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1066
Pre Norman Roots
In the late 9th century, Alfred the Great assembled the Doom book which collected the existing laws of Kent, Wessex, and Mercia, and attempted to blend in the Mosaic code, Christian principles, and Germanic customs dating as far as the 5th century. -
1150
Norman Conquest
The "common law" was the law that emerged as "common" throughout the realm as the king's judges followed each other's decisions to create a unified common law throughout England. From at least the 11th century and continuing for several centuries after that, there were several different circuits in the royal court system, served by itinerant judges who would travel from town to town dispensing the King's justice. -
1268
Medieval English Common Law
The early development of case-law in the thirteenth century has been traced to Bracton's On the Laws and Customs of England and led to the yearly compilations of court cases known as Year Books, of which the first extant was published in 1268, the same year that Bracton died. The Year Books are known as the law reports of medieval England, and are a principal source for knowledge of the developing legal doctrines, concepts, and methods in the period from the 13th to the 16th centuries, -
1300
Influences of foreign legal systems
The term "common law" is often used as a contrast to Roman-derived "civil law", and the fundamental processes and forms of reasoning in the two are quite different. Nonetheless, there has been considerable cross-fertilization of ideas, while the two traditions and sets of foundational principles remain distinct. -
Coke and Blackstone
The first attempt at a comprehensive compilation of centuries of common law was by Lord Chief Justice Edward Coke, in his treatise, Institutes of the Lawes of England in the 17th century.
The next definitive historical treatise on the common law is Commentaries on the Laws of England, written by Sir William Blackstone and first published in 1765–1769. -
Propagation of the common law to the colonies and Commonwealth by reception statutes
A reception statute is a statutory law adopted as a former British colony becomes independent, by which the new nation adopts pre-independence English law, to the extent not explicitly rejected by the legislative body or constitution of the new nation. Reception statutes generally consider the English common law dating prior to independence, because of the importance of using an extensive and predictable body of law to govern the conduct of citizens and businesses in a new state. -
Period: to
1870 through 20th century, and the procedural merger of law and equity
In England, courts of and equity were combined by the Judicature Acts of 1873 and 1875, with equity prevailing in case of conflict.
In the United States, parallel systems of law and equity survived well into the 20th century. The United States federal courts procedurally separated law and equity: the same judges could hear either kind of case, but a given case could only pursue causes in law or in equity, and the two kinds of cases proceeded under different procedural rules. -
Period: to
Common law pleading and its abolition in the early 20th century[
One of the major reforms of the late 19th century and early 20th century was the abolition of common law pleading requirements. Pleading technicalities before then were such that a suit by a pro se party was practically impossible. Common law procedure before the statutory reforms was mainly dependent on forms of action and required the opening pleading , and Ejectment (pleading in the alternative was not permitted), and an increasingly technical method of pleading, known as special pleading.