British court

“ The treaty of 1842 settled the dividing line of jurisdiction between the United States and the British possessions in America, from the Atlantic ocean to the Rocky Mountains. On either side of the line, in great part, there is an extensive population; escapes of criminals from the jurisdiction where the crime was committed, to the other, must often occur; and if criminals are taken at all, they must be arrested in hot pursuit, when fleeing from justice. To do so, a magistrate must be at hand to issue the warrant, cause the arrest, and adjudge the criminality. ”

“ That there being no maritime lien by the law of England, and the contract being British as to ship, parties, mode of performance, place where made, and place where to be performed British every way, in short, and without any citizen having any interest in the matter-our courts ought not to originate rights, and to give a privilege which would not be given in the home of the parties. ”

“ Gwinn, clerk of their general court, prove that British suits have been maintained in the superior and inferior courts throughout the State without any obstruction; that British claimants have, in every instance, enjoyed every facility in the tribunals of justice equally with their own citizens; and have recovered in due course of law, and remitted large debts, as well under contracts previous, as subsequent to the war. ”

“ Every court, in the first place, as well in Victoria as elsewhere throughout the British dominions, is bound to hold void, and in fact does hold void, enactments which contravene an Imperial statute, and from Colonial courts there is an appeal to the Privy Council. ”

“ It is idle to complain that Great Britain administers international law by means of her own courts; that is the only method ever followed by other belligerent nations, the United States included, nor has any better practical method, so far as I know, been even proposed to her. And lastly, I believe it is profoundly false to say that the British courts have acted in heat and passion or at all fallen below the level of scrupulous care which is expected from the best judicial bodies in the world. ”

“ The jurisdiction of controversies between citizens, and foreign subjects and citizens, will operate retrospectively. Every thing with respect to the treaty with Great Britain and other nations will be involved by it. Every man who owes any thing to a subject of Great Britain, or any other nation, is subject to a tribunal that he knew not when he made the contract. Apply this to our citizens. If ever a suit be instituted by a British creditor for a sum which the defendant does not in fact owe, he had better pay it than appeal t9 the federal Supreme Court. ”

“ Evidently Congress meant to confer on the British subject the right to sue in the Court of Claims under the act relating to captured and abandoned property, if, in the ordinary course of the administration of justice in England, the law secures to the American citizen the right to prosecute his claim against the government in its courts. That the petition of right accomplishes this object, cannot admit of question. If the mode of proceeding to enforce it be formal and ceremonious, it is nevertheless a practical and efficient remedy for the invasion by the sovereign power of individual rights. ”

“ The British Government, in pursuit of its favorite device of seeking in American practice parallel instances to justify her prize-court methods, had contended that the United States, in Civil War contraband cases, had also referred foreign claimants to its prize courts for redress. ”

“ The plea of the defence of the incompetence of the Court to try the case, was first answered by the learned counsel, who remarked, that the character, and composition of the Court, as well as the provision for the trial of capital offences by a jury of six men instead of twelve, were in harmony with the Dominion Law enacted for the Government of the Territories, and that the Dominion Parliament had the right, under the British North America Act, to make that law. ”

“ That where American citizens have sustained losses or damages, 'by reason of irregular or illegal captures, or condemnations of their vessels, or other property, under colour of authority or commissions from His Majesty, and adequate compensation cannot be obtained by the ordinary course of judicial tribunals, full and complete compensation for the same will be made by the British government to the said complainants.' The very ground of the treaty is, that the municipal remedy is inadequate ”

“ It is the law that creates the offence; it is a jury that must determine the guilt; it is the law that affixes the punishment; and all other modes of proceeding are ILLEGAL. Why then, my lords, are we to assume to ourselves an executive power, with which even the executive power itself is not entrusted? I am aware, my lords, it will be said that this House, in its capacity of a court of justice, has a right to call for evidence at its bar, and to punish the witness who shall not attend. I admit it, my lords ”

“ By the common law, justices of the peace had some criminal jurisdiction, but no jurisdiction whatever of suits between man and man. There were in England, however, courts baron, county courts, courts of conscience, and other petty courts, which were not courts of record, and whose proceedings varied in many respects from the course of the common law, but which were empowered to hear and determine, in a summary way, without a jury, personal actions in which the debt or damages demanded did not exceed 40 shillings. ”

“ When we congratulate ourselves, as we are so apt to do, on the length of time the system of trial by jury has been established in England, and the safeguard it affords against attempts to strain the law to the prejudice of the accused, we are often unmindful of the fact that the institution has not always proved a safeguard when the court, acting under the influence of the Crown, endeavoured to obtain a conviction. ”

“ The independent body shall have the right to bring a legal action before a competent court or tribunal in the United Kingdom in an appropriate judicial procedure, with a view to seeking an adequate remedy. ”

“ The treaty with Great Britain is equally binding on us as the act of Congress, and it likewise confers jurisdiction and authority on the judges and magistrates of the respective governments, to issue warrants for the apprehension of fugitives; and for hearing and considering the evidence produced against them; and also provides, that the committing magistrate shall certify as to the sufficiency of the evidence, to the executive authority, so that a warrant of surrender may issue. ”

“ The law of Great Britain since the declaration of independence is the law of a foreign country, and, like any other foreign law, is matter of fact, which the courts of this country cannot be presumed to be acquainted with, or to have judicial knowledge of, unless it is pleaded and proved. ”

“ Every nation must and will abide by its own municipal laws, which various accidents conspire to render different in almost every country in Europe. We permit some kinds of suits to be of ecclesiastical cognizance which other nations have referred entirely to the temporal courts, as concerning wills and successions to intestates' chattels; and perhaps we may, in our turn, prohibit them from interfering in some controversies which, on the Continent, may be looked upon as merely spiritual. In short, the common law of England is the one uniform rule to determine the jurisdiction of our courts ”

“ Yet as we are not in America, but in England,—the boasted land of liberty,—we must, forsooth, be seized as criminals, merely because we wish to institute an inquiry into the circumstances of the murder of an individual, whose assassin, or assassins, have hitherto escaped the slippery hands of justice! We are no cowards in regimentals, nor did we make our statement with a view of slandering the royal pensioner. We would have willingly contended with his royal highness in a court of law, if he had had the courage to have met us on fair grounds. ”

“ It is still more strange to hear a judge, whose name is known the world over, gravely charging a jury as to the value, as evidence of identity, of a wart under the tail of a costermonger's donkey, the ownership of which is in dispute. Yet, like every feature of an English court, it is eminently practical and free from form or affectation.
The highly paid judges of the High Court, sit in the smallest case; the idea seems to be that if a man desires to assert his rights, however insignificant, it is the duty of the Government to afford him the opportunity. ”

“ The royal courts are no longer to attend the king’s person—a vexatious practice when sovereigns were always on the move, and litigants and witnesses had to follow them from manor to manor—but are to be fixed at Westminster. General rules of indisputable equity are fixed for the conduct of the courts—no man is to be tried or punished more than once for the same offence; no one is to be arrested and kept in prison without trial; all arrested persons are to be sent before the courts within a reasonable time, and to be tried by a jury of their peers. ”

“ Parliament may change the common law by statute. The right of a peer to be tried for capital crimes by a court composed of his peers was established. There was a widespread belief that all the peers are by right the king's councilors.
No attorney may practice law and also be a Justice of Assize. No justice may take any gift except from the king nor give counsel to any litigant before him.
In 1390, there was a statute against maintainers, instigators, barretors, procurers, and embracers of quarrels and inquests because of great and outrageous oppressions of parties in court. ”

“ In England it is usual, in the admiralty courts, in proceedings in rem, when it is made to appear that property of the government ought, in justice, to contribute to a general average, or to salvage, for the proper officer of the government to consent in court that it may take jurisdiction of the matter. ”

“ As of 1679, no man could be held in prison but on a charge or conviction of crime or for debt. Every prisoner on a criminal charge could demand as a right from the Court of the King's Bench the issue of a writ of habeas corpus which bound his gaoler to produce the prisoner and the warrant on which he was imprisoned for review as to legality. This forced trials to be speedy, which they had not hitherto been. Now it was impossible for the Crown to detain a person for political reasons in defiance of both Parliament and the courts, as Charles I had done. ”

“ Lord Chief Justice DE GREY, on that occasion said, 'When the House of Commons adjudged any thing to be a contempt, or a breach of privilege, their adjudication is a conviction, and their commitment in consequence is execution; and no Court can discharge, on bail, a person that is in execution by the judgment of any other Court. The House of Commons, therefore, having an authority to commit, and that commitment being an execution, what can this Court do? It can do nothing, when a person is in execution by the judgment of a Court having a competent jurisdiction. ”

“ If a man were to commit a capital offense in the face of all the judges of England, their united authority could not put him upon his trial:-they could file no complaint against him, even upon the records of the supreme criminal court, but could only commit him for safe custody, which is equally competent to every common justice of the peace:-the grand jury alone could arraign him, and in their discretion might likewise finally discharge him, by throwing out the bill, with the names of all your lordships as witnesses on the back of it. ”

“ But who is to be the judge, in such a case, whether the tribunals are corrupt or not? The British Government, or the Government of the state from which you demand justice?
I will take a transaction that occurred not long ago, as an instance of a case in which, I say, the people of England would not permit a British subject to be simply amenable to the tribunals of the foreign country in which he happened to be. I am not going to talk of the power of sending a man arbitrarily to Siberia; nor of a country the constitution of which vests despotic power in the hands of the sovereign. ”

“ Speaking generally, those ministers who have paid most attention to finances and to internal reform have been less successful in upholding the honour of England abroad and in strengthening the army and navy.
The Law Courts.With regard to the law and the law courts, it is not such a very different England in which we live from what it was in the days of our great-grandfathers. The House of Lords is still the highest ‘Court of Appeal’ in Great Britain and Ireland; but to hear appeals, only those peers sit who are specially appointed to be judges for that purpose. ”

“ They rely on the judiciary to secure their enforcement, and the judiciary must enforce them according to what it understands their meaning to be.
There is but a step from interpretation to enlargement. Every statute is passed to accomplish something. If the object is clear, the rules of Anglo-American law allow the court that may be called on to apply it to extend its operation to cases within the purpose evidently intended, although the language used is inadequate fully to express it. ”

“ Chief Justice MARSHALL delivered the opinion of the Court, that whatever might have been the ancient doctrine in England in respect to captures in war, it is now clearly established in that kingdom, that all captures jure belli, are made for the government, and that no title of prize can be acquired but by the public acts of the government conferring rights on the captors.
If the original law of England authorized an individual to acquire to his own use the property of an individual, without any express authority from the public, that law was changed long before the settlement of this country. ”