Barter
In trade, barter is a system of exchange where participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. Economists distinguish barter from gift economies in many ways. Barter takes place on a bilateral basis, but may be multilateral. In most developed countries, barter only exists parallel to monetary systems to a limited extent. Market actors use barter as a replacement for money as the method of exchange in times of monetary crisis, such as when currency becomes unstable or unavailable for conducting commerce. Economists since the times of Adam Smith, looking at non-specific pre-modern societies as examples, have used the inefficiency of barter to explain the emergence of money, of "the" economy, hence of the discipline of economics itself. However, ethnographic studies have shown that no present or past society has used barter without any other medium of exchange or measurement, nor have anthropologists found evidence that money emerged from barter, instead finding that gift-giving was the most usual means of exchange of goods and services.
Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, sought to demonstrate that markets pre-existed the state, hence should be free of government regulation. He argued. Markets emerged, in his view, out of the division of labour, by which individuals began to specialize in specific crafts and hence had to depend on others for subsistence goods; these goods were first exchanged by barter. Specialization depended on trade, but was hindered by the "double coincidence of wants" which barter requires, i.e. for the exchange to occur, each participant must want what the other has. To complete this hypothetical history, craftsmen would stockpile one particular good, be it salt or metal, that they thought no one would refuse; this is the origin of money according to Smith. Money, as a universally desired medium of exchange, allows each half of the transaction to be separated. Barter is characterized in Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" by a disparaging vocabulary: "higgling, swapping, dickering." It has been characterized as negative reciprocity, or "selfish profiteering."Anthropologists have argued, in contrast, "that when something resembling barter does occur in stateless societies it is always between strangers."
Barter occurred between strangers, not fellow villagers, hence cannot be used to naturalistically explain the origin of money without the state. Since most people engaged in trade knew each other, exchange was fostered through the extension of credit. Marcel Mauss, author of'The Gift', argued that the first economic contracts were to not act in one's economic self-interest, that before money, exchange was fostered through the processes of reciprocity and redistribution, not barter. Everyday exchange relations in such societies are characterized by generalized reciprocity, or a non-calculative familial "communism" where each takes according to their needs, gives as they have. Since direct barter does not require payment in money, it can be utilized when money is in short supply, when there is little information about the credit worthiness of trade partners, or when there is a lack of trust between those trading. Barter is an option to those who cannot afford to store their small supply of wealth in money in hyperinflation situations where money devalues quickly.
The limitations of barter are explained in terms of its inefficiencies in facilitating exchange in comparison to money. It is said that barter is'inefficient' because: There needs to be a'double coincidence of wants' For barter to occur between two parties, both parties need to have what the other wants. There is no common measure of value In a monetary economy, money plays the role of a measure of value of all goods, so their values can be assessed against each other. Indivisibility of certain goods If a person wants to buy a certain amount of another's goods, but only has for payment one indivisible unit of another good, worth more than what the person wants to obtain, a barter transaction cannot occur. Lack of standards for deferred payments This is related to the absence of a common measure of value, although if the debt is denominated in units of the good that will be used in payment, it is not a problem. Difficulty in storing wealth If a society relies on perishable goods, storing wealth for the future may be impractical.
However, some barter economies rely on durable goods like sheep or cattle for this purpose. Other anthropologists have questioned whether barter is between "total" strangers, a form of barter known as "silent trade". Silent trade called silent barter, dumb barter, or depot trade, is a method by which traders who cannot speak each other's language can trade without talking. However, Benjamin Orlove has shown that while barter occurs through "silent trade", it occurs in commercial markets as well. "Because barter is a difficult way of conducting trade, it will occur only where there are strong institutional constraints on the use of money or where the barter symbolically denotes a special social relationship and is used in well-defined conditions. To sum up, multipurpose money in markets is like lubrication for machines - necessary for the
Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster, Inc. is an American company that publishes reference books and is known for its dictionaries. In 1828, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as G & C Merriam Co. in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1843, after Noah Webster died, the company bought the rights to An American Dictionary of the English Language from Webster's estate. All Merriam-Webster dictionaries trace their lineage to this source. In 1964, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. acquired Inc. as a subsidiary. The company adopted its current name in 1982. In 1806, Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. In 1807 Webster started two decades of intensive work to expand his publication into a comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language. To help him trace the etymology of words, Webster learned 26 languages. Webster hoped to standardize American speech, since Americans in different parts of the country used somewhat different vocabularies and spelled and used words differently.
Webster completed his dictionary during his year abroad in 1825 in Paris, at the University of Cambridge. His 1820s book contained 70,000 words, of which about 12,000 had never appeared in a dictionary before; as a spelling reformer, Webster believed that English spelling rules were unnecessarily complex, so his dictionary introduced American English spellings, replacing colour with color, waggon with wagon, centre with center. He added American words, including skunk and squash, that did not appear in British dictionaries. At the age of 70 in 1828, Webster published his dictionary. However, in 1840, he published the second edition in two volumes with much greater success. In 1843, after Webster's death, George Merriam and Charles Merriam secured publishing and revision rights to the 1840 edition of the dictionary, they published a revision in 1847, which did not change any of the main text but added new sections, a second update with illustrations in 1859. In 1864, Merriam published a expanded edition, the first version to change Webster's text overhauling his work yet retaining many of his definitions and the title "An American Dictionary".
This began a series of revisions. In 1884 it contained 118,000 words, "3000 more than any other English dictionary". With the edition of 1890, the dictionary was retitled Webster's International; the vocabulary was vastly expanded in Webster's New International editions of 1909 and 1934, totaling over half a million words, with the 1934 edition retrospectively called Webster's Second International or "The Second Edition" of the New International. The Collegiate Dictionary was introduced in 1898 and the series is now in its eleventh edition. Following the publication of Webster's International in 1890, two Collegiate editions were issued as abridgments of each of their Unabridged editions. With the ninth edition, the Collegiate adopted changes which distinguish it as a separate entity rather than an abridgment of the Third New International; some proper names were returned including names of Knights of the Round Table. The most notable change was the inclusion of the date of the first known citation of each word, to document its entry into the English language.
The eleventh edition includes more than 225,000 definitions, more than 165,000 entries. A CD-ROM of the text is sometimes included; this dictionary is preferred as a source "for general matters of spelling" by the influential The Chicago Manual of Style, followed by many book publishers and magazines in the United States. The Chicago Manual states. Merriam overhauled the dictionary again with the 1961 Webster's Third New International under the direction of Philip B. Gove, making changes that sparked public controversy. Many of these changes were in formatting, omitting needless punctuation, or avoiding complete sentences when a phrase was sufficient. Others, more controversial, signaled a shift from linguistic prescriptivism and towards describing American English as it was used at that time. Since the 1940s, the company has added many specialized dictionaries, language aides, other references to its repertoire; the G. & C. Merriam Company lost its right to exclusive use of the name "Webster" after a series of lawsuits placed that name in public domain.
Its name was changed to "Merriam-Webster, Incorporated", with the publication of Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary in 1983. Previous publications had used "A Merriam-Webster Dictionary" as a subtitle for many years and will be found on older editions; the company has been a subsidiary of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1964. In 1996, Merriam-Webster launched its first website, which provided free access to an online dictionary and thesaurus. Merriam-Webster has published dictionaries of synonyms, English usage, biography, proper names, medical terms, sports terms, Spanish/English, numerous others. Non-dictionary publications include Collegiate Thesaurus, Secretarial Handbook, Manual for Writers and Editors, Collegiate Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia of Literature, Encyclopedia of World Religions. On February 16, 2007, Merriam-Webster announced the launch of a mobile dictionary and thesaurus service developed with mobile search-and-information provider AskMeNow. Consumers use the service to access definitions and synonyms via text message.
Services include Merr
Lobbying
Lobbying, persuasion, or interest representation is the act of attempting to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of officials in their daily life, most legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying is done by many types of people and organized groups, including individuals in the private sector, fellow legislators or government officials, or advocacy groups. Lobbyists may be among a legislator's constituencies, meaning a voter or bloc of voters within their electoral district. Professional lobbyists are people whose business is trying to influence legislation, regulation, or other government decisions, actions, or policies on behalf of a group or individual who hires them. Individuals and nonprofit organizations can lobby as an act of volunteering or as a small part of their normal job. Governments define and regulate organized group lobbying that has become influential; the ethics and morals involved with lobbying are complicated. Lobbying can, at times, be spoken of with contempt, when the implication is that people with inordinate socioeconomic power are corrupting the law in order to serve their own interests.
When people who have a duty to act on behalf of others, such as elected officials with a duty to serve their constituents' interests or more broadly the public good, can benefit by shaping the law to serve the interests of some private parties, a conflict of interest exists. Many critiques of lobbying point to the potential for conflicts of interest to lead to agent misdirection or the intentional failure of an agent with a duty to serve an employer, client, or constituent to perform those duties; the failure of government officials to serve the public interest as a consequence of lobbying by special interests who provide benefits to the official is an example of agent misdirection. In a report carried by the BBC, an OED lexicographer has shown that "lobbying" finds its roots in the gathering of Members of Parliament and peers in the hallways of the UK Houses of Parliament before and after parliamentary debates where members of the public can meet their representatives. One story held that the term originated at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, where it was used by President Ulysses S. Grant to describe the political advocates who frequented the hotel's lobby to access Grant—who was there in the evenings to enjoy a cigar and brandy—and would try to buy the president drinks in an attempt to influence his political decisions.
Although the term may have gained more widespread currency in Washington, D. C. by virtue of this practice during the Grant Administration, the OED cites numerous documented uses of the word well before Grant's presidency, including use in Pennsylvania as early as 1808. The term "lobbying" appeared in print as early as 1820: Other letters from Washington affirm, that members of the Senate, when the compromise question was to be taken in the House, were not only "lobbying about the Representatives' Chamber" but active in endeavoring to intimidate certain weak representatives by insulting threats to dissolve the Union. Dictionary definitions:'Lobbying' is a form of advocacy with the intention of influencing decisions made by the government by individuals or more by lobby groups. A'lobbyist' is a person who tries to influence legislation on behalf of a special interest or a member of a lobby. Governments define and regulate organized group lobbying as part of laws to prevent political corruption and by establishing transparency about possible influences by public lobby registers.
Lobby groups may concentrate their efforts on the legislatures, where laws are created, but may use the judicial branch to advance their causes. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for example, filed suits in state and federal courts in the 1950s to challenge segregation laws, their efforts resulted in the Supreme Court declaring such laws unconstitutional. Lobbyists may use a legal device known as amicus curiae briefs to try to influence court cases. Briefs are written documents filed with a court by parties to a lawsuit. Amici curiae briefs are briefs filed by groups who are not parties to a suit; these briefs are entered into the court records, give additional background on the matter being decided upon. Advocacy groups use these briefs both to promote their positions; the lobbying industry is affected by the revolving door concept, a movement of personnel between roles as legislators and regulators and roles in the industries affected by legislation and regulation, as the main asset for a lobbyist is contacts with and influence on government officials.
This climate is attractive for ex-government officials. It can mean substantial monetary rewards for lobbying firms, government projects and contracts worth in the hundreds of millions for those they represent; the international standards for the regulation of lobbying were introduced at four international organizations and supranational associations: 1) the European Union. In pre-modern political systems, royal courts provided incidental opportunities for gaining the ear of monarchs and their councillors. Nowadays, lobying has taken a more drastic position as big corporations pressure politicians to help them gain more benefit. Lobying has become a big part of the world economy as big companies corrupt regulations. Kellogg School of Manag
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private and statutory Ivy League research university in Ithaca, New York. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, the university was intended to teach and make contributions in all fields of knowledge—from the classics to the sciences, from the theoretical to the applied; these ideals, unconventional for the time, are captured in Cornell's founding principle, a popular 1868 Ezra Cornell quotation: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study."The university is broadly organized into seven undergraduate colleges and seven graduate divisions at its main Ithaca campus, with each college and division defining its own admission standards and academic programs in near autonomy. The university administers two satellite medical campuses, one in New York City and one in Education City and Cornell Tech, a graduate program that incorporates technology and creative thinking; the program moved from Google's Chelsea Building in New York City to its permanent campus on Roosevelt Island in September 2017.
Cornell is one of ten private land grant universities in the United States and the only one in New York. Of its seven undergraduate colleges, three are state-supported statutory or contract colleges through the State University of New York system, including its agricultural and human ecology colleges as well as its industrial labor relations school. Of Cornell's graduate schools, only the veterinary college is state-supported; as a land grant college, Cornell operates a cooperative extension outreach program in every county of New York and receives annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions. The Cornell University Ithaca Campus comprises 745 acres, but is much larger when the Cornell Botanic Gardens and the numerous university-owned lands in New York City are considered; as of October 2018, 58 Nobel laureates, four Turing Award winners and one Fields Medalist have been affiliated with Cornell University. Since its founding, Cornell has been a co-educational, non-sectarian institution where admission has not been restricted by religion or race.
Cornell counts more than 245,000 living alumni, its former and present faculty and alumni include 34 Marshall Scholars, 30 Rhodes Scholars, 29 Truman Scholars, 7 Gates Scholars, 55 Olympic Medalists, 14 living billionaires. The student body consists of more than 14,000 undergraduate and 8,000 graduate students from all 50 American states and 116 countries. Cornell University was founded on April 27, 1865. Senator Ezra Cornell offered his farm in Ithaca, New York, as a site and $500,000 of his personal fortune as an initial endowment. Fellow senator and educator Andrew Dickson White agreed to be the first president. During the next three years, White oversaw the construction of the first two buildings and traveled to attract students and faculty; the university was inaugurated on October 7, 1868, 412 men were enrolled the next day. Cornell developed as a technologically innovative institution, applying its research to its own campus and to outreach efforts. For example, in 1883 it was one of the first university campuses to use electricity from a water-powered dynamo to light the grounds.
Since 1894, Cornell fulfill statutory requirements. Cornell has had active alumni since its earliest classes, it was one of the first universities to include alumni-elected representatives on its Board of Trustees. Cornell was among the Ivies that had heightened student activism during the 1960s related to cultural issues, civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War. Today the university has more than 4,000 courses. Cornell is known for the Residential Club Fire of 1967, a fire in the Residential Club building that killed eight students and one professor. Since 2000, Cornell has been expanding its international programs. In 2004, the university opened the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, it has partnerships with institutions in India and the People's Republic of China. Former president Jeffrey S. Lehman described the university, with its high international profile, a "transnational university". On March 9, 2004, Cornell and Stanford University laid the cornerstone for a new'Bridging the Rift Center' to be built and jointly operated for education on the Israel–Jordan border.
Cornell's main campus is on East Hill in Ithaca, New York, overlooking Cayuga Lake. Since the university was founded, it has expanded to about 2,300 acres, encompassing both the hill and much of the surrounding areas. Central Campus has laboratories, administrative buildings, all of the campus' academic buildings, athletic facilities and museums. North Campus is composed of ten residence halls that house first-year students, although the Townhouse Community houses transfer students; the five main residence halls on West Campus make up the West Campus House System, along with several Gothic-style buildings, referred to as "the Gothics". Collegetown contains two upper-level residence halls and the Schwartz Performing Arts Center amid a mixed-use neighborhood of apartments and businesses; the main campus is marked by an irregular layout and eclectic architectural styles, including ornate Collegiate Gothic and Neoclassical buildings, the more spare international and modernist structures. The more ornat
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, is known for his portraits, both of German princes and those of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, whose cause he embraced with enthusiasm, he was a close friend of Martin Luther. Cranach painted religious subjects, first in the Catholic tradition, trying to find new ways of conveying Lutheran religious concerns in art, he continued throughout his career to paint nude subjects drawn from religion. Cranach had a large workshop and many of his works exist in different versions, he has been considered the most successful German artist of his time. He is commemorated in the liturgical calendars of the Lutheran churches, he was born at Kronach in upper Franconia in 1472. His exact date of birth is unknown, he learned the art of drawing from his father Hans Maler. His mother, with surname Hübner, died in 1491; the name of his birthplace was used for his surname, another custom of the times.
How Cranach was trained is not known, but it was with local south German masters, as with his contemporary Matthias Grünewald, who worked at Bamberg and Aschaffenburg. There are suggestions that Cranach spent some time in Vienna around 1500. According to Gunderam Cranach demonstrated his talents as a painter before the close of the 15th century, his work drew the attention of Duke Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, known as Frederick the Wise, who attached Cranach to his court in 1504. The records of Wittenberg confirm Gunderam's statement to this extent that Cranach's name appears for the first time in the public accounts on the 24 June 1504, when he drew 50 gulden for the salary of half a year, as pictor ducalis. Cranach was to remain in the service of the Elector and his successors for the rest of his life, although he was able to undertake other work. Cranach married Barbara Brengbier, the daughter of a burgher of Gotha and born there. Cranach owned a house at Gotha, but most he got to know Barbara near Wittenberg, where her family owned a house, that also belonged to Cranach.
The first evidence of Cranach's skill as an artist comes in a picture dated 1504. Early in his career he was active in several branches of his profession: sometimes a decorative painter, more producing portraits and altarpieces, woodcuts and designing the coins for the electorate. Early in the days of his official employment he startled his master's courtiers by the realism with which he painted still life and antlers on the walls of the country palaces at Coburg and Locha. Before 1508 he had painted several altar-pieces for the Castle Church at Wittenberg in competition with Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair and others. In 1509 Cranach went to the Netherlands, painted the Emperor Maximilian and the boy who afterwards became Emperor Charles V; until 1508 Cranach signed his works with his initials. In that year the elector gave him the winged snake as an emblem, or Kleinod, which superseded the initials on his pictures after that date. Cranach was the court painter to the electors of Saxony in Wittenberg, an area in the heart of the emerging Protestant faith.
His patrons were powerful supporters of Martin Luther, Cranach used his art as a symbol of the new faith. Cranach made numerous portraits of Luther, provided woodcut illustrations for Luther's German translation of the Bible. Somewhat the duke conferred on him the monopoly of the sale of medicines at Wittenberg, a printer's patent with exclusive privileges as to copyright in Bibles. Cranach's presses were used by Martin Luther, his apothecary shop was open for centuries, was only lost by fire in 1871. Cranach, like his patron, was friendly with the Protestant Reformers at a early stage; the oldest reference to Cranach in Luther's correspondence dates from 1520. In a letter written from Worms in 1521, Luther calls him his "gossip", warmly alluding to his "Gevatterin", the artist's wife. Cranach first made an engraving of Luther in 1520, he was godfather to their first child, Johannes "Hans" Luther, born 1526. In 1530 Luther lived at the citadel of Veste Coburg under the protection of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and his room is preserved there along with a painting of him.
The Dukes became noted collectors of Cranach's work, some of which remains in the family collection at Callenberg Castle. The death in 1525 of the Elector Frederick the Wise and Elector John's in 1532 brought no change in Cranach's position.
Contract
A contract is a legally-binding agreement which recognises and governs the rights and duties of the parties to the agreement. A contract is enforceable because it meets the requirements and approval of the law. An agreement involves the exchange of goods, money, or promises of any of those. In the event of breach of contract, the law awards the injured party access to legal remedies such as damages and cancellation. In the Anglo-American common law, formation of a contract requires an offer, consideration, a mutual intent to be bound; each party must have capacity to enter the contract. Although most oral contracts are binding, some types of contracts may require formalities such as being in writing or by deed. In the civil law tradition, contract law is a branch of the law of obligations. At common law, the elements of a contract are offer, intention to create legal relations and legality of both form and content. Not all agreements are contractual, as the parties must be deemed to have an intention to be bound.
A so-called gentlemen's agreement is one, not intended to be enforceable, "binding in honour only". In order for a contract to be formed, the parties must reach mutual assent; this is reached through offer and an acceptance which does not vary the offer's terms, known as the "mirror image rule". An offer is a definite statement of the offeror's willingness to be bound should certain conditions be met. If a purported acceptance does vary the terms of an offer, it is not an acceptance but a counteroffer and, therefore a rejection of the original offer; the Uniform Commercial Code disposes of the mirror image rule in §2-207, although the UCC only governs transactions in goods in the USA. As a court cannot read minds, the intent of the parties is interpreted objectively from the perspective of a reasonable person, as determined in the early English case of Smith v Hughes, it is important to note that where an offer specifies a particular mode of acceptance, only an acceptance communicated via that method will be valid.
Contracts may be unilateral. A bilateral contract is an agreement in which each of the parties to the contract makes a promise or set of promises to each other. For example, in a contract for the sale of a home, the buyer promises to pay the seller $200,000 in exchange for the seller's promise to deliver title to the property; these common contracts take place in the daily flow of commerce transactions, in cases with sophisticated or expensive precedent requirements, which are requirements that must be met for the contract to be fulfilled. Less common are unilateral contracts in which one party makes a promise, but the other side does not promise anything. In these cases, those accepting the offer are not required to communicate their acceptance to the offeror. In a reward contract, for example, a person who has lost a dog could promise a reward if the dog is found, through publication or orally; the payment could be additionally conditioned on the dog being returned alive. Those who learn of the reward are not required to search for the dog, but if someone finds the dog and delivers it, the promisor is required to pay.
In the similar case of advertisements of deals or bargains, a general rule is that these are not contractual offers but an "invitation to treat", but the applicability of this rule is disputed and contains various exceptions. The High Court of Australia stated that the term unilateral contract is "unscientific and misleading". In certain circumstances, an implied contract may be created. A contract is implied in fact if the circumstances imply that parties have reached an agreement though they have not done so expressly. For example, John Smith, a former lawyer may implicitly enter a contract by visiting a doctor and being examined. A contract, implied in law is called a quasi-contract, because it is not in fact a contract. Quantum meruit claims are an example. Where something is advertised in a newspaper or on a poster, the advertisement will not constitute an offer but will instead be an invitation to treat, an indication that one or both parties are prepared to negotiate a deal. An exception arises if the advertisement makes a unilateral promise, such as the offer of a reward, as in the famous case of Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co, decided in nineteenth-century England.
The company, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, advertised a smoke ball that would, if sniffed "three times daily for two weeks", prevent users from catching the'flu. If the smoke ball failed to prevent'flu, the company promised that they would pay the user £100, adding that they had "deposited £1,000 in the Alliance Bank to show our sincerity in the matter"; when Mrs Carlill sued for the money, the company argued the advert should not be taken as a serious binding offer. Although an invitation to treat cannot be accepted, it should not be ignored, for it may affect the offer. For instance, where an offer is made in response to an invitation to treat, the offer may incorporate the terms of the invitation to treat. If, as in the Boots case, the offer is made by an action without any
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
