Common Law is unwritten law;
which are the generally accepted laws carried to the United States from England. Common law courts
generally explain in detail the legal rationale behind their decisions, with citations of both legislation and previous relevant judgments,
and often an exegesis of the wider legal principles.
Statutory Law is written law;
based upon the statutes and codes enacted by legislative
bodies. decisions in civil law jurisdictions are generally very short, referring only to
statutes. The reason for this difference
is that these civil law jurisdictions adhere to a tradition that the reader should be able to deduce the logic from the decision and
the statutes, so that, in some cases, it is somewhat difficult to apply previous decisions to the facts presented in future cases.
Case
law is based on precedence;
in a process known as stare decisis- only in courts of first impression