Editing Common law (section)

== Scholarly works ==
[[File:WilliamBlackstone.jpg|thumb|right|[[Sir William Blackstone]] as illustrated in his ''[[Commentaries on the Laws of England]]'']]
[[Edward Coke]], a 17th-century Lord Chief Justice of England and a [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|Member of Parliament]] (MP), wrote several legal texts that collected and integrated centuries of case law. Lawyers in both England and America learned the law from his ''[[Institutes of the Lawes of England|Institutes]]'' and ''Reports'' until the end of the 18th century. His works are still cited by common law courts around the world.

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. Since 1979, a facsimile edition of that first edition has been available in four paper-bound volumes. Today it has been superseded in the English part of the United Kingdom by [[Halsbury's Laws of England]] that covers both common and statutory English law.

While he was still on the [[Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court]], and before being named to the [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]], Justice [[Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.]] published a short volume called ''[[The Common Law (Holmes)|The Common Law]]'', which remains a classic in the field. Unlike Blackstone and the Restatements, Holmes' book only briefly discusses what the law ''is''; rather, Holmes describes the common law ''process''. Law professor [[John Chipman Gray]]'s ''The Nature and Sources of the Law'', an examination and survey of the common law, is also still commonly read in [[Law school in the United States|U.S. law schools]].

In the United States, [[Restatement of the Law|Restatements]] of various subject matter areas (Contracts, Torts, Judgments, and so on.), edited by the [[American Law Institute]], collect the common law for the area. The ALI Restatements are often cited by American courts and lawyers for propositions of uncodified common law, and are considered highly persuasive authority, just below binding precedential decisions. The [[Corpus Juris Secundum]] is an encyclopedia whose main content is a compendium of the common law and its variations throughout the various state jurisdictions.

Scots ''common law'' covers matters including murder and theft, and has sources in custom, in legal writings and previous court decisions. The legal writings used are called ''Institutional Texts'' and come mostly from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Examples include Craig, ''Jus Feudale'' (1655) and Stair, ''The Institutions of the Law of Scotland'' (1681).