Common law
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. Additionally, the Catholic Church operated its own court system that adjudicated issues of canon law.
South African labour law
The common law of South Africa, "an amalgam of principles drawn from Roman, Roman-Dutch, English and other jurisdictions, which were accepted and applied by the courts in colonial times and during the period that followed British rule after Union in 1910," plays virtually no role in collective labour law. Initially, in fact, employment law, or "the law of master and servant," was regarded as a branch of the law of lease. As such, the common law did not concern itself directly with collective bargaining; its focus instead was on the rights and duties of individual employees and employers, as reflected in the contract on which their relationship was based. The law did not recognize claims by employees which had not been conferred by agreement. Although the role of the common law is minimal, therefore, it should be noted that the common-law contractual relationship between employer and employee underpins collective labour law in general and collective bargaining in particular.