ABSTRACT
All the reappraisals involve areas in which the role of statutes has been tangential and the role of the judges central. The task assigned to the common law judges was to resolve the disputes that were brought to them, so the common law was built out of solutions to specific problems, rather than according to a legislative master plan. The law of landlord and tenant, for example, that had remained static for so many centuries was rather rapidly overhauled when reform-minded judges reconceptualized. Legal systems constantly borrow from one another from the historic interchange of concepts and vocabulary between the great legal systems of English common law and Roman civil law, to the enriching interaction between common law and equity. Law must be relatively stable so ordinary people can live their lives without too many surprises, and legal professionals can manage the huge apparatus efficiently.
