Common Law is a real thing. It is a real system of laws derived from centuries of work, study and sacrifice of millions of people. It is not trivial and inconsequential as some would have you think. It is the Common Law that is most represented within Our Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Our Bill of Rights. These documents were designed to limit and eliminate the vicious Equity, Maritime or Admiralty Law which was what we revolted against as Our Revolution against the totalitarianism of England.
Did you know the Anglo-American system (Our system) of jurisprudence is the only one which developed out of what is called the Common Law, that is, the general law of private property known in the British Isles? It is true - Common Law was designed through the centuries to secure the rights of individuals (you and me) to property and to make it difficult for property to be taken away from us by a government or governmental structure (bureaucracy) without due process of law. The Common Law was expounded over the years in hundreds of thousands of case decisions as a result of trials in which the Common Law jury acted as the Judges, and in which they exercised the authority to hear and decide questions of both Law and fact. Common Law deals with legal relationships, powers and liabilities, and types of actions rather than theoretical definitions of abstract legal concepts. The Common Law was recognized by Our Founding Fathers and is the basis of all law in America today.
The Common Law recognizes the Power of Government lies in the common people and not in an elite group of power brokers. It is the terrible Equity, Maritime or Admiralty Laws (laws of contract) that steals this power from the people and centralizes it into the hands of a few power oriented men. The Common Law deals in real property whereas the Equity Laws deal in written abstractions of performance (agreements or contracts). In other words, Masters own their own property, work and destiny. We are all Masters when we truly own our own property. Slaves do not own property, they usually rent property of another and are compelled to perform upon or with that rented (tenured) property according to some agreement or contract.
It is from such controversies involving property that all of our Rights have come. Property is known as Substance at the Common Law, and includes hard money in the form of gold and silver coin as required by Our federal Constitution and every other State Constitution as they were all drafted to be in perfect harmony one with another.
Controversies involving these matters carry with them a Law jurisdiction, a jurisdiction in which all of our Rights are found. The Judge in a Court of Common Law is an impartial referee of the dispute, and he is bound to protect the Rights of the parties to the dispute, or he will have lost whatever jurisdiction he may have had, or claimed to have had. It is the Jury who decides whether or not the Facts of the case are valid and they also decide the Law - does it apply? Is it correct for this case?, etc.