Anglo-Saxon legal system, its history and some features

The Anglo-Saxon legal system is a set of legal norms and interrelations between them, characteristic of the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and other territories that were once part of the British Empire. It can also be called an Anglo-American system or a legal family. The main provisions of this legal system were formed in the Middle Ages. It is believed that this order is derived from the Norman conquest of England after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Then, as in all of Europe, the law of lawmaking belonged to kings or other royal people. Since the courts in the capital of the conquered country were royal, and the Normans dislodged the old order, the decisions of these courts became provisions that were legally binding.

So there was a situation when, in considering a specific case, the royal judges issued a decision and formulated the rules that guided them in making their verdict. Quite often, the judges used customs that developed outside of any legal framework. These decisions were brought to the knowledge of all other courts in the state, and they had to follow the same rules, taking similar decisions in similar cases. This kind of source was rightly called a precedent, that is, a mandatory sample, which should be sorted out similar cases. The Anglo-Saxon legal system is characterized by the fact that its legislative norms represent a huge number of precedents.

With the passage of time, the decline of the feudal economic system and the growth of cities and the bourgeoisie, another form of law was formed, when the Chancellor of the King, in accordance with the rules of a clear procedure, resolved the disputes with which the litigants turned to the monarch. This type of legislative powers was called the right of equity, in contrast to the basic set of judicial precedents (common law). We can say that the Anglo-Saxon legal system for a long time was dualistic, because the decisions of both legal branches were recorded separately and had different spheres of application.

When in the second half of the XIX century in the country there was a judicial reform, both regulations, which used the precedent as a regulatory source, became one. Up to now, the tradition of developing legislation based on judicial decisions is the main one for the UK, and it rests on the entire legal system of society. Unlike the continental law, such norms are more elastic and not so monolithic, but on the other hand they allow a fairly wide interpretation, and a huge role in their enforcement belongs to procedural moments. Since many provisions of Roman law were not incorporated into the "island" set of legal institutions that developed autonomously, there is also no division into public and private law.

The legal system of England has never known and still does not know the multivolume codes that characterize the rest of Europe. Although in modern society law is divided into certain types, in practice, in theory, these distinctions do not attach much importance. All courts in this country have general jurisdiction, and the same court can handle cases of civil, criminal, administrative, commercial law, and so on. The hierarchy in this legislative system does not exist between laws, but between precedents, and the precedence of the precedent depends on the level of the court's approval. The highest binding force is the decisions taken by the House of Lords, the Appeals and the High Courts.

The Anglo-Saxon legal system makes it possible to change the earlier precedent, but this requires a ruling of the highest authority or the Parliament. But such cases are very infrequent, especially since it is rarely possible to meet cases, as two drops of water are similar to each other. Therefore, if the judges believe that the case before them has no similarity to any other, they themselves may be the authors of the new rule. In this type of legislative regulation, the powers of judges are extremely broad. However, they are regulated by the so-called statutory law, consisting of laws and regulations adopted by the parliament (it is known that about eight dozen such documents are approved every year). Recently, this type of legal system plays an ever-increasing role in the "island" system of law.