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3.
The
It is
of
to
ability
contemporary practitioners
develop common law "principles" from
from a body of
reasoned decision-making provided by highly
intelligent judges solving practical problems in
the past.
the nooks
of and crannies
Within
their decisions lie the articulated exposition
of a vision of the nature of a society which the
law seeks to preserve and to protect. In that
a high measure society, the individual has
protection from arbitrary power.
of
The individual
enjoys a high level of respect for the exercise,
unhindered, of certain basic civil and political
rights.
These features of the common law did not develop overnight.
The legal a system eight centuries in the making.
systems of the countries of the Commonwealth are, to a large
measure,
the
gift of the common law, 1
just as for
It is a system
both fundamental and practical.
Herodotus, Egypt was the gift of the Nile.
with
blemishes, many
Fundamentalists criticise its lack of conceptualism and its
embarrassment with anything akin to a grand theory. If a
"concept" or "principle" ever emerges, it is only after a
multitude of cases have edged the judges, struggling, to
perceive that
their practical decisions lie large
behind
general rules of wide application. The specific defects are
too
mention.
Relevantly,
they include a
to numerous
suggested bias in favour of the Crown,
favour of the Crown, business interests,
property
holders
and a prejudice against minorities or
when the
"bottom line" of legal
indigenous majorities
decisions comes to be written.
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