Origins.

The English common law, from which Americans borrowed heavily in the colonial period, had evolved for centuries in England. Its principles and rules were extensive and complex, and they varied by region and locality. Common law developed through practical experience over time and thus became distinguished from a legal code in which the law was summarized all at once. The royal courts established by the Normans slowly harmonized the divergent laws and practices that had characterized the Anglo-Saxon courts before the conquest of England in 1066. Because the royal courts were in greater contact with one another than the older regional courts had been, there developed similarities in interpreting the law. This situation did not create one law for all of England, as regional and local variations continue even today, but it did overlay local variations with principles of interpretation that were common...