Unwritten Law
Common Law: Reporting the Unwritten Law
Common law has been known as unwritten law, because it is not collected in a single source. Reports of the judicial decisions from which the common law was derived were only occasionally circulated from the 12th to the 16th century. Starting in the 17th century formal reports of some decisions were published by private parties. These early reports were supplemented by infrequent scholarly treatises summarizing large segments of the case law, such as those of Sir Edward Coke (published in 1628) and Sir William Blackstone (1765-69). As reporting improved, the influence of these treatise writers diminished. In the 19th century the courts themselves took responsibility for publishing judicial decisions in both Britain and the U.S. It is primarily decisions of appellate rather than trial courts that are published. (1)