[indymike]

Has nothing to do with judges, and the fact the US adopted English common law and evolved it's judiciary from there.

[zopa]

To be a little pedantic, individual states maintained systems based on English common law, rather than the US as a whole adopting it. There’s famously no such thing as Federal common law.

This matters in Louisiana, which has a civil and not a common law system, dating from the French period.

[Retric]

In theory sure, in practice the legal system is run by people who somewhat regularly make technically incorrect decisions.