common law

Questions about common law

What does common law mean?

common law means "(civil law) a law established by following earlier judicial decisions". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for common law?

Close synonyms include case law, precedent, case law, precedent. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is common law a common word?

common law is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.