Law of The Commons
The legal position concerning common land is confused. Most commons are based on ancient rights, that is to say common law (coincidence of term only), which pre-date statute law laid down by parliament. The exact rights which apply to individual commons were in some cases documented but more often were based on long-held traditions. The UK government tried to regularise the definitions of common land with the Commons Registration Act 1965, which established a register of common land. However numerous inconsistencies and irregularities remain.
Prior to the Erection of Cottages Act 1588, an Englishman could build his house on common land, if he could raise the roof over his head and have a fire in the hearth between sunrise and sunset, and claim the dwelling as his home.
Registered commons often abut each other, so what may appear to be a single large common may in fact consist of several commons with no visible boundary between them — these may for example be in different parishes. The commoners will have reciprocal rights over each other's commons.
Read more about this topic: Common Land
Famous quotes containing the words law of the, law of, law and/or commons:
“The law of humanity ought to be composed of the past, the present, and the future, that we bear within us; whoever possesses but one of these terms, has but a fragment of the law of the moral world.”
—Edgar Quinet (1803–1875)
“The Law of Triviality ... briefly stated, it means that the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.”
—C. Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993)
“Half the testimony in the Bobbitt case sounded like Sally Jesse Raphael. Juries watch programs like this and are ready to listen.”
—William Geimer, U.S. law educator. New York Times, p. B18 (January 28, 1994)
“I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons & Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)