls, which were the official court records for the Courts of Common Pleas and King's Bench, were written in Latin. The rolls were made up in bundles by law term: Hilary, Easter, Trinity, and Michaelmas, or winter, spring, summer, and autumn. They are currently deposited in the UK National Archives, by whose permission images of the rolls for the Courts of Common Pleas, King's Bench, and Exchequer of Pleas, from the 13th century to the 17th, can be viewed online at the Anglo-American Legal Tradition site (The O'Quinn Law Library of the University of Houston Law Center).


title: Common law

text: The doctrine of precedent developed during the 12th and 13th centuries, as the collective judicial decisions that were based in tradition, custom and precedent.


title: Common law

text: The form of reasoning used in common law is known as casuistry or case-based reasoning. The common law, as applied in civil cases (as distinct from criminal cases), was devised as a means of compensating someone for wrongful acts known as torts, including both intentional torts and torts caused by negligence, and as developing the body of law recognizing and regulating contracts. The type of procedure practiced in common law courts is known as the adversarial system; this is also a development of the common law.


title: Common law

text: In 1154, Henry II became the first Plantagenet king. Among many achievements, Henry institutionalized common law by creating a unified system of law "common" to the country through incorporating and elevating local custom to the national, ending local control and peculiarities, eliminating arbitrary remedies and reinstating a jury system—citizens sworn on oath to investigate reliable criminal accusations and civil claims. The jury reached its verdict through evaluating common local knowledge, not necessarily through the presentation of evidence, a distinguishing factor from today's civil and criminal court systems.


title: Common law

text: At the time, royal government centered on the "Curia Regis" (king's court), the body of aristocrats and prelates who assisted in the administration of the realm and the ancestor of Parliament, the Star Chamber, and Privy Council. Henry II developed the practice of sending judges (numbering around 20 to 30 in the 1180s) from his Curia Regis to hear the various disputes throughout the country, and return to the court thereafter. The king's itinerant justices would generally receive a writ or commission under the great seal. They would then resolve disputes on an ad hoc basis according to what they interpreted the customs to be. The king's judges would then return to London and often discuss their cases and the decisions they made with the other judges. These decisions would be recorded and filed. In time, a rule, known as "stare decisis" (also commonly known as precedent) developed, whereby a judge would be bound to follow the decision of an earlier judge; he was required to adopt the earlier judge's interpretation of the law and apply the same principles promulgated by that earlier judge if the two cases had similar facts to one another. Once judges began to regard each other's decisions to be binding precedent, the pre-Norman system of local customs and law varying in each locality was replaced by a system that was (at least in theory, though not always in practice) common throughout the whole country, hence the name "common law".


title: Common law

text: The king's object was to preserve public order, but providing law and order was also extremely profitable–cases on forest use as well as fines and forfeitures can generate "great treasure" for the government. Eyres (a Norman French word for judicial circuit, originating from Latin "iter") are more than just courts; they would supervise local government, raise revenue, investigate crimes, and enforce feudal rights of the king. There were complaints that the "eyre" of 1198 reducing the kingdom to poverty and Cornishmen fleeing to escape the eyre of 1233.


title: Common law

text: Henry II's creation of a powerful and unified court system, which curbed somewhat the power of canonical (church) courts, brought him (and England) into conflict with the church, most famously with Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The murder of the Archbishop gave rise to a wave of popular outrage against the King. International pressure on Henry grew, and in May 1172 he negotiated a settlement with the papacy in which the King swore to go on crusade as well as effectively overturned the more controversial clauses of the Constitutions of Clarendon. Henry nevertheless continued to exert influence in any ecclesiastical case which interested him and royal power was exercised more subtly with considerable success.


title: Common law

text: The English Court of Common Pleas was established after Magna Carta to try lawsuits between commoners in which the monarch had no interest. Its judges sat in open court in the Great Hall of the king's Palace of Westminster, permanently except in the vacations between the four terms of the Legal year.


title: Common law

text: Judge-made common law operated as the primary source of law for several hundred years, before Parliament acquired legislative powers to create statutory law. It is important to understand that common law is the older and more traditional source of law, and legislative power is simply a layer applied on top of the older common law foundation. Since the 12th century, courts have had parallel and co-equal authority to make law—"legislating from the bench" is a traditional and essential function of courts, which was carried over into the U.S. system as an essential component of the "judicial power" specified by Article III of the U.S. Constitution. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. summarized centuries of history in 1917, "judges do and must legislate." There are legitimate debates on how the powers of courts and legislatures should be balanced. However, the view that courts lack law-making power is historically inaccurate and constitutionally unsupportable.


title: Common law

text: In England, judges have devised a number of rules as to how to deal with precedent decisions. The early development of case-law in the thirteenth century has been traced to Bracton's "On the Laws and Customs of England" and led to the yearly compilations of court cases known as Year Books, of which the first extant was published in 1268, the same year that Bracton died. The Year Books are known as the law reports of medieval England, and are a principal source for knowledge of the developing legal doctrines, concepts, and methods in the period from the 13th to the 16th centuries, when the common law developed into recognizable form.


title: Common law

text: The term "common law" is often used as a contrast to Roman-derived "civil law", and the fundamental processes and forms of reasoning in the two are quite different. Nonetheless, there has been considerable cross-fertilization of ideas, while the two traditions and sets of foundational principles remain distinct.


title: Common law

text: By the time of the rediscovery of the Roman law in Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries, the common law had already developed far enough to prevent a Roman law reception as it occurred on the continent. However, the first common law scholars, most notably Glanvill and Bracton, as well as the early royal common law judges, had been well accustomed with Roman law. Often, they were clerics trained in the Roman canon law. One of the first and throughout its history one of the most significant treatises of the common law, Bracton's "De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae" (On the Laws and Customs of England), was heavily influenced by the division of the law in Justinian's "Institutes". The impact of Roman law had decreased sharply after the age of Bracton, but the Roman divisions of actions into "in rem" (typically, actions against a "thing" or property for the purpose of gaining title to that property; must be filed in a court where the property is located) and "in personam" (typically, actions directed against a person; these can affect a person's rights and, since a person often owns things, his property too) used by Bracton had a lasting effect and laid the groundwork for a return of Roman law structural concepts in the 18th and 19th centuries. Signs of this can be found in Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England", and Roman law ideas regained importance with the revival of academic law schools in the 19th century. As a result, today, the main systematic divisions of the law into property, contract, and tort (and to some extent unjust enrichment) can be found in the civil law as well as in the common law.


title: Common law

text: The first attempt at a comprehensive compilation of centuries of common law was by Lord Chief Justice Edward Coke, in his treatise, "Institutes of the Lawes of England" in the 17th century.


title: Common law

text: The next definitive historical treatise on the common law is "Commentaries on the Laws of England", written by Sir William Blackstone and first published in 1765–1769.


title: Common law

text: A reception statute is a statutory law adopted as a former British colony becomes independent, by which the new nation adopts (i.e. receives) pre-independence common law, to the extent not explicitly rejected by the legislative body or constitution of the new nation. Reception statutes generally consider the English common law dating prior to independence, and the precedent originating from it, as the default law, because of the importance of using an extensive and predictable body of law to govern the conduct of citizens and businesses in a new state. All U.S. states, with the partial exception of Louisiana, have either implemented reception statutes or adopted the common law by judicial opinion.


title: Common law

text: Other examples of reception statutes in the United States, the states of the U.S., Canada and its provinces, and Hong Kong, are discussed in the reception statute article.


title: Common law

text: Yet, adoption of the common law in the newly independent nation was not a foregone conclusion, and was controversial. Immediately after the American Revolution, there was widespread distrust and hostility to anything British, and the common law was no exception. Jeffersonians decried lawyers and their common law tradition as threats to the new republic. The Jeffersonians preferred a legislatively enacted civil law under the control of the political process, rather than the common law developed by judges that—by design—were insulated from the political process. The Federalists believed that the common law was the birthright of Independence: after all, the natural rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" were the rights protected by common law. Even advocates for the common law approach noted that it was not an ideal fit for the newly independent colonies: judges and lawyers alike were severely hindered by a lack of printed legal materials. Before Independence, the most comprehensive law libraries had been maintained by Tory lawyers, and those libraries vanished with the loyalist expatriation, and the ability to print books was limited. Lawyer (later President) John Adams complained that he "suffered very much for the want of books". To bootstrap this most basic need of a common law system—knowable, written law—in 1803, lawyers in Massachusetts donated their books to found a law library. A Jeffersonian newspaper criticized the library, as it would carry forward "all the old authorities practiced in England for centuries back ... whereby a new system of jurisprudence [will be founded] on the high monarchical system [to] become the Common Law of this Commonwealth... [The library] may hereafter have a very unsocial purpose."


title: Common law

text: For several decades after independence, English law still exerted influence over American common law—for example, with "Byrne v Boadle" (1863), which first applied the res ipsa loquitur doctrine.


title: Common law

text: Well into the 19th century, ancient maxims played a large role in common law adjudication. Many of these maxims had originated in Roman Law, migrated to England before the introduction of Christianity to the British Isles, and were typically stated in Latin even in English decisions. Many examples are familiar in everyday speech even today, "One cannot be a judge in one's own cause" (see Dr. Bonham's Case), rights are reciprocal to obligations, and the like. Judicial decisions and treatises of the 17th and 18th centuries, such at those of Lord Chief Justice Edward Coke, presented the common law as a collection of such maxims.


title: Common law

text: Reliance on old maxims and rigid adherence to precedent, no matter how old or ill-considered, came under critical discussion in the late 19th century, starting in the United States. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in his famous article, "The Path of the Law", commented, "It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past." Justice Holmes noted that study of maxims might be sufficient for "the man of the present", but "the man of the future is the man of statistics and the master of economics". In an 1880 lecture at Harvard, he wrote:


title: Common law

text: In the early 20th century, Louis Brandeis, later appointed to the United States Supreme Court, became noted for his use of policy-driving facts and economics in his briefs, and extensive appendices presenting facts that lead a judge to the advocate's conclusion. By this time, briefs relied more on facts than on Latin maxims.


title: Common law

text: Reliance on old maxims is now deprecated. Common law decisions today reflect both precedent and policy judgment drawn from economics, the social sciences, business, decisions of foreign courts, and the like. The degree to which these external factors "should" influence adjudication is the subject of active debate, but it is indisputable that judges "do" draw on experience and learning from everyday life, from other fields, and from other jurisdictions.


title: Common law

text: As early as the 15th century, it became the practice that litigants who felt they had been cheated by the common law system would petition the King in person. For example, they might argue that an award of damages (at common law (as opposed to equity)) was not sufficient redress for a trespasser occupying their land, and instead request that the trespasser be evicted. From this developed the system of equity, administered by the Lord Chancellor, in the courts of chancery. By their nature, equity and law were frequently in conflict and litigation would frequently continue for years as one court countermanded the other, even though it was established by the 17th century that equity should prevail.


title: Common law

text: In England, courts of law (as opposed to equity) were combined with courts of equity by the Judicature Acts of 1873 and 1875, with equity prevailing in case of conflict.


title: Common law

text: In the United States, parallel systems of law (providing money damages, with cases heard by a jury upon either party's request) and equity (fashioning a remedy to fit the situation, including injunctive relief, heard by a judge) survived well into the 20th century. The United States federal courts procedurally separated law and equity: the same judges could hear either kind of case, but a given case could only pursue causes in law or in equity, and the two kinds of cases proceeded under different procedural rules. This became problematic when a given case required both money damages and injunctive relief. In 1937, the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure combined law and equity into one form of action, the "civil action". Fed.R.Civ.P. . The distinction survives to the extent that issues that were "common law (as opposed to equity)" as of 1791 (the date of adoption of the Seventh Amendment) are still subject to the right of either party to request a jury, and "equity" issues are decided by a judge.


title: Common law

text: The states of Delaware, Illinois, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee continue to have divided courts of law and courts of chancery, for example, the Delaware Court of Chancery. In New Jersey, the appellate courts are unified, but the trial courts are organized into a Chancery Division and a Law Division.


title: Common law

text: For centuries, through to the 19th century, the common law recognized only specific forms of action, and required very careful drafting of the opening pleading (called a writ) to slot into exactly one of them: debt, detinue, covenant, special assumpsit, general assumpsit, trespass, trover, replevin, case (or trespass on the case), and ejectment. To initiate a lawsuit, a pleading had to be drafted to meet myriad technical requirements: correctly categorizing the case into the correct legal pigeonhole (pleading in the alternative was not permitted), and using specific "magic words" encrusted over the centuries. Under the old common law pleading standards, a suit by a "pro se" ("for oneself", without a lawyer) party was all but impossible, and there was often considerable procedural jousting at the outset of a case over minor wording issues.


title: Common law

text: One of the major reforms of the late 19th century and early 20th century was the abolition of common law pleading requirements. A plaintiff can initiate a case by giving the defendant "a short and plain statement" of facts that constitute an alleged wrong. This reform moved the attention of courts from technical scrutiny of words to a more rational consideration of the facts, and opened access to justice far more broadly.


title: Common law

text: The main alternative to the common law system is the civil law system, which is used in Continental Europe, and most of Central and South America.


title: Common law

text: In common law jurisdictions, nearly every case that presents a "bona fide" disagreement on the law is resolved in a written opinion. The legal reasoning for the decision, known as "ratio decidendi", not only determines the court's judgment between the parties, but also stands as precedent for resolving future disputes. In contrast, civil law decisions typically do not include explanatory opinions, and thus no precedent flows from one decision to the next.


title: Common law

text: In common law systems, a single decided case is binding common law (connotation 1) to the same extent as statute or regulation, under the principle of "stare decisis". In contrast, in civil law systems, individual decisions have only advisory, not binding effect. In civil law systems, case law only acquires weight when a long series of cases use consistent reasoning, called "jurisprudence constante". Civil law lawyers consult case law to obtain their best prediction of how a court will rule, but comparatively, civil law judges are less bound to follow it.


title: Common law

text: For that reason, statutes in civil law systems are more comprehensive, detailed, and continuously updated, covering all matters capable of being brought before a court.


title: Common law

text: Common law systems tend to give more weight to separation of powers between the judicial branch and the executive branch. In contrast, civil law systems are typically more tolerant of allowing individual officials to exercise both powers. One example of this contrast is the difference between the two systems in allocation of responsibility between prosecutor and adjudicator.


title: Common law

text: Common law courts usually use an adversarial system, in which two sides present their cases to a neutral judge. In contrast, in civil law systems, criminal proceedings proceed under an inquisitorial system in which an examining magistrate serves two roles by developing the evidence and arguments for one side and then the other during the investigation phase.


title: Common law

text: The examining magistrate then presents the dossier detailing his or her findings to the president of the bench that will adjudicate on the case where it has been decided that a trial shall be conducted. Therefore, the president of the bench's view of the case is not neutral and may be biased while conducting the trial after the reading of the dossier. Unlike the common law proceedings, the president of the bench in the inquisitorial system is not merely an umpire and is entitled to directly interview the witnesses or express comments during the trial, as long as he or she does not express his or her view on the guilt of the accused.


title: Common law

text: The proceeding in the inquisitorial system is essentially by writing. Most of the witnesses would have given evidence in the investigation phase and such evidence will be contained in the dossier under the form of police reports. In the same way, the accused would have already put his or her case at the investigation phase but he or she will be free to change his or her evidence at trial. Whether the accused pleads guilty or not, a trial will be conducted. Unlike the adversarial system, the conviction and sentence to be served (if any) will be released by the trial jury together with the president of the trial bench, following their common deliberation.


title: Common law

text: In contrast, in an adversarial system, the onus of framing the case rests on the parties, and judges generally decide the case presented to them, rather than acting as active investigators, or actively reframing the issues presented. "In our adversary system, in both civil and criminal cases, in the first instance and on appeal, we follow the principle of party presentation. That is, we rely on the parties to frame the issues for decision and assign to courts the role of neutral arbiter of matters the parties present." This principle applies with force in all issues in criminal matters, and to factual issues: courts seldom engage in fact gathering on their own initiative, but decide facts on the evidence presented (even here, there are exceptions, for "legislative facts" as opposed to "adjudicative facts"). On the other hand, on issues of law, courts regularly raise new issues (such as matters of jurisdiction or standing), perform independent research, and reformulate the legal grounds on which to analyze the facts presented to them. The United States Supreme Court regularly decides based on issues raised only in amicus briefs from non-parties. One of the most notable such cases was "Erie Railroad v. Tompkins", a 1938 case in which neither party questioned the ruling from the 1842 case "Swift v. Tyson" that served as the foundation for their arguments, but which led the Supreme Court to overturn "Swift" during their deliberations. To avoid lack of notice, courts may invite briefing on an issue to ensure adequate notice. However, there are limits—an appeals court may not introduce a theory that contradicts the party's own contentions.


title: Common law

text: There are many exceptions in both directions. For example, most proceedings before U.S. federal and state agencies are inquisitorial in nature, at least the initial stages ("e.g.", a patent examiner, a social security hearing officer, and so on), even though the law to be applied is developed through common law processes.


title: Common law

text: The role of the legal academy presents a significant "cultural" difference between common law (connotation 2) and civil law jurisdictions. In both systems, treatises compile decisions and state overarching principles that (in the author's opinion) explain the results of the cases. In neither system are treatises considered "law," but the weight given them is nonetheless quite different.


title: Common law

text: In common law jurisdictions, lawyers and judges tend to use these treatises as only "finding aids" to locate the relevant cases. In common law jurisdictions, scholarly work is seldom cited as authority for what the law is. Chief Justice Roberts noted the "great disconnect between the academy and the profession." When common law courts rely on scholarly work, it is almost always only for factual findings, policy justification, or the history and evolution of the law, but the court's legal conclusion is reached through analysis of relevant statutes and common law, seldom scholarly commentary.


title: Common law

text: In contrast, in civil law jurisdictions, courts give the writings of law professors significant weight, partly because civil law decisions traditionally were very brief, sometimes no more than a paragraph stating who wins and who loses. The rationale had to come from somewhere else: the academy often filled that role.


title: Common law

text: The contrast between civil law and common law legal systems has become increasingly blurred, with the growing importance of jurisprudence (similar to case law but not binding) in civil law countries, and the growing importance of statute law and codes in common law countries.


title: Common law

text: Examples of common law being replaced by statute or codified rule in the United States include criminal law (since 1812, U.S. federal courts and most but not all of the states have held that criminal law must be embodied in statute if the public is to have fair notice), commercial law (the Uniform Commercial Code in the early 1960s) and procedure (the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in the 1930s and the Federal Rules of Evidence in the 1970s). But note that in each case, the statute sets the general principles, but the interstitial common law process determines the scope and application of the statute.


title: Common law

text: An example of convergence from the other direction is shown in the 1982 decision "Srl CILFIT and Lanificio di Gavardo SpA v Ministry of Health" (), in which the European Court of Justice held that questions it has already answered need not be resubmitted. This showed how a historically distinctly common law principle is used by a court composed of judges (at that time) of essentially civil law jurisdiction.


title: Common law

text: The former Soviet Bloc and other socialist countries used a socialist law system, although there is controversy as to whether socialist law ever constituted a separate legal system or not.


title: Common law

text: Many churches use a system of canon law. The canon law of the Catholic Church influenced the common law during the medieval period through its preservation of Roman law doctrine such as the presumption of innocence.


title: Common law

text: and many other generally English-speaking countries or Commonwealth countries (except the UK's Scotland, which is bijuridicial, and Malta). Essentially, every country that was colonised at some time by England, Great Britain, or the United Kingdom uses common law except those that were formerly colonised by other nations, such as Quebec (which follows the bijuridicial law or civil code of France in part), South Africa and Sri Lanka (which follow Roman Dutch law), where the prior civil law system was retained to respect the civil rights of the local colonists. Guyana and Saint Lucia have mixed Common Law and Civil Law systems.


title: Common law

text: Scotland is often said to use the civil law system, but it has a unique system that combines elements of an uncodified civil law dating back to the Corpus Juris Civilis with an element of its own common law long predating the Treaty of Union with England in 1707 (see Legal institutions of Scotland in the High Middle Ages), founded on the customary laws of the tribes residing there. Historically, Scottish common law differed in that the use of "precedent" was subject to the courts' seeking to discover the principle that justifies a law rather than searching for an example as a "precedent", and principles of natural justice and fairness have always played a role in Scots Law. From the 19th century, the Scottish approach to precedent developed into a "stare decisis" akin to that already established in England thereby reflecting a narrower, more modern approach to the application of case law in subsequent instances. This is not to say that the substantive rules of the common laws of both countries are the same, but in many matters (particularly those of UK-wide interest), they are similar.


title: Common law

text: Scotland shares the Supreme Court with England, Wales and Northern Ireland for civil cases; the court's decisions are binding on the jurisdiction from which a case arises but only influential on similar cases arising in Scotland. This has had the effect of converging the law in certain areas. For instance, the modern UK law of negligence is based on "Donoghue v Stevenson", a case originating in Paisley, Scotland.


title: Common law

text: Scotland maintains a separate criminal law system from the rest of the UK, with the High Court of Justiciary being the final court for criminal appeals. The highest court of appeal in civil cases brought in Scotland is now the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (before October 2009, final appellate jurisdiction lay with the House of Lords).


title: Common law

text: The centuries-old authority of the common law courts in England to develop law case by case and to apply statute law—"legislating from the bench"—is a traditional function of courts, which was carried over into the U.S. system as an essential component of the "judicial power" specified by Article III of the U.S. constitution. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. summarized centuries of history in 1917, "judges do and must legislate" (in the federal courts, only interstitially, in state courts, to the full limits of common law adjudicatory authority).


title: Common law

text: The original colony of New Netherland was settled by the Dutch and the law was also Dutch. When the English captured pre-existing colonies they continued to allow the local settlers to keep their civil law. However, the Dutch settlers revolted against the English and the colony was recaptured by the Dutch. In 1664, the colony of New York had two distinct legal systems: on Manhattan Island and along the Hudson River, sophisticated courts modeled on those of the Netherlands were resolving disputes learnedly in accordance with Dutch customary law. On Long Island, Staten Island, and in Westchester, on the other hand, English courts were administering a crude, untechnical variant of the common law carried from Puritan New England and practiced without the intercession of lawyers. When the English finally regained control of New Netherland they imposed common law upon all the colonists, including the Dutch. This was problematic, as the patroon system of land holding, based on the feudal system and civil law, continued to operate in the colony until it was abolished in the mid-19th century. New York began a codification of its law in the 19th century. The only part of this codification process that was considered complete is known as the Field Code applying to civil procedure. The influence of Roman-Dutch law continued in the colony well into the late 19th century. The codification of a law of general obligations shows how remnants of the civil law tradition in New York continued on from the Dutch days.


title: Common law

text: Under Louisiana's codified system, the Louisiana Civil Code, private law—that is, substantive law between private sector parties—is based on principles of law from continental Europe, with some common law influences. These principles derive ultimately from Roman law, transmitted through French law and Spanish law, as the state's current territory intersects the area of North America colonized by Spain and by France. Contrary to popular belief, the Louisiana code does not directly derive from the Napoleonic Code, as the latter was enacted in 1804, one year after the Louisiana Purchase. However, the two codes are similar in many respects due to common roots.


title: Common law

text: Louisiana's criminal law largely rests on English common law. Louisiana's administrative law is generally similar to the administrative law of the U.S. federal government and other U.S. states. Louisiana's procedural law is generally in line with that of other U.S. states, which in turn is generally based on the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.


title: Common law

text: Historically notable among the Louisiana code's differences from common law is the role of property rights among women, particularly in inheritance gained by widows.


title: Common law

text: The U.S. state of California has a system based on common law, but it has codified the law in the manner of civil law jurisdictions. The reason for the enactment of the California Codes in the 19th century was to replace a pre-existing system based on Spanish civil law with a system based on common law, similar to that in most other states. California and a number of other Western states, however, have retained the concept of community property derived from civil law. The California courts have treated portions of the codes as an extension of the common-law tradition, subject to judicial development in the same manner as judge-made common law. (Most notably, in the case "Li v. Yellow Cab Co.", 13 Cal.3d 804 (1975), the California Supreme Court adopted the principle of comparative negligence in the face of a California Civil Code provision codifying the traditional common-law doctrine of contributory negligence.)


title: Common law

text: The United States federal government (as opposed to the states) has a variant on a common law system. United States federal courts only act as interpreters of statutes and the constitution by elaborating and precisely defining broad statutory language (connotation 1(b) above), but, unlike state courts, do not generally act as an independent source of common law.


title: Common law

text: Before 1938, the federal courts, like almost all other common law courts, decided the law on any issue where the relevant legislature (either the U.S. Congress or state legislature, depending on the issue), had not acted, by looking to courts in the same system, that is, other federal courts, even on issues of state law, and even where there was no express grant of authority from Congress or the Constitution.


title: Common law

text: In 1938, the U.S. Supreme Court in "Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins" 304 U.S. 64, 78 (1938), overruled earlier precedent, and held "There is no federal general common law," thus confining the federal courts to act only as interstitial interpreters of law originating elsewhere. "E.g.", "Texas Industries v. Radcliff", (without an express grant of statutory authority, federal courts cannot create rules of intuitive justice, for example, a right to contribution from co-conspirators). Post-1938, federal courts deciding issues that arise under state law are required to defer to state court interpretations of state statutes, or reason what a state's highest court would rule if presented with the issue, or to certify the question to the state's highest court for resolution.


title: Common law

text: Later courts have limited "Erie" slightly, to create a few situations where United States federal courts are permitted to create federal common law rules without express statutory authority, for example, where a federal rule of decision is necessary to protect uniquely federal interests, such as foreign affairs, or financial instruments issued by the federal government. "See, e.g.", "Clearfield Trust Co. v. United States", (giving federal courts the authority to fashion common law rules with respect to issues of federal power, in this case negotiable instruments backed by the federal government); "see also" "International News Service v. Associated Press", 248 U.S. 215 (1918) (creating a cause of action for misappropriation of "hot news" that lacks any statutory grounding); "but see National Basketball Association v. Motorola, Inc.", 105 F.3d 841, 843–44, 853 (2d Cir. 1997) (noting continued vitality of "INS" "hot news" tort under New York state law, but leaving open the question of whether it survives under federal law). Except on Constitutional issues, Congress is free to legislatively overrule federal courts' common law.


title: Common law

text: Most executive branch agencies in the United States federal government have some adjudicatory authority. To greater or lesser extent, agencies honor their own precedent to ensure consistent results. Agency decision making is governed by the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946.


title: Common law

text: For example, the National Labor Relations Board issues relatively few regulations, but instead promulgates most of its substantive rules through common law (connotation 1).


title: Common law

text: The law of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are largely based on English common law because of the long period of British colonial influence during the period of the British Raj.


title: Common law

text: Ancient India represented a distinct tradition of law, and had an historically independent school of legal theory and practice. The "Arthashastra", dating from 400 BCE and the "Manusmriti", from 100 CE, were influential treatises in India, texts that were considered authoritative legal guidance. Manu's central philosophy was tolerance and pluralism, and was cited across Southeast Asia. Early in this period, which finally culminated in the creation of the Gupta Empire, relations with ancient Greece and Rome were not infrequent. The appearance of similar fundamental institutions of international law in various parts of the world show that they are inherent in international society, irrespective of culture and tradition. Inter-State relations in the pre-Islamic period resulted in clear-cut rules of warfare of a high humanitarian standard, in rules of neutrality, of treaty law, of customary law embodied in religious charters, in exchange of embassies of a temporary or semi-permanent character.


title: Common law

text: When India became part of the British Empire, there was a break in tradition, and Hindu and Islamic law were supplanted by the common law. After the failed rebellion against the British in 1857, the British Parliament took over control of India from the British East India Company, and British India came under the direct rule of the Crown. The British Parliament passed the Government of India Act 1858 to this effect, which set up the structure of British government in India. It established in Britain the office of the Secretary of State for India through whom the Parliament would exercise its rule, along with a Council of India to aid him. It also established the office of the Governor-General of India along with an Executive Council in India, which consisted of high officials of the British Government. As a result, the present judicial system of the country derives largely from the British system and has little correlation to the institutions of the pre-British era.


title: Common law

text: Post-partition, India retained its common law system. Much of contemporary Indian law shows substantial European and American influence. Legislation first introduced by the British is still in effect in modified form today. During the drafting of the Indian Constitution, laws from Ireland, the United States, Britain, and France were all synthesized to produce a refined set of Indian laws. Indian laws also adhere to the United Nations guidelines on human rights law and environmental law. Certain international trade laws, such as those on intellectual property, are also enforced in India.


title: Common law

text: The exception to this rule is in the state of Goa, annexed in stages in the 1960s through 1980s. In Goa, a Portuguese uniform civil code is in place, in which all religions have a common law regarding marriages, divorces and adoption.


title: Common law

text: Each province and territory is considered a separate jurisdiction with respect to case law. Each has its own procedural law in civil matters, statutorily created provincial courts and superior trial courts with inherent jurisdiction culminating in the Court of Appeal of the province. These Courts of Appeal are then subject to the Supreme Court of Canada in terms of appeal of their decisions.


title: Common law

text: All but one of the provinces of Canada use a common law system for civil matters (the exception being Quebec, which uses a French-heritage civil law system for issues arising within provincial jurisdiction, such as property ownership and contracts).


title: Common law

text: Canadian Federal Courts operate under a separate system throughout Canada and deal with narrower range of subject matter than superior courts in each province and territory. They only hear cases on subjects assigned to them by federal statutes, such as immigration, intellectual property, judicial review of federal government decisions, and admiralty. The Federal Court of Appeal is the appellate court for federal courts and hears cases in multiple cities; unlike the United States, the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal is not divided into appellate circuits.


title: Common law

text: Canadian federal statutes must use the terminology of both the common law and civil law for civil matters; this is referred to as legislative bijuralism.


title: Common law

text: Criminal law is uniform throughout Canada. It is based on the federal statutory Criminal Code, which in addition to substance also details procedural law. The administration of justice are the responsibilities of the provinces. Canadian criminal law uses a common law system no matter which province a case proceeds.


title: Common law

text: Nicaragua's legal system is also a mixture of the English Common Law and Civil Law. This situation was brought through the influence of British administration of the Eastern half of the Mosquito Coast from the mid-17th century until about 1894, the William Walker period from about 1855 through 1857, US interventions/occupations during the period from 1909 to 1933, the influence of US institutions during the Somoza family administrations (1933 through 1979) and the considerable importation between 1979 and the present of US culture and institutions.


title: Common law

text: Israel has a common law legal system. Its basic principles are inherited from the law of the British Mandate of Palestine and thus resemble those of British and American law, namely: the role of courts in creating the body of law and the authority of the supreme court in reviewing and if necessary overturning legislative and executive decisions, as well as employing the adversarial system. One of the primary reasons that the Israeli constitution remains unwritten is the fear by whatever party holds power that creating a written constitution, combined with the common-law elements, would severely limit the powers of the Knesset (which, following the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, holds near-unlimited power).


title: Common law

text: Roman Dutch common law is a bijuridical or mixed system of law similar to the common law system in Scotland and Louisiana. Roman Dutch common law jurisdictions include South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. Many of these jurisdictions recognise customary law, and in some, such as South Africa the Constitution requires that the common law be developed in accordance with the Bill of Rights. Roman Dutch common law is a development of Roman Dutch law by courts in the Roman Dutch common law jurisdictions. During the Napoleonic wars the Kingdom of the Netherlands adopted the French "code civil" in 1809, however the Dutch colonies in the Cape of Good Hope and Sri Lanka, at the time called Ceylon, were seized by the British to prevent them being used as bases by the French Navy. The system was developed by the courts and spread with the expansion of British colonies in Southern Africa. Roman Dutch common law relies on legal principles set out in Roman law sources such as Justinian's Institutes and Digest, and also on the writing of Dutch jurists of the 17th century such as Grotius and Voet. In practice, the majority of decisions rely on recent precedent.


title: Common law

text: Ghana follows the English common-law tradition which was inherited from the British during her colonisation. Consequently, the laws of Ghana are, for the most part, a modified version of imported law that is continuously adapting to changing socio-economic and political realities of the country. The Bond of 1844 marked the period when the people of Ghana (then Gold Coast) ceded their independence to the British and gave the British judicial authority. Later, the Supreme Court Ordinance of 1876 formally introduced British law, be it the common law or statutory law, in the Gold Coast. Section 14 of the Ordinance formalised the application of the common-law tradition in the country.


title: Common law

text: Ghana, after independence, did not do away with the common law system inherited from the British, and today it has been enshrined in the 1992 Constitution of the country. Chapter four of Ghana's Constitution, entitled "The Laws of Ghana", has in Article 11(1) the list of laws applicable in the state. This comprises (a) the Constitution; (b) enactments made by or under the authority of the Parliament established by the Constitution; (c) any Orders, Rules and Regulations made by any person or authority under a power conferred by the Constitution; (d) the existing law; and (e) the common law. Thus, the modern-day Constitution of Ghana, like those before it, embraced the English common law by entrenching it in its provisions. The doctrine of judicial precedence which is based on the principle of "stare decisis" as applied in England and other pure common law countries also applies in Ghana.


title: Common law

text: Edward Coke, a 17th-century Lord Chief Justice of the English Court of Common Pleas and a Member of Parliament (MP), wrote several legal texts that collected and integrated centuries of case law. Lawyers in both England and America learned the law from his "Institutes" and "Reports" until the end of the 18th century. His works are still cited by common law courts around the world.


title: Common law

text: The next definitive historical treatise on the common law is "Commentaries on the Laws of England", written by Sir William Blackstone and first published in 1765–1769. Since 1979, a facsimile edition of that first edition has been available in four paper-bound volumes. Today it has been superseded in the English part of the United Kingdom by Halsbury's Laws of England that covers both common and statutory English law.


title: Common law

text: While he was still on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and before being named to the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. published a short volume called "The Common Law", which remains a classic in the field. Unlike Blackstone and the Restatements, Holmes' book only briefly discusses what the law "is"; rather, Holmes describes the common law "process". Law professor John Chipman Gray's "The Nature and Sources of the Law", an examination and survey of the common law, is also still commonly read in U.S. law schools.


title: Common law

text: In the United States, Restatements of various subject matter areas (Contracts, Torts, Judgments, and so on.), edited by the American Law Institute, collect the common law for the area. The ALI Restatements are often cited by American courts and lawyers for propositions of uncodified common law, and are considered highly persuasive authority, just below binding precedential decisions. The Corpus Juris Secundum is an encyclopedia whose main content is a compendium of the common law and its variations throughout the various state jurisdictions.


title: Common law

text: Scots "common law" covers matters including murder and theft, and has sources in custom, in legal writings and previous court decisions. The legal writings used are called "Institutional Texts" and come mostly from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Examples include Craig, "Jus Feudale" (1655) and Stair, "The Institutions of the Law of Scotland" (1681).


title: Makoto Shinkai

text: Shinkai began his career as a video game animator with Nihon Falcom in 1996, and gained recognition as a filmmaker with the release of the original video animation (OVA) "She and Her Cat" (1999). Beginning his longstanding association with CoMix Wave Films, Shinkai then released the science-fiction OVA "Voices of a Distant Star" in 2002, and followed this with his debut feature film "The Place Promised in Our Early Days" (2004).


title: Makoto Shinkai

text: Shinkai's second feature film, the romantic drama anthology "5 Centimeters per Second" (2007), gained critical acclaim, as did his subsequent releases, the dramas "Children Who Chase Lost Voices" (2011) and "The Garden of Words" (2013). Shinkai's 2016 fantasy romance "Your Name" was a critical and commercial success, becoming the third highest-grossing anime film of all time. His 2019 film, "Weathering with You", also achieved similar critical and commercial success. His seventh film, "Suzume", was released in Japan in November 2022.


title: Makoto Shinkai

text: A native of Nagano Prefecture, Shinkai studied Japanese literature at Chuo University, where he was a member of the juvenile literature club and drew picture books. He traces his passion for creation to the manga, anime and novels he was exposed to in middle school. His favorite anime films are "", "Nausicaä" and "The Castle of Cagliostro" by Hayao Miyazaki, "The End of Evangelion" by Hideaki Anno and "Patlabor 2" by Mamoru Oshii.


title: Makoto Shinkai

text: After graduating from Chuo University Faculty of Literature in March 1996, he got a job at Falcom, a video game company where he worked for 5 years making video clips for games and graphic design including web content. During this time he met musician Tenmon, who later scored many of his movies.


title: Makoto Shinkai

text: In 1999, Shinkai released "She and Her Cat", a five-minute short piece done in monochrome. It won several awards, including the grand prize at the 12th DoGA CG Animation contest (2000). DoGA is an independent nonprofit company set up to encourage entry-level animators with software and advice. The short details the life of a cat, entirely from the cat's perspective, as it passes time with its owner, a young woman.


title: Makoto Shinkai

text: After winning the grand prize, Shinkai began thinking about a follow-up while he continued working for Falcom. In June 2000, Shinkai was inspired to begin "Voices of a Distant Star" by drawing a picture of a girl in a cockpit grasping a cell phone. Some time later, he was contacted by "Manga Zoo" (today a smartphone app), which offered to work with him, giving him a grant to turn his idea into an anime they could sell. In May 2001, he quit his job at Falcom and began to work on "Voices". In an interview, Shinkai noted that production took around seven months of "real work".


title: Makoto Shinkai

text: "Voices of a Distant Star" was followed by the 90-minute "The Place Promised in Our Early Days", which was released nationwide in Japan on November 20, 2004. It was critically acclaimed, winning many honors. Shinkai's next project was "5 Centimeters per Second" and premiered 3 March 2007. It consists of three short films: "Cherry Blossom", "Cosmonaut", and "5 Centimeters per Second". The total run time is about 63 minutes. In September 2007 Nagano's leading newspaper, "Shinano Mainichi Shinbun", released a TV commercial animated by Shinkai.


title: Makoto Shinkai

text: Shinkai spent 2008 in London, resting since the completion of "5 Centimeters per Second". He returned to Japan in 2009 to start work on his next project. He released two concept drawings for this film in December 2009. Shinkai noted that it would be his longest animation film to date and described the story as a "lively" animated film with adventure, action, and romance centered on a cheerful and spirited girl on a journey to say "farewell". In November 2010, he revealed that his next work would be titled "Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below". A teaser trailer was released on November 9, and the film was released on May 7, 2011.


title: Makoto Shinkai

text: On August 26, 2016, Shinkai released "Your Name." The film received positive reviews, including by media scholar Ram Prakash Dwivedi who praised the film for its narrative, imagery, animation, music, emotional weight, and skillful use of post-postmodernist themes. The film was also a commercial success, becoming the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time in Japan. Then by 2019, the film became the highest-grossing anime film worldwide of all time, overtaking Miyazaki's "Spirited Away".


title: Makoto Shinkai

text: Shinkai has been called "The New Miyazaki" in several reviews, including those by Anime Advocates and ActiveAnime—comparisons he calls an "overestimation".


title: Makoto Shinkai

text: He is married to retired actress and producer Chieko Misaka, star of films including "Versus" by Ryuhei Kitamura; they have a daughter, child actress Chise Niitsu (born 2010).


title: Winnipeg

text: Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,607 and a metropolitan population of 834,678, making it the sixth-largest city, and eighth-largest metropolitan area in Canada.


title: Winnipeg

text: The city is named after the nearby Lake Winnipeg; the name comes from the Western Cree words for "muddy water" - “winipīhk”. The region was a trading centre for Indigenous peoples long before the arrival of Europeans; it is the traditional territory of the Anishinabe (Ojibway), Ininew (Cree), Oji-Cree, Dene, and Dakota, and is the birthplace of the Métis Nation. French traders built the first fort on the site in 1738. A settlement was later founded by the Selkirk settlers of the Red River Colony in 1812, the nucleus of which was incorporated as the City of Winnipeg in 1873. Being far inland, the local climate is extremely seasonal even by Canadian standards with average January highs of around and average July highs of .


title: Winnipeg

text: Known as the "Gateway to the West", Winnipeg is a railway and transportation hub with a diversified economy. This multicultural city hosts numerous annual festivals, including the Festival du Voyageur, the Winnipeg Folk Festival, the Jazz Winnipeg Festival, the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival, and Folklorama. In 1967, Winnipeg was the first Canadian host of the Pan American Games. It is home to several professional sports franchises, including the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (Canadian football), the Winnipeg Jets (ice hockey), Manitoba Moose (ice hockey), Valour FC (association football), Winnipeg Sea Bears (basketball), and the Winnipeg Goldeyes (baseball).


title: Winnipeg

text: Winnipeg is named after nearby Lake Winnipeg, 65 km north of the city. English explorer Henry Kelsey may have been the first European to see the lake in 1690, and he adopted the Cree and Ojibwe name (also transcribed or ) meaning "murky water" or "muddy water" (modern , ). French-Canadian fur trader La Vérendrye referred to the lake as or when he built the first forts in the area in the 1730s. Local newspaper "The Nor'-Wester" included the name on its masthead on February 24, 1866, and the city was incorporated by that name under legislation by the Manitoba Assembly in 1873.


title: Winnipeg

text: Winnipeg lies at the confluence of the Assiniboine and the Red River of the North, a location now known as "The Forks". This point was at the crossroads of canoe routes travelled by First Nations before European contact. Evidence provided by archaeology, petroglyphs, rock art and oral history indicates that native peoples used the area in prehistoric times for camping, harvesting, hunting, tool making, fishing, trading and, farther north, for agriculture.


title: Winnipeg

text: Estimates of the date of first settlement in this area range from 11,500 years ago for a site southwest of the present city to 6,000 years ago at The Forks. In 1805, Canadian colonists observed First Nations peoples engaged in farming activity along the Red River. The practice quickly expanded, driven by the demand by traders for provisions. The rivers provided an extensive transportation network linking northern First Peoples with those to the south along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. The Ojibwe made some of the first maps on birch bark, which helped fur traders navigate the waterways of the area.


title: Winnipeg

text: Sieur de La Vérendrye built the first fur trading post on the site in 1738, called Fort Rouge. French trading continued at this site for several decades before the arrival of the British Hudson's Bay Company after France ceded the territory following its defeat in the Seven Years' War. Many French men who were trappers married First Nations women; their mixed-race children hunted, traded, and lived in the area. Their descendents are known as the Métis.


title: Winnipeg

text: Lord Selkirk was involved with the first permanent settlement (known as the Red River Colony), the purchase of land from the Hudson's Bay Company, and a survey of river lots in the early 19th century. The North West Company built Fort Gibraltar in 1809, and the Hudson's Bay Company built Fort Douglas in 1812, both in the area of present-day Winnipeg. The two companies competed fiercely over trade. The Métis and Lord Selkirk's settlers fought at the Battle of Seven Oaks in 1816. In 1821, the Hudson's Bay and North West Companies merged, ending their long rivalry. Fort Gibraltar was renamed Fort Garry in 1822 and became the leading post in the region for the Hudson's Bay Company. A flood destroyed the fort in 1826 and it was not rebuilt until 1835. A rebuilt section of the fort, consisting of the front gate and a section of the wall, is near the modern-day corner of Main Street and Broadway in downtown Winnipeg.


title: Winnipeg

text: In 1869–70, present-day Winnipeg was the site of the Red River Rebellion, a conflict between the local provisional government of Métis, led by Louis Riel, and newcomers from eastern Canada. General Garnet Wolseley was sent to put down the uprising. The Manitoba Act of 1870 made Manitoba the fifth province of the three-year-old Canadian Confederation. Treaty 1, which encompassed the city and much of the surrounding area, was signed on 3 August 1871 by representatives of the Crown and local Indigenous groups, comprising the Brokenhead Ojibway, Sagkeeng, Long Plain, Peguis, Roseau River Anishinabe, Sandy Bay and Swan Lake communities. On 8 November 1873, Winnipeg was incorporated as a city, with the Selkirk settlement as its nucleus. Métis legislator and interpreter James McKay named the city. Winnipeg's mandate was to govern and provide municipal services to citizens attracted to trade expansion between Upper Fort Garry / Lower Fort Garry and Saint Paul, Minnesota.


title: Winnipeg

text: Winnipeg developed rapidly after the coming of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1881. The railway divided the North End, which housed mainly Eastern Europeans, from the richer Anglo-Saxon southern part of the city. It also contributed to a demographic shift beginning shortly after Confederation that saw the francophone population decrease from a majority to a small minority group. This shift resulted in Premier Thomas Greenway controversially ending legislative bilingualism and removing funding for French Catholic Schools in 1890.


title: Winnipeg

text: By 1911, Winnipeg was Canada's third-largest city. However, the city faced financial difficulty when the Panama Canal opened in 1914. The canal reduced reliance on Canada's rail system for international trade; the increase in shipping traffic helped Vancouver to surpass Winnipeg in both prosperity and population by the end of World War I.


title: Winnipeg

text: More than 30,000 workers walked off their jobs in May 1919 in what came to be known as the Winnipeg general strike. The strike was a product of postwar recession, labour conditions, the activity of union organizers and a large influx of returning World War I soldiers seeking work. After many arrests, deportations, and incidents of violence, the strike ended on 21 June 1919 when the Riot Act was read and a group of Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers charged a group of strikers. Two strikers were killed and at least thirty others were injured on the day that became known as "Bloody Saturday"; the event polarized the population. One of the leaders of the strike, J. S. Woodsworth, went on to found Canada's first major socialist party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which later became the New Democratic Party.


title: Winnipeg

text: The Manitoba Legislative Building, constructed mainly of Tyndall stone, opened in 1920; its dome supports a bronze statue finished in gold leaf, titled "Eternal Youth and the Spirit of Enterprise" (commonly known as the "Golden Boy"). The stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression resulted in widespread unemployment, worsened by drought and low agricultural prices. The Depression ended after the start of World War II in 1939.


title: Winnipeg

text: In the Battle of Hong Kong, The Winnipeg Grenadiers were among the first Canadians to engage in combat against Japan. Battalion members who survived combat were taken prisoner and endured brutal treatment in prisoner of war camps. In 1942, the Victory Loan Campaign staged a mock Nazi invasion of Winnipeg to promote awareness of the stakes of the war in Europe. When the war ended, pent-up demand generated a boom in housing development, although building activity was checked by the 1950 Red River flood. The federal government estimated damage at over $26 million, although the province indicated that it was at least double that. The damage caused by the flood led then-Premier Duff Roblin to advocate for the construction of the Red River Floodway.


title: Winnipeg

text: Before 1972, Winnipeg was the largest of thirteen cities and towns in a metropolitan area around the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. In 1960, the Metropolitan Corporation of Greater Winnipeg was established to co-ordinate service delivery in the metropolitan region. A consolidated metropolitan "unicity" government incorporating Winnipeg and its surrounding municipalities was established on 27 July 1971, taking effect in 1972. The City of Winnipeg Act incorporated the current city. In 2003, the City of Winnipeg Act was repealed and replaced with the City of Winnipeg Charter.


title: Winnipeg

text: Winnipeg experienced a severe economic downturn in advance of the early 1980s recession, during which the city incurred closures of prominent businesses, including the "Winnipeg Tribune", as well as the Swift's and Canada Packers meat packing plants. In 1981, Winnipeg was one of the first cities in Canada to sign a tripartite agreement with the provincial and federal governments to redevelop its downtown area, and the three levels of government contributed over $271 million to its development. In 1989, the reclamation and redevelopment of the CNR rail yards turned The Forks into Winnipeg's most popular tourist attraction. The city was threatened by the 1997 Red River flood as well as further floods in 2009 and 2011.


title: Winnipeg

text: Winnipeg lies at the bottom of the Red River Valley, a flood plain with an extremely flat topography. It is on the eastern edge of the Canadian Prairies in Western Canada and is known as the "Gateway to the West". Winnipeg is bordered by tallgrass prairie to the west and south and the aspen parkland to the northeast, although most of the native prairie grasses have been removed for agriculture and urbanization. It is relatively close to many large Canadian Shield lakes and parks, as well as Lake Winnipeg (the Earth's 11th largest freshwater lake). Winnipeg has North America's largest extant mature urban elm forest. The city has an area of .


title: Winnipeg

text: Winnipeg has four major rivers: the Red, Assiniboine, La Salle and Seine. The city was subject to severe flooding in the past. The Red River reached its greatest flood height in 1826. Another large flood in 1950 caused millions of dollars in damage and mass evacuations. This flood prompted Duff Roblin's provincial government to build the Red River Floodway to protect the city. In the 1997 flood, flood control dikes were reinforced and raised using sandbags; Winnipeg suffered limited damage compared to the flood's impact on cities without such structures, such as Grand Forks, North Dakota. The generally flat terrain and the poor drainage of the Red River Valley's clay-based soil also results in many mosquitoes during wetter years.


title: Winnipeg

text: Winnipeg's location in the Canadian Prairies gives it a warm-summer humid continental climate (Köppen "Dfb"), with warm, humid summers, and long, severely cold winters. Summers have a July mean average of . Winters are the coldest time of year, with the January mean average around and total winter precipitation (December through February) averaging . Temperatures occasionally drop below .


title: Winnipeg

text: On average there are 317.8 days per year with measurable sunshine, with July seeing the most on average. With 2353 hours of sunshine per year, Winnipeg is the second sunniest city in Canada. Total annual precipitation (both rain and snow) is just over . Thunderstorms are very common during summer, and sometimes severe enough to produce tornadoes. Low wind chill values are a common occurrence in the local climate. The wind chill has gone down as low as and on average there are twelve days of the year that can reach a wind chill below .


title: Winnipeg

text: The highest temperature ever recorded in Winnipeg was during the 1936 North American heat wave. The temperature reached on 11 July 1936 while the highest daily low temperature, recorded on the following day, 12 July 1936, was . The apparent heat can be even more extreme due to bursts of humidity, and on 25 July 2007 a humidex reading of was measured.


title: Winnipeg

text: The frost-free season is comparatively long for a location with such severe winters. The last spring frost is on average around 23 May, while the first fall frost is on 22 September.


title: Winnipeg

text: There are officially 236 neighbourhoods in Winnipeg. Downtown Winnipeg, the city's financial heart and economic core, is centred on the intersection of Portage Avenue and Main Street and covers about . More than 72,000 people work downtown, and over 40,000 students attend classes at its universities and colleges.


title: Winnipeg

text: Downtown Winnipeg's Exchange District is named after the area's original grain exchange, which operated from 1880 to 1913. The 30-block district received National Historic Site of Canada status in 1997; it includes North America's most extensive collection of early 20th-century terracotta and cut stone architecture, Stephen Juba Park, and Old Market Square. Other major downtown areas are The Forks, Central Park, Broadway-Assiniboine and Chinatown. Many of Downtown Winnipeg's major buildings are linked with the Winnipeg Walkway.


title: Winnipeg

text: Residential neighbourhoods surround the downtown in all directions; expansion is greatest to the south and west, although several areas remain underdeveloped. The city's largest park, Assiniboine Park, houses the Assiniboine Park Zoo and the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden. Other large city parks include Kildonan Park and St. Vital Park. The city's major commercial areas are Polo Park, Kildonan Crossing, South St. Vital, Garden City (West Kildonan), Pembina Strip, Kenaston Smart Centre, Osborne Village, and the Corydon strip. The main cultural and nightlife areas are the Exchange District, The Forks, Osborne Village and Corydon Village (both in Fort Rouge), Sargent and Ellice Avenues (West End) and Old St. Boniface. Osborne Village is Winnipeg's most densely populated neighbourhood and one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in Western Canada.


title: Winnipeg

text: In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Winnipeg had a population of 749,607 living in 300,431 of its 315,465 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 705,244. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021. As of the 2021 census, 16.6 percent of residents were 14 years old or younger, 66.4 percent were between 15 and 64 years old, and 17.0 percent were 65 or over. The average age of a Winnipegger was 40.3.


title: Winnipeg

text: At the census metropolitan area (CMA) level in the 2021 census, the Winnipeg CMA had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.


title: Winnipeg

text: Winnipeg represents 54.9% of the population of the province of Manitoba, the highest population concentration in one city of any province in Canada. Apart from the city of Winnipeg, the Winnipeg CMA includes the rural municipalities of Springfield, St. Clements, Taché, East St. Paul, Macdonald, Ritchot, West St. Paul, Headingley, the Brokenhead 4 reserve, Rosser and St. François Xavier. Statistics Canada's estimate of the Winnipeg CMA population as of 1 July 2020 is 850,056, making it the 7th largest CMA in Canada.


title: Winnipeg

text: Winnipeg has a significant and increasing Indigenous population, with both the highest percentage of Indigenous peoples (12.2%) for any major Canadian city, and the highest total number of Aboriginals (84,305) for any single non-reserve municipality. The Aboriginal population grew by 22% between 2001 and 2006, compared to an increase of 3% for the city as a whole; this population tends to be younger and less wealthy than non-Aboriginal residents. Winnipeg also has the highest Métis population in both percentage (6.5%) and numbers (47,915); the growth rate for this population between 2001 and 2006 was 30%.


title: Winnipeg

text: The 2021 census reported that immigrants comprise 201,040 persons or 27.3% of the total population of Winnipeg. Of the total immigrant population, the top countries of origin were the Philippines (62,100 persons or 30.9%), India (27,605 persons or 13.7%), and China (8,900 persons or 4.4%). The city receives over 10,000 net international immigrants per year. Winnipeg has the greatest percentage of Filipino residents of any major Canadian city, although Toronto has more Filipinos by total population. As of 2021, 34% of residents were of a visible minority.


title: Winnipeg

text: More than a hundred languages are spoken in Winnipeg, of which the most common is English: 95 percent of Winnipeggers speak English as their first language, and 2.8 percent have a first language of French (Canada's other official language). Other languages spoken as a mother tongue in Winnipeg include Tagalog (6.0%), Punjabi (4.1%), and Mandarin (1.5%). Several Indigenous languages are also spoken, such as Ojibwe (0.2%) and Cree (0.1%).


title: Winnipeg

text: The 2021 Census reported the religious make-up of Winnipeg as: 50.4% Christian, including 24.0% Catholic, 4.0% United Church, and 2.7% Anglican; 4.4% Sikh; 3.3% Muslim; 2.0% Hindu; 1.5% Jewish; 0.9% Buddhist; 0.4% traditional (aboriginal) spirituality; 0.7% other; and 36.4% no religious affiliation.