[Axlrose]

I'm very far from being an expert on this, but i seem to remember a lawyer telling me once that English legal decisions dating back hundreds of years have been allowed as precidents in US cases, and that a large part of the US legal code is based on British common law.

So this isn't really hot news, as far as i know.

[drpix]

"...legal decisions dating back hundreds of years have been allowed as precedents in US cases...

Those lawyers always cite England's Lord Blackstone. What they leave out is that his "precedents" were the significant influence his writings had on the writing of our Constitution before ratification (or as they reveal original intent of the framers). Not as a precedent for rewriting the constitution after ratification or to circumvent the Constitution's Amendment process.

[RKB-AFG]

Our Constitution protects the common law system that we inherited from England. The basic ideas of torts, contracts, and property are all mainly common law with some statutory modifications.

But there is a big difference between using English common law cases and using the law of Russia, France, Germany, Belgium or wherever.

In fact, Scalia said that he uses cites English common law cases more the any other justice. But what Scalia is opposed to is using the laws of various non-English countries that do not have our common law tradition.