Foundations of American law. During America’s colonial period, most of the English common law tradition, and many of the English statutes, became firmly entrenched, though modified to some extent in accordance with the religious and cultural beliefs of the colonists. At independence, the basic legal system did not change. For the most part the new country simply continued to follow English law. There was of course one big difference. The U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789 and neither the laws of Parliament nor the edicts of George the III had any further power in the new United States. The constitution became the foundation on which our legal house was built, and both the law inherited from England and that enacted by Congress and state legislatures eventually had to either find support in this foundation or be discarded. In the past 200-plus years of American history the English common law (case by case) tradition has been modified somewhat. Specifically, there has been an increased reliance on statutes and administrative regulations to make new law and codify principles developed by the case law. Especially since the New Deal era of the 1930’s, new federal and state administrative agencies have popped up at a rapid rate. Most of these agencies have the authority (within certain prescribed limits) to make rules that have the force of statutes. Many of them also have the power to judge disputes that arise under these rules. Still, despite the increasing importance of these other sources of law, many areas of our law still consist almost solely of court decisions and thus follow the old English common law system, as practiced by American courts. The common law continues to be important even when a statute is involved because the courts of this country are empowered to interpret statutes when a dispute arises as to their meaning. As well as using other interpretative techniques, a judge will look at earlier cases to see how they have interpreted the statute and