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.
Law of the land
Littleton Powys, a judge of the King's Bench, wrote in 1704 with reference to Magna Carta: "lex terrae is not confined to the common law, but takes in all the other laws, which are in force in this realm; as the civil and canon law..." In 1975, political scientist Keith Jurow asserted that the term "law of the land", as understood by Lord Coke, includes "only" the common law, but that assertion by Jurow was called "manifestly wrong" in a 1990 article by Brigham Young Law School professor Robert Riggs.