IN THE summer of 2013 British royalists were eagerly awaiting the birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s first child. If the couple had had a girl instead of bonny Prince George, she would have been the first daughter to be able to accede to the throne ahead of any younger brothers. That is thanks to a law enacted in 2011 that changed the rules of royal succession. The previous law that sons took precedence over older sisters was never written down, but was instead part of English common law, the basis of the country’s legal system. But just what is common law, and how does it differ from the civil-law system used in some other countries?
