These days there is so much statutory law in the developed world that this distinction is fading away. Yes, it’s technically possible for a common law court to grant a new form of relief that isn’t derived from legislation or binding precedent (eg. the Mabo decision in Australia), but these days the common law is really a ‘god of the gaps,’ and if the courts aren’t satisfied with the common law remedies available 200 years ago or created later by statute, they have very little power to create new remedies. Of course, written laws are always open to interpretation in both the common and civil law system, and that’s what happened in this case (the written law being the U.S. Constitution).

It's not really a 'meme', it just uses a shorthand for 'statutory law' which is what most people think of when they they see 'law'.

> It's not really a 'meme'

It is, in fact, a self-replicating unit of behavior.

(It's also true in one sense, which is one of the bases of it's relative reproductive fitness as a meme.)

That’s like claiming any knowledge is a meme. Kinda destroys the meaning if it just means any time someone repeats a fact.

This is the original meaning given by Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. The word ‘meme’ is more than a repeated fact – first, it doesn’t have to be a fact, and second, it suggests that our culture is the result of evolution in an environment where memes are selected for reproductive fitness (‘virality’).

I've read the Selfish Gene and loved it, but I had NO idea that meme originated from that book. I must have skimmed that paragraph. Thank you for this!

If I'm remembering the book correctly, it's discussed at some length in a later chapter; maybe the last chapter.

> That’s like claiming any knowledge is a meme.

No, beliefs—whether true and justified (hence, knowledge) or otherwise—are not memes. Behaviors—including ones by which beliefs (including knowledge) are transmitted—are memes. If memes are viewed as analogous to genes (which is the whole point of the concept), beliefs (again, including knowledge) are among the features analogous to aspects of phenotype.

Any knowledge capable of self-replication is a meme.

Isn't the difference here that Federal courts can't create law, only rule on constitutional matters. Common law (state and local courts) can create "laws".

There are some exceptions to this where federal laws have likely overreached the framers intentions, and then federal courts had to rule on a matter pertaining to that law.

>Isn't the difference here that Federal courts can't create law, only rule on constitutional matters. Common law (state and local courts) can create "laws".

Uh, no. This is just completely incorrect. Things like reasonable suspicion are standards created by federal courts that have the force of law (see Terry v Ohio). The logic is based on the 4th amendment, but the standard was created by the justices.

District courts can't really create laws since it's not binding on any other court. Appeals courts do all the time, in fact one of the easiest ways to get something to the supreme court is to have a split between the circuits because that creates different law in different parts of the country.

> Isn't the difference here that Federal courts can't create law, only rule on constitutional matters.

Federal courts aren't limited to ruling on Constitutional issues—cases that are purely state law can be in federal court jurisdiction, e.g., because of diversity of citizenship of the parties, and any federal law issue, not just an issue of the Constitution, also qualifies a case for federal court; and they create law just like any other courts (only with broader geographical impact, because it's federal law.)

The federal courts can create law solely because overruling them is nigh impossible. The Supreme Court exists to rule on constitutional matters, but it is merely the final arbiter and uses that to its advantage based on case law they made for themselves.

Overruling the Supreme Court requires a constitutional amendment and this won't happen, and the court rarely does something untenable or an impossible outcome for a functioning society as it wants compliance. It tries to match a partial collective conscious understanding of a topic.

When it does act as fill-in legislature, Congress/Legislatures are capable of simply changing the law it ruled on, such as repealing the legal framework supporting enforcement agency.

The courts can also overrule itself in a future court case.

(The Supreme Court exists by the constitution, the other federal courts are created by congress and have a path to the supreme court.)

Underneath the parent comment -- which linked a Wikipedia article with some educational material on case law vs statutory law vs common law etc -- there are a number of comments like this which just show users didn't even bother to read a Wikipedia page, but were happy to tell the world how it works in their own minds.

Maybe there is some important lesson about people here. I think today people think of themselves as above those of the past who took intellectual shortcuts to understanding the world and came to preposterous models of reality. But then you can see just how intellectually lazy people are still today, yet at the same time how hard it is to convince them.

I find it incredibly ironic that the person's user name is KorematsuFred given the context.