The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council: Common law and its local variations in the Commonwealth

Although a number of different legal systems have come under the influence of the common law, these differ in socio-cultural terms. Within the common law world the initial circulation of the model emanating from England and Wales has evolved through a process of bilateral interaction, in which the jurisprudence of the Privy Council has been at the same time instrumental and an expression, influencing cases in countries such as New Zealand, Canada, Australia, India and Hong Kong. The diffusion of the substantially uniform common law in reciprocal directions among the legal systems with Anglo-Saxon origins is shown by the frequent references made by the courts in England and Wales to the decisions of the courts of the Commonwealth as ‘authorities’. This lack of distinction between national and Commonwealth jurisprudence suggests a trend towards uniformity. It is only in the last few decades, that the Privy Council has become familiar with the ‘localization’ of the common law, arising from the interpretation of the law provided by local judges ‘in so far as they reflect the advantage which those judges enjoy of familiarity with prevailing local conditions, this with the proviso that the courts have used that advantage’.