In common law countries there are three main tributaries of law: legislation, the common law, and equity. Depending on where you are, the latter two are sometimes "fused" into a single type of law.

"Law makers" -- I presume you mean legislators -- only control legislation. This is often called "positive law", in that somebody has to take positive action to "make" it where it didn't exist before.

By convention, the common law is considered to be "discovered". It exists independent of men and women, and the role of judges is to determine what it is.

In practice there is a dynamic tension between the evolution of the common law as it finds and adapts to new problems, and the intervention of the legislature when it decides that the law should be something else. Legislation itself quickly accretes case law that decides what the given piece of legislation means.