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There is a lot of noise in this thread. Most but not all of English common law,and much common law subsequent to American Independence, has been incorporated into statute, incluiding at least in California, a lot of boilerplate from Blackstone et al., adopted in the 19th century, which remains on the books. What has survived from the common law, is the notion that courts interpret the meaning of statutes, and that if it goes to the appellate level, the holdings that are published interpreting such statutes become law as it were, and sometimes the courts revert, particularly in real property law, to rather ancient precedents.

The point is, is that the words of the statutes are king, and the words of the Constitution trump all. When judges are activist, if there is "ambiguity" in the words in a particular factual context, then the courts "refine" the meaning of the statutory and Constitutional words. But where statutes are silent, as in much of the lacunae of contractual law, for example, prior judicial precedents really matter, and legal practioners rely much more on the case law than the statutes. Without my training to parse case law, I would be largely useless as a legal practioner myself. It is not a simple task often.