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.
Sources of law
In civil law systems, the sole source is the appropriate code, such as the civil code or the criminal code; whereas in common law systems there are several sources that combine to form “the law”. Civil law systems often absorb ideas from the common law and "vice-versa". Scotland, for instance, has a hybrid form of law, as does South Africa, whose law in an amalgam of common law, civil law and tribal law.