The common lawso named because it was "common" to all the king's courts across Englandoriginated in the practices of the courts of the English kings in the centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066. The British Empire later spread the English legal system to its far flung colonies, many of which retain the common law system today. These "common law systems" are legal systems that give great weight to judicial precedent, and to the style of reasoning inherited from the English legal system.