List of national legal systems
Common law is currently in practice in Ireland, most of the United Kingdom (England and Wales and Northern Ireland), Australia, New Zealand, Bangladesh, India (excluding Goa), Pakistan, South Africa, Canada (excluding Quebec), Hong Kong, the United States (on a state level excluding Louisiana), and many other places. In addition to these countries, several others have adapted the common law system into a mixed system. For example, Nigeria operates largely on a common law system, but incorporates religious law.
Common law
The centuries-old authority of the common law courts in England to develop law case by case and to apply statute law—"legislating from the bench"— is a traditional function of courts, which was carried over into the U.S. system as an essential component of the "judicial power" specified by Article III of the U.S. constitution. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. summarized centuries of history in 1917, "judges do and must legislate” (in the federal courts, only interstitially, in state courts, to the full limits of common law adjudicatory authority).