ABSTRACT
The term ‘the common law’ means the body of case law of universal, or common, application formed by the judgements of the courts. Each judgement contains the judge’s enunciation of the facts, a statement of the law applying to the case and his ratio decidendi or legal reasoning for the finding to which he has come. The judgements are recorded in the various series of Law Reports and have thus developed into the body of decided case law which we now have and which continues to develop.
