Historically speaking, common law is what we call precedent; in other words, past judicial rulings informing current ones. This tradition is strong in the US, but not without exception. English case law, however, is barely taught anymore and even Supreme Court justices can have entire careers being blissfully ignorant of it.
Common law uses case law for precedent, which is insanely complicated and requires years of study and decades of active practice to not screw up badly.
It's funny seeing "common law" referred as a US thing when it's literally been in use in the UK for centuries before the US was a thing, and that's where the US inherited it from.
And precedent has it's place in civil law countries too, mostly around clarifying existing legislation in case of ambiguity, but it isn't an automatic ironclad thing.
That's a bit off... Common law has a slightly bigger emphasis on precedents. Mostly because precedents can expand laws and establish conventions as laws.
In civil legal system, precedents are clarifying and very specific.
Common legal system is simpler at local levels(because it doesn't have to consult a central authority), and along with British empire - it is widely applied.
The US inherited the common law of England. There's usually something more relevant now, but you'll still sometimes see citations of old English cases or the Magna Carta.
The legal philosophy is actually the opposite. Common Law is heavily based upon precedent and what the norms of the community are to “fill in the gaps”. The vast majority of what goes into a decision is this historical case law. The actual legal text is more of a framework than exhaustive guide.
Much of Europe works with civil law where everything is expected to be codified beforehand. Past cases have little bearing on how a new one will be decided.
English law is also a common law system, relying heavily on previous precedents that have been set down in similar decisions. Civil law juristictions (for example France) give less weight to precedence, so courts have narrower scope to interpret areas the current law does not cover exactly.
English civil law therefore has gained popularity, as it is reliable (precedents can be consulted), and because judges can easily adapt previous rulings to new circumstances.
IIUC Common law courts were supposed to be exactly that - that's where the concept of judicial precedent comes from. When a court hears a case and decides it's different enough from previous cases it makes a new ruling for that scenario which is now a precedent for other cases in that scenario. The collection of rulings built up over time is the law.
> The United States is on something called Common Law [1], in which courts are generally supposed to follow precedent and not make up new stuff or function as de facto legislatures.
Even while linking to Wikipedia articles, you manage to get the common law / civil law distinction almost completely backwards: the common law is a body of judge-made law resulting from judges acting as “de facto legislatures” (which is the source of the respect for precedent, as the prior decisions are themselves incorporated into law), whereas civil law is a system in which the law is strictly created by legislative bodies, and thus courts are expected to look exclusively to the acts of the legislature, and not prior court decisions.
Courts in a common law jurisdiction (like the UK and US) don't have to try to set a precedent, each ruling tends to set a precedent. That is what makes common law common, the same law is applied everywhere, so any new ruling would be applied everywhere. This is exactly why judges avoid making rulings that would set a new precedent! I hope I haven't oversimplified a complicated subject!
The difference is that precedent can guide a judge's decision, it doesn't force it.
Likewise in civil law the judge isn't simply a referee, they're meant to actively investigate. While in common law lawyers get to do a big show by asking various questions, in civil law the questions are asked by the judge and the lawyers only exist to make an argument.
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