English common law has precedential value in the US as we modeled our courts on those of the British right away. Our courts have, therefore, cited court cases from England (and other nations who adopted English common law such as Australia) as precedent since the beginning of our court system. Our property, tort, contract, and criminal laws, both common and statutory, have their origin in court cases from England. Some of those cases were decided nearly a thousand years ago.
What is disturbing about this is the citation of law from "civil" law countries or laws stemming from the "Code Napoleon" and before. Those laws have never, to my knowledge, been part of our "stare decisis," except, perhaps, in the state of Louisiana which has a tradition of adopting French civil law.