September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The attacks killed 2,996 people, injured over 6,000 others, caused at least $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage. Additional people died of 9/11-related cancer and respiratory diseases in the months and years following the attacks. Four passenger airliners operated by two major U. S. passenger air carriers —all of which departed from airports in the northeastern United States bound for California—were hijacked by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists. Two of the planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, were crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan. Within an hour and 42 minutes, both 110-story towers collapsed. Debris and the resulting fires caused a partial or complete collapse of all other buildings in the World Trade Center complex, including the 47-story 7 World Trade Center tower, as well as significant damage to ten other large surrounding structures.
A third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, was crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington County, which led to a partial collapse of the building's west side. The fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, was flown toward Washington, D. C. but crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, after its passengers thwarted the hijackers. 9/11 is the single deadliest terrorist attack in human history and the single deadliest incident for firefighters and law enforcement officers in the history of the United States, with 343 and 72 killed, respectively. Suspicion fell on al-Qaeda; the United States responded by launching the War on Terror and invaded Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, which had failed to comply with U. S. demands to extradite Osama bin expel al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. Many countries strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation and expanded the powers of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to prevent terrorist attacks. Although Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda's leader denied any involvement, in 2004 he claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Al-Qaeda and bin Laden cited U. S. support of Israel, the presence of U. S. troops in Saudi Arabia, sanctions against Iraq as motives. After evading capture for a decade, bin Laden was located in Pakistan and killed by SEAL Team Six of the U. S. Navy in May 2011; the destruction of the World Trade Center and nearby infrastructure harmed the economy of Lower Manhattan and had a significant effect on global markets, which resulted in the closing of Wall Street until September 17 and the civilian airspace in the U. S. and Canada until September 13. Many closings and cancellations followed, out of respect or fear of further attacks. Cleanup of the World Trade Center site was completed in May 2002, the Pentagon was repaired within a year. On November 18, 2006, construction of One World Trade Center began at the World Trade Center site; the building was opened on November 3, 2014. Numerous memorials have been constructed, including the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, the Pentagon Memorial in Arlington County and the Flight 93 National Memorial in a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Although not confirmed, there is evidence of alleged Saudi Arabian involvement in the attacks. Given as main evidence in these charges are the contents of the 28 redacted pages of the December 2002 Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; these 28 pages contain information regarding the material and financial assistance given to the hijackers and their affiliates leading up to the attacks by the Saudi Arabian government. The origins of al-Qaeda can be traced to 1979. Osama bin Laden helped organize Arab mujahideen to resist the Soviets. Under the guidance of Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden became more radical. In 1996, bin Laden issued his first fatwā. In a second fatwā in 1998, bin Laden outlined his objections to American foreign policy with respect to Israel, as well as the continued presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War.
Bin Laden used Islamic texts to exhort Muslims to attack Americans until the stated grievances are reversed. Muslim legal scholars "have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries", according to bin Laden. Bin Laden orchestrated the attacks and denied involvement but recanted his false statements. Al Jazeera broadcast a statement by bin Laden on September 16, 2001, stating, "I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation." In November 2001, U. S. forces recovered a videotape from a destroyed house in Afghanistan. In the video, bin Laden admits foreknowledge of the attacks. On December 27, 2001, a second bin Laden video was released. In the video, he said: It has become clear that the West in general and America in particular have an unspeakable hatred for Islam.... It is the hatred of crusaders. Terrorism against America deserves to be praised because it was a response to injustice, aimed at forcing America to stop its support for Israel, which kills our people....
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Constitution Act, 1867
The Constitution Act, 1867 is a major part of Canada's Constitution. The Act created a federal dominion and defines much of the operation of the Government of Canada, including its federal structure, the House of Commons, the Senate, the justice system, the taxation system; the British North America Acts, including this Act, were renamed in 1982 with the patriation of the Constitution. Amendments were made at this time: section 92A was added, giving provinces greater control over non-renewable natural resources; the Act begins with a preamble declaring that the three provinces New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the Province of Canada have requested to form "one Dominion...with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom". This description of the Constitution has proven important in its interpretation; as Peter Hogg wrote in Constitutional Law of Canada, some have argued that, since the United Kingdom had some freedom of expression in 1867, the preamble extended this right to Canada before the enactment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982.
In New Brunswick Broadcasting Co. v. Nova Scotia, the leading Canadian case on parliamentary privilege, the Supreme Court of Canada grounded its 1993 decision on the preamble. Moreover, since the UK had a tradition of judicial independence, the Supreme Court ruled in the Provincial Judges Reference of 1997 that the preamble shows judicial independence in Canada is constitutionally guaranteed. Political scientist Rand Dyck has criticized the preamble, saying it is "seriously out of date", he claims the Act "lacks an inspirational introduction". The preamble to the Act is not the Constitution of Canada's only preamble; the Charter has a preamble. Part I consists of just two sections. Section 1 gives the short title of the law as Constitution Act, 1867. Section 2 indicates that all references to the Queen apply to all her heirs and successors; the Act establishes the Dominion of Canada by uniting the North American British "Provinces" of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia. Section 3 establishes that the union would take effect within six months of passage of the Act and Section 4 confirms "Canada" as the name of the country.
Section 5 lists the four provinces of the new federation. These are formed by dividing the former Province of Canada into two: its two subdivisions, Canada West and Canada East, renamed Ontario and Quebec become full provinces in Section 6. Section 7 confirms that the boundaries of New Brunswick are not changed, and Section 8 provides. Section 9 confirms that all executive powers remain with the Queen, as represented by the Governor General or an administrator of the government, as stated in Section 10. Section 11 creates the Queen's Privy Council for Canada. Section 12 states that the executive branches of the Provinces continue to exist and their power is exercised through the Lieutenant Governors, that the powers exercised by the federal government must be exercised through the Governor General, either with the advice of the privy council or alone. Section 13 defines the Governor General in Council as the Governor General acting with the advice of the Privy Council. Section 14 allows the Governor General to appoint deputies to exercise his powers in various parts of Canada.
The Commander-in-Chief of all armed forces in Canada continues with the Queen under Section 15. Section 16 declares Ottawa the capital of the new federation; the Parliament of Canada comprises the Queen and two chambers, as created by section 17. Section 18 defines its powers and privileges as being no greater than those of the British parliament. Section 19 states that Parliament's first session must begin six months after the passage of the Act and Section 20 holds that Parliament must hold a legislative session at least once every twelve months; the Senate has 105 Senators, most of whom represent one of four equal divisions: Ontario, the Maritime Provinces and the Western Provinces. Section 23 lays out the qualifications to become a Senator. Senators are appointed by the Governor General under Section 24, the first group of senators was proclaimed under section 25. Section 26 allows The Crown to add four or eight Senators at a time to the Senate, divided among the divisions, but according to section 27 no more senators can be appointed until, by death or retirement, the number of senators drops below the regular limit of 24 per division.
The maximum number of senators was set at 113, in Section 28. Senators are appointed for life, under Section 29, though they can resign under Section 30 and can be removed under the terms of section 31, in which case the vacancy can be filled by the Governor General. Section 33 gives the Senate the power to rule on its own disputes over vacancy; the Speaker of the Senate is appointed and dismissed by Governor General under Section 34. Quorum for the Senate is set at 15 senators by Section 35, voting procedures are set by Section 36; the composition of the Commons, under Section 37, consists of 30
England
England is a country, part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to Scotland to the north-northwest; the Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south; the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century, since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world; the English language, the Anglican Church, English law – the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world – developed in England, the country's parliamentary system of government has been adopted by other nations.
The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's terrain is chiefly low hills and plains in central and southern England. However, there is upland and mountainous terrain in the west; the capital is London, which has the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. England's population of over 55 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom concentrated around London, the South East, conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century; the Kingdom of England – which after 1535 included Wales – ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The name "England" is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means "land of the Angles"; the Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea; the earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning "the land inhabited by the English", it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was part of the English kingdom of Northumbria; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went "out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland", thus using it in the more ancient sense.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its modern spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used; the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars. How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe, less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany. In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England. An alternative name for England is Albion; the name Albion referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus the 4th-century BC De Mundo: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth.
In it are two large islands called Britannia. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, i.e. it was written in the Graeco-Roman period or afterwards. The word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins, it either derives from a cognate of the Latin albus meaning white, a reference to the white cliffs of Dover or from the phrase the "island of the Albiones" in the now lost Massaliote Periplus, attested through Avienus' Ora Maritima to which the former served as a source. Albion is now applied to England in a more poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend; the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximate
Juvenile Delinquents Act
The Juvenile Delinquents Act, SC 1908, c 40 was a law passed by the Parliament of Canada to improve its handling of juvenile crime. The act established procedures for the handling of juvenile offenses, including the government assuming control of juvenile offenders, it superseded in 1984 by the Young Offenders Act. Under English common law, there were complex distinctions concerning age, criminal intent and the type of crime involved that determined whether an infant could be convicted. For common misdemeanors in cases of omission, punishment was not given to those under the age of twenty-one, except where there was a notorious breach of the peace, in which case those aged fourteen years or more could be convicted. For capital crimes, since the time of Henry III, those under the age of seven could not be convicted, those between seven and fourteen were prima facie considered to be doli capax. Proof of malice had to be "strong and clear beyond all doubt and contradiction."There has been little investigation as to how the pre-Confederation courts took the age of minor defendants into account.
Children and teenagers were forced to serve their sentences alongside adult offenders in filthy, over-crowded prisons. There were many instances where justice was uneven and punishment was extreme. In 1857, the Province of Canada passed its first Acts concerning juvenile offenders, providing special procedures for the trial of persons aged 16 or less, maximum penalties for larceny of three months' imprisonment or a fine of £5, Minor defendants still had the option of trial by jury, in which case they would be tried as an adult with corresponding punishment. Separate reformatory prisons were established for those under the age of 22 sentenced to terms of five years or less. Under the latter Act, institutions were established at Île aux Noix in Lower Canada, Penetanguishene in Upper Canada. While Canada did not otherwise distinguish their terms from those given to adult offenders, Nova Scotia passed legislation that limited juvenile sentences to 90 days. In 1868, the new Parliament of Canada provided for the transfer of "incorrigible" juvenile offenders from a reformatory to a penitentiary to serve the remainder of their term.
It provided for the transfer of offenders from a penitentiary to a reformatory, provided that they had been sentenced to a term of at least two years, had to be "susceptible to reformation." This was considered to be a regressive step from the measures taken in 1857, was amended the following year to remove the "susceptible to reformation" requirement and to allow the courts, for terms of not less than six months and not more than five years, to send convicted juvenile offenders to a reformatory. This reflected concerns that those sentenced to terms of greater than five years were at higher risk of recidivism, were thus beyond the reach of successful intervention; the former Act of the Province of Canada dealing with trial and punishment was repealed and replaced in 1869 by the Parliament of Canada. The Legislative Assembly of Quebec passed new legislation in 1869 providing for Certified Reformatory Schools, in consequence of which the former Act dealing with young offenders' prisons was repealed with respect to that province.
In 1875, a federal Act was passed that provided for juvenile offenders to be sentenced to a reformatory for terms of not less than two years and not more than five. The Criminal Code was passed in 1892 to consolidate the criminal law in Canada; the following provisions of it concerned juvenile offenders: Standardization of the age of criminal culpability, so that no juvenile under the age of seven could be convicted, those between the ages of seven and thirteen could be convicted only where they were "competent to know the nature and consequences of the conduct, to appreciate that it was wrong." Provision for the trial of juvenile offenders to be conducted without publicity special provisions for the trial of indictable offences the reenactment of the sentencing provisions relating to sentencing to a reformatory, with respect to other offences. Separate legislation relating to juvenile offenders was passed in 1894, which provided for the separation of juvenile offenders from older persons and habitual criminals during arrest, confinement and subsequent imprisonment, as well as integrating efforts with those of children's aid organizations being organized by the provinces.
There were several provincial initiatives in this period that were designed to complement the federal measures. Ontario passed the Industrial Schools Act in 1874, in order to provide institutions to serve neglected and problem children. In British Columbia, the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia passed the Reformatory Act in 1890, under which a designated institution could admit those juvenile offenders sentenced to terms of two to five years, boys transferred from jails and incorrigible or misbehaving youngsters between ten and thirteen who needed supervision. There was provision for remission for good conduct and for binding over to apprenticeship. A Bill to reform the law relating to juvenile offenders was introduced to the Senate of Canada in 1907 by Secretary of State for Canada Richard William Scott, but did not pass before that session's prorogation, it was reintroduced the following year by Senator Frédéric Liguori Béique, received Royal assent on 20 July 1908. In reintroducing the Bill, Senator Béique summarized the philosophy it expressed: The Act was designed to operate in a similar manner to the Probation of Offenders A
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
The Minister of Justice and Attorney General is a dual role portfolio in the Canadian Cabinet. In the role of Minister of Justice, the MoJAG serves as the Minister of the Crown, responsible for the Department of Justice and the Justice Portfolio. Acting as Attorney General, the MoJAG litigates on behalf of the Crown and serves as the chief legal advisor to the Government of Canada. Most prosecution functions of the Attorney General have been assigned to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada; the Attorney General is supported in this role by the Director of Public Prosecutions. This cabinet position is reserved for someone holding a legal qualification. There have been exceptions: Joe Clark only studied the first year of law at University of British Columbia Faculty of Law before embarking on political life; this cabinet portfolio has been held by many individuals who went on to become Prime Minister including John Sparrow David Thompson, R. B. Bennett, Louis St Laurent, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, John Turner, Kim Campbell and Jean Chrétien.
This is the only Canadian Ministry which has not been reorganized since its creation in 1867. The role was created in 1867 to replace the Attorney General of Canada West and Attorney General of Canada East; as the top prosecuting officer in Canada, the Attorney General of Canada is a separate title held by the Canadian Minister of Justice —a member of the Cabinet. The Minister of Justice is concerned with questions of policy and their relationship to the justice system. In their role as attorney general, they are the chief law officer of the Crown. A separate cabinet position, the Minister of Public Safety —formerly the "Solicitor General"—administers the law enforcement agencies of the federal government. Key: For the Attorneys-General of the various provinces of Canada see: Alberta Minister of Justice and Attorney General Attorney General of British Columbia Minister of Justice and Attorney General Office of the Attorney General Minister of Justice and Public Safety and Attorney General of Newfoundland and Labrador Minister of Justice of the Northwest Territories Attorney General and Minister of Justice of Nova Scotia Minister of Justice of Nunavut Attorney General of Ontario Minister of Justice and Public Safety and Attorney General of Prince Edward Island Ministry of Justice Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Saskatchewan Minister of Justice Historical roles Attorney General of Upper Canada Attorney General of Lower Canada
Criminal law of Canada
The criminal law of Canada is under the exclusive legislative jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada. The power to enact criminal law is derived from section 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867. Most criminal laws have been codified in the Criminal Code, as well as the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, Youth Criminal Justice Act and several other peripheral statutes. In all Canadian provinces and territories, criminal prosecutions are brought in the name of the "Queen in Right of Canada". A person may be prosecuted criminally for any offences found in the Criminal Code or any other federal statute containing criminal offences. There are two basic types of offences; the most minor offences are summary conviction offences. They are defined as "summary" within the Act and, unless otherwise stated, are punishable by a fine of no more than $5,000 and/or 6 months in jail. Examples of offences which are always summary offences include trespassing at night, causing a disturbance and taking a motor vehicle without the owner's consent.
All non-summary offences are indictable: the available penalties are greater for indictable offences than for summary offences. These in turn may be divided into three categories. Indictable-only offences include treason and murder, are listed in section 469 of the Criminal Code; these can only be tried by the higher court of the province with a jury, unless both the accused person and the Attorney General consent to trial by a higher court judge alone: section 473. Offences of absolute jurisdiction include theft and fraud up to the value of $5,000 and certain nuisance offences; these are listed in section 553 of the Criminal Code: the accused person does not have an election and must be tried by a judge of the provincial court without a jury. Most other offences defined by the Criminal Code are triable either way, are sometimes known as hybrid offences. In these offences the accused person can elect whether to be tried by:a provincial court judge, a judge of the higher court of the province without a jury or a judge of the higher court with a jury.
However, if the accused elects trial by a provincial court judge, that judge can decline jurisdiction and refer the case to the higher court: section 554. The Attorney General can require a case to be tried by the higher court with a jury: section 568. Criminal offences require the prosecuting crown to prove that there was criminal conduct accompanied by a criminal state of mind on a standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt". Exceptions to the mens rea requirement exist for absolute liability offences; the specific elements of each offence can be found in the wording of the offence as well as the case law interpreting it. The external elements require there to be an "act", within some "circumstances", sometimes a specific "consequence", caused by the action. For the crown to prove the accused is guilty the actus reus and mens rea must be proven. Actus Reus + Mens Rea = Crime/ Guilty The mental or fault elements of an offence are determined by the use of words within the text of the offence or else by case law.
Mens Rea in Canada focuses on the actual or'subjective' state of mind of the accused. Where no standard is explicitly stated conduct must be proven to have been done with a general intent. Where certain circumstances are part of the offence, the accused must have had knowledge of them, which can be imputed based on conduct and other evidence; when the Crown is able to prove the elements of the offence beyond a reasonable doubt, the defence may still avoid conviction by raising a positive defence. A true defence arises when some circumstances afford the accused a partial or complete justification or excuse for committing the criminal act. In Canada, the defences are similar to standard and popularly understood defences of other common law jurisdictions such as the U. K. Australia and the United States; the true defences include duress, intoxication, or necessity. There is a partial defence of provocation, which has the effect of reducing what would otherwise be murder to manslaughter; this partial defence is provided by s. 232 of the Criminal Code.
Some defences are provided for by statute and some defences are provided for by the common law. In some cases common law defences are superseded by statutory enactment, for example duress, self-defence and as mentioned above, extreme intoxication. In the case of duress the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the statutory provision as violative of s. 7 of the Charter, leaving the broader common law defence instead. Statutory encroachments on the scope of common law defences can violate s. 7 of the Charter if they unacceptably reduce the fault requirement of offences. In addition to the true defences as mentioned above, there are other "defences" in a broader sense. In some cases, these "defences" are just an assertion that the Crown has not proven one of the elements of the offence. For example, the mistake of fact defence involves an assertion that the accused misunderstood some material factual matter that prevented him from forming the requisite mens rea for the offence. In the context of sexual assault, for example, a mistake of fact defence involves an assertion that the accused did not realize the complainant was not consenting.
Since the mens rea for sexual assault includes a subjective appreciation of the fact that the complainant is not consenting, the "defence" of mistake of fact in this context is thus properly understood as a failure on the part of the Crown to prove its case. In practical t
Common law
In law, common law is that body of law derived from judicial decisions of courts and similar tribunals. The defining characteristic of "common law" is. In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, a common law court looks to past precedential decisions of relevant courts, synthesizes the principles of those past cases as applicable to the current facts. If a similar dispute has been resolved in the past, the court is bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior decision. If, the court finds that the current dispute is fundamentally distinct from all previous cases, legislative statutes are either silent or ambiguous on the question, judges have the authority and duty to resolve the issue; the court states an opinion that gives reasons for the decision, those reasons agglomerate with past decisions as precedent to bind future judges and litigants. Common law, as the body of law made by judges, stands in contrast to and on equal footing with statutes which are adopted through the legislative process, regulations which are promulgated by the executive branch.
Stare decisis, the principle that cases should be decided according to consistent principled rules so that similar facts will yield similar results, lies at the heart of all common law systems. The common law—so named because it was "common" to all the king's courts across England—originated in the practices of the courts of the English kings in the centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066; the British Empire spread the English legal system to its historical colonies, many of which retain the common law system today. These "common law systems" are legal systems that give great precedential weight to common law, to the style of reasoning inherited from the English legal system. Today, one-third of the world's population lives in common law jurisdictions or in systems mixed with civil law, including Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Botswana, Cameroon, Cyprus, Fiji, Grenada, Hong Kong, Ireland, Jamaica, Liberia, Malta, Marshall Islands, Namibia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Tobago, the United Kingdom, the United States, Zimbabwe.
Some of these countries have variants on common law systems. The term common law has many connotations; the first three set out here are the most-common usages within the legal community. Other connotations from past centuries are sometimes seen and are sometimes heard in everyday speech; the first definition of "common law" given in Black's Law Dictionary, 10th edition, 2014, is "The body of law derived from judicial decisions, rather than from statutes or constitutions. This usage is given as the first definition in modern legal dictionaries, is characterized as the “most common” usage among legal professionals, is the usage seen in decisions of courts. In this connotation, "common law" distinguishes the authority. For example, the law in most Anglo-American jurisdictions includes "statutory law" enacted by a legislature, "regulatory law" or “delegated legislation” promulgated by executive branch agencies pursuant to delegation of rule-making authority from the legislature, common law or "case law", i.e. decisions issued by courts.
This first connotation can be further differentiated into pure common law arising from the traditional and inherent authority of courts to define what the law is in the absence of an underlying statute or regulation. Examples include most criminal law and procedural law before the 20th century, today, most contract law and the law of torts. Interstitial common law court decisions that analyze and determine the fine boundaries and distinctions in law promulgated by other bodies; this body of common law, sometimes called "interstitial common law", includes judicial interpretation of the Constitution, of legislative statutes, of agency regulations, the application of law to specific facts. Publication of decisions, indexing, is essential to the development of common law, thus governments and private publishers publish law reports. While all decisions in common law jurisdictions are precedent, some become "leading cases" or "landmark decisions" that are cited often. Black's Law Dictionary 10th Ed. definition 2, differentiates "common law" jurisdictions and legal systems from "civil law" or "code" jurisdictions.
Common law systems place great weight on court decisions, which are considered "law" with the same force of law as statutes—for nearly a millennium, common law courts have had the authority to make law where no legislative statute exists, statutes mean what courts interpret them to mean. By contrast, in civil law jurisdictions, courts lack authority to act. Civil law judges tend to give less weight to judicial precedent, which means that a
