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Common law is law that comes from the common people, vers., legislation, which, comes from the experts.
Common law comes about at the root levels of society: it is not law that is imposed by some authority from on high. The development of common law was essentially a private affair concerning millions of people throughout dozens of generations and stretching across several centuries. It is a process that is self adjusting and which goes on everyday unnoticed, without great expense to the state and with out fractionalizing society. This is to be compared to the legislative process, a comparison I make elsewhere.
Before getting into the specifics of the common law, let me first set forth a small speech given in 1875 by an obscure judge. The name of the judge was The Honourable Joseph Neilson, Chief Justice of the City Court of Brooklyn. He gave this address at some sort of a gathering, not in a court, I don't think. The publisher of the book2 in which I discovered this short speech, entitled it "The Growth of Principles."
Common Law SystemUnder the common-law system, when a court decides and reports its decision concerning a particular case, the case becomes part of the body of law and can be used in later cases involving similar matters. This use of precedents is known as stare decisis. Common law has been administered in the courts of England since the Middle Ages; it is also found in the U.S. and in most of the British Commonwealth. It is distinguished from civil law.
English Common 
The English common law originated in the early Middle Ages in the King’s Court Curia Regis, a single royal court set up for most of the country at Westminster, near London. Like many other early legal systems, it did not originally consist of substantive rights but rather of procedural remedies. The working out of these remedies has, over time, produced the modern system in which rights are seen as primary over procedure. Until the late 19th century, English common law continued to be developed primarily by judges rather than legislators.
The common law is as a result of a natural sequence which hardened first into custom and then into law. It did not come about as an act of will, as an act of some group aware only of the instant moment, unaware of the nature and history of man. It came about as a result of a seamless and continual development, through processes we can hardly begin to understand; it evolved along with man.