countries has diverged to some extent from English common law, but
reference is often made to the decisions of English courts in awkward cases.
This is true of the USA as well as countries such as Australia. In fact the process
is now two way, with English courts not infrequently citing Australian or
American decisions. This has led to the hope that some sort of international
common law may emerge. Much incentive towards this is given by the
increasing importance of cases, often going to arbitration rather than law,
where complex international dealings involving several countries require a
uniform solution. Thus ‘private’international law, vastly important in
commercial cases, can only really develop as a form of common law, there
being no relevant statute-making body.
Commonwealth
Commonwealth is a historic term in political theory, used by writers of very
different political persuasion to refer to their ideal state. It has also been used in
the title of the voluntary association of states, the Commonwealth of Nations,
which gradually emerged during the first half of the 20th century to replace the
British Empire as former colonies achieved self-government and became
independent, and in that of the Commonwealth of Independent States set
up as an attempt to preserve some unity and co-operation among the former
republics of the Soviet Union. It probably derives from the Greek concept of
‘oikumene’ (living together). Poland and Lithuania formed a Commonwealth
in 1569 to protect themselves against threats from the Russian state of Muscovy
to the east, the Turkish Ottoman Empire to the south and Sweden to the
north, but the usual early example is the English Commonwealth under the
Cromwells from the execution of Charles I until the restoration of Charles II.
The contemporary political theorist ThomasHobbesused the term to mean
that there existed some common ‘weal’ or values which rational people would
co-operate to defend. Four of the earliest US states (Kentucky, Massachusetts,
Pennsylvania and Virginia) use the word Commonwealth in their titles; like
the English Commonwealth, this was an attempt to find a description of a
political system that did not rest on any notion of a monarch legitimately
‘owning’ the country, but allowed for considerable power to be wielded by a
central sovereign institution, whether that be vested in an individual or an
assembly.
The modern Commonwealth of Nations can be subdivided into two very
general types of countries: the ‘Old Commonwealth’ refers to those territories
which were settled rather than conquered, had all become independent by the
First World War, and are predominantly European in origin, such as Canada,
Australia and New Zealand; the ‘New Commonwealth’ countries are those,
such as India, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia and Nigeria, which have gained their
Commonwealth