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. The British Empire spread the English legal system to its historical colonies, many of which retain the common law system today. These "common law systems" are legal systems that give great precedential weight to common law, and to the style of reasoning inherited from the English legal system.
Civil law (legal system)
The term "civil law" comes from English legal scholarship and is used in English-speaking countries to lump together all legal systems of the "jus commune" tradition. However, legal comparativists and economists promoting the legal origins theory prefer to subdivide civil law jurisdictions into four distinct groups: