> *English Common Law* has entered the chat
France (and Normandy) was conquered by Rome before it was granted to Rollo, a Viking. A few generations later, his descendant William the Conqueror claimed the English crown. Just like what happened with Gauls and Romans, the conquered people adopted large parts of the language and customs of the conqueror. That's why the English language is ~25% of Roman origin for it's vocabulary. I suppose it is the same for English common law.
So, we pore over Supreme Court cases on the First Amendment, for example, to
try to interpret what tests we will use to determine whether something is
going to be unconstitutional law. Leoni didn't want that. He argued that--and
again, he was proud of the Roman law contribution. He said that the Roman
jurist was a sort of scientist: that the object of his research was a
solution to cases that citizens submitted to him for study. So, an
industrialist or a scientist might look to a physicist to engineer a
technical problem. So, private Roman law was something to be described or
discovered, not something to be enacted. So, over time, these principles
emerge.
The law should be akin to the scientific method. Unfortunately like science it is full of humans, so reputation is important, etc, etc. unfortunately the judiciary is far worse than the scientific community.