In the words of the great Common Law advocate Bill Thornton, the Common Law is custom that is shared among a community of likeminded people. The tradition of the Common Law has its earliest roots in the venerable pre-Christian, Pagan approaches to regulating law and order.
A venerable tradition
Pagan (pre-Christian) traditions were rich in Common Law principles and practices that are recognizable today. From Ancient Celtic/Germanic/Gothic traditions to Pagan Greek and Roman rules and codes, legal systems of today retain much of these ancient, venerable traditions.
1) Germanic / Anglo-Saxon customary law (Pagan in origin)
Before Christianity became dominant in England, the Germanic peoples already had legal customs that later influenced how English law “felt” on the ground.
Key features that echo into later Common Law culture:
- Custom as law: rules are known through community usage, not written codes
- Public assemblies deciding disputes (folk-moots; later “courts”)
- Wergild and compensation schedules (harm → payment) (the root word for today’s ‘guilty’)
- Oaths, oath-helpers, reputation as proof
- Local decision-making and local norms (later seen in “local custom” arguments)
Even though Anglo-Saxon law becomes Christianised over time, the customary, pragmatic, community-tested nature is a deep root.
2) Roman law and Roman legal method (Pagan classical roots)
The Common Law is not “Roman law in English clothing” (England never fully adopted the Civil Law model).
But Roman legal ideas shaped European legal reasoning generally, and indirectly influenced English practice—especially through the educated clerical and university tradition later on.
Pagan Roman contributions that matter:
- Legal reasoning by categories (contract, property, delict/tort-like wrongs)
- Distinctions in property and remedies
- Procedural sophistication (actions, pleading forms, structured process)
- Maxims and interpretive habits (later echoed in legal maxims)
Roman law is a methodological ancestor, more than a direct parent.
3) Ancient Greek ideas of “rule of law” and civic adjudication
Greek city-states weren’t a source of English Common Law doctrine, but they are a Pagan source of legal philosophy that later became foundational in Western legal thought:
- Nomos (law as public reason / shared order)
- Courts as civic institutions
- Debate, persuasion, and public accountability in dispute resolution
- Early thinking on natural justice and fairness principles
This influences later Western legal ideals and vocabulary, even when not directly “received” into English courts.
4) The Pagan idea of customary law as legitimate authority
Across Pagan Europe and the ancient Mediterranean, you see a consistent concept:
“A rule is binding because the community recognises it as binding.”
That concept matters because Common Law becomes famous for treating custom + practice + precedent as law, rather than treating legislation as the only source of legality.
So the root isn’t one civilisation; it’s the broader Pagan customary law worldview.
5) Early legal ideas that later show up as Common Law “habits”
Some Common Law habits have analogues in older (Pagan) systems:
- Proof through witnesses and oath (seen widely in early societies)
- Restitution / compensation models (harm → make whole)
- Public adjudication and community validation
- Procedure matters (how you sue can be as important as what you claim)
Common Law later professionalises this, but the instinct is old.
In short…
If one considers, “what are the Pagan sources of Common Law?” the most accurate answer is:
Customary Germanic/Anglo-Saxon law (the most direct cultural ancestor)
Classical Roman legal method (indirect but extremely influential to legal reasoning)
Greek rule-of-law philosophy (background intellectual heritage)
Pagan customary law legitimacy model (law as lived practice)
An important misconception
A misconception of the Common Law is that it is a mix of precedent (judge made law) and statutes as created by Acts of Parliament. In reality, its present form is complex but unified system based ancient pagan traditions with post-Conquest (Norman invasion of 1066) addition of royal courts + writs + precedent that took shape in medieval England.
Expansion of layers of jurisdiction by Church mandate
With the introduction of Christianity in the late Western Roman era, new and more complex layers of law were added, namely Cannon Law and Ecclesiastical Law were applied to overlay the Roman Civil Law and Common Law traditions.
Cannon Law and Ecclesiastical Law share their roots in Christian orthodoxy, however their application has differed in that Cannon Law determined laws and guidelines for management of the Church’s internal affairs, such appointment of Bishops, Cardinals, etc, punishments of the clergy, procedures for marriage, births and deaths, etc and administration of Church assets and wealth.
Ecclesiastical Law governed relations of the state with the people and the Church through the frameworks of the institutional Church hierarchies. Importantly, laws governing the practice of marriage (eg. elimination of local customs in place of Church ordained marriage rules), administration of births and deaths and by extension administration of wills, estates, trusts and probate.
In short, the overlay of Church doctrine in the form of Cannon and Ecclesiastical law has given us the systems of intergenerational estate management, regulations of families and societal norms on morality as the Church the determines at any point in time.