Court of Queen's Bench

“ In 1859 he was raised to the bench, and for a period of nine years sat as a puisné judge in the Superior Court of Lower Canada. In 1868 he was promoted to the Queen’s Bench, on the retirement of Justice Aylwin. His reputation as a judge stands high. His natural talents, united to his vast knowledge and graceful elocution, have made him one of the most instructive and agreeable persons to listen to whenever he has a judgment to deliver in the Court of Appeals or a charge to make in the Criminal Court. ”

“ Why are swallows like a leap head-over-heels?—Because they are a summer set (a somerset) .
CUTTING IT RATHER SHORT.
The unexpected adjournment of the Court of Queen’s Bench, by Lord Denman, on last Thursday, has filled the bar with consternation.—“What is to become of our clients?” said Fitzroy Kelly.—“And of our fees?” added the Solicitor General.—“I feel deeply for my clients,” sighed Serjeant Bompas.—“We all compassionate them, brother,” observed Wilde.—In short, one and all declare it was a most arbitrary and unprecedented curtailment of their little term—and, to say the least of it ”

“ Upon this record, the queen's bench division of the high court of justice of the province of Ontario must be taken to have been a competent court, so far as the subject-matter or cause of action was concerned, to entertain jurisdiction of the action brought before it by the plaintiffs against the defendant. ”

“ I was now served with a notice, that the writ would be executed at Devizes, at seven o'clock in the evening, on the third day of the sessions, and that counsel would attend. I merely said to the attorney, who served me with the notice, "well! if the Court of King's Bench has so ruled it, so it must be." The sessions arrived; the third day came; and, as I did not appear in the town, it was generally understood, amongst the barristers and attorneys, that there would be no sport, as I should make no attempt to obtain another verdict, in opposition to the opinion of the Court of King's Bench. ”

“ There are masters in the king’s bench division. Unlike the masters in the chancery division, they have original jurisdiction, and are not attached to any particular judge. They hear applications in chambers, act as taxing masters and occasionally as referees to conduct inquiries, take accounts, and assess damages. There is an appeal from the master to the judge in chambers. Formerly there was an appeal from the judge in chambers to a divisional court in every case and thence to the court of appeal, until the multiplication of appeals in small interlocutory matters became a scandal. ”

“ If the case cited from the queen's bench were susceptible of a different construction, it should not have controlling influence. Here no such relations exist between the executive and judicial departments as exist in England between the crown and the courts. ”

“ No one would pretend that an attempt to control the deliberation of the bench, by the apprehension of violence, and subject the judges to the power of those who are, or ought to be, subordinate to them, is compatible with professional duty, or the judicial independence so indispensable to the administration of justice. And an enormity of the sort, practiced but on a single judge, would be an offence as much against the court, which is bound to protect all its members, as if it had been repeated on the person of each of them, because the consequences to suitors and the public would be the same ”

“ No law can deprive your honors of your places here during life or good behavior. No President can remove a judge from this bench; and thank God it is so. No law of Congress can remove a judge from this bench. I know there have been laws of Congress that have removed United States judges from lower benches than this, but their validity has been always questioned. But no Congress has ever dared to pass a law to remove a judge from this bench, or to abolish this bench, or change the structure of the Supreme Court of the United States. ”

“ And certainly, even in England, the King's Bench never claimed or exercised the power to issue a mandamus to an inferior court of record, commanding it to reverse its judgment, in a matter where the law authorized it to judge. ”

“ Practically all of the National and many of the State judges were highly learned in the law, and, of course, drew their inspiration from British precedents and the British bench. Indeed, some of them were more British than they were American. [91] "Let a stranger go into our courts," wrote Tyler, "and he [Pg 29] would almost believe himself in the Court of the King's Bench." [92]
This conduct of the National Judiciary furnished Jefferson with another of those "issues" of which that astute politician knew how to make such effective use. ”

“ That in the death of Judge Willson the Bench has lost a learned, upright and fearless Judge, ever doing right and equity among the suitors of his Court, fearing only the errors and mistakes to which a fallible human judgment is ever liable. Urbanity and courtesy to the older members of the Bar, protecting and loving kindness to its younger members, and deep and abiding interest in the reputation of all, were among his distinguishing characteristics. ”

“ If the repeated adjudications of the king's bench, enlightened and adorned, as it then was, by the transcendent genius of Chief Justice Holt, were known to be erroneous, and contrary to former precedents, why did not the merchants, always a wealthy class of the community, make a different appeal, and before the lords in parliament, reverse and annul the erroneous judgment of the king's bench? ”

“ CHAPTER XXXVIII. PUPILS IN CHAMBERS.
But the most important part of an industrious law-student's labors in olden time, was the work of watching the practice of Westminster Hall. In the seventeenth century, the constant succession of political trials made the King's Bench Court especially attractive to students who were more eager for gossip than advancement of learning; but it was always held that the student, who was desirous to learn the law rather than to catch exciting news or hear exciting speeches, ought to frequent the Common Pleas, in which court the common law was said to be at home. ”

“ It was asserted that after his second trial 'the high sheriff, foreman of jury, and divers others of the justices gentlemen then present of the same jury died within a fortnight.' The local authorities consequently petitioned for his removal to King's Bench prison in London. He was taken thither, and was apparently kept there in easy confinement for some fifteen years. His fame as an astrologer rapidly spread through London, and he was allowed to receive his numerous clients in the prison. ”

“ We have such a multiplicity of courts that it has become common, and judges are so often chosen for purely political reasons, even for the Supreme Court of the United States, that the lawyer of professional dignity and self-respect hesitates to enter into the competition. Thus the bench tends to be114 filled with duffers, and many of them are also scoundrels, as the frequent complaints against their extortions and tyrannies testify. The English bench, as everyone knows, is immensely better: the fact is often noted with lamentation by American lawyers. ”

“ When, therefore, it was conceded on the argument that if the affair at Lathrop had taken place in the court-room during the sitting of the court, the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court would be unquestionable, it is difficult for me to see why the whole question of federal jurisdiction was not embraced in that concession. Assassinating a judge on the bench would no more obstruct and defeat public justice than assassinating him on his way to the bench. In each case he is proceeding in the line of official duty imposed on him by law and his official oath. ”

“ He would never consent directly to procure the death or dethronement of Elizabeth; though it must have been perfectly evident to any man of clear and unbiassed judgement, that, under all the circumstances, the accomplishment of his wishes could by no other means be attained.
This affair was regarded in so very serious a light, that the queen thought it necessary, before the duke was put on his trial, to lay all the circumstances of his case before the court of France ”

“ Courts never are. Those who owed their places and pensions to the Queen Mother and the Queen naturally studied to please them, and nothing would have pleased Anne of Austria and Marie Thérèse, of Spain so much as the ruin of this radiant, spirituelle Madame who cast them into the shade. To the people of Paris, who shuddered when the couriers came from St. Cloud with the news of her tragic death, the Court of France [235] appeared as dazzling as did the palace of Armida to Renaud before he crossed its threshold. ”

“ In fact, it was only since the reformation that this great office had begun to be filled by common-law lawyers: before this period it was usally exercised by some ecclesiastic who was also a civilian, and instances were not rare of the seals having been held in commission by noblemen during considerable intervals;—facts which, in justice to Hatton and to Elizabeth, ought on this occasion to be kept in mind. ”

“ All the Court ladies, not attached to the King and Queen personally, abandoned the Court. No one would be seen at the Queen's card-parties, once so crowded, and so much sought after. We were entirely reduced to the family circle. The King, when weary of playing with the Princesse Elizabeth and the Queen, would retire to his apartments without uttering a word, not from sullenness, but overcome by silent grief.
"The Queen was occupied continually by the extensive correspondence she had to carry on with the foreign Sovereigns, the Princes, and the different parties. ”

“ It is an hortation which, by whomsoever delivered, would tend to dispirit the bravest and most honest of witnesses. The presence of a judge is always, as I have said, oppressive. The presence of three is trebly so. Yet not a score of them serried along the bench could have outdone in oppressiveness Sir Charles Russell. He alone, among the counsel I have seen, was an exception to the rule that by a judge every one in court is levelled. On the bench, in his last years, he was not notably more predominant than he ever had been. ”

“ Outside the Agency, the civil tribunals are of the usual four grades, namely, the courts of village and district munsifs and of the recently -appointed sub-judge, and the District Court. Their powers and jurisdiction are the same as elsewhere. Statistics regarding the work done by them will be found in the separate Appendix to this volume. As elsewhere, the value of the suits tried by the village munsifs is seldom above Rs. 20. The system of trial by Bench Courts under section 9 of the Village Courts Act I of 1889 has been introduced in seventeen of the larger villages. ”

“ There is every reason to believe that-162-
-vol ii- their complaint was well founded; but Elizabeth, refusing as usual to allow her prerogative to be touched, imprisoned several Irish lawyers, who came to England to appeal against the tax; and sir Henry, being able to prove that he had royal warrant for what he had done, was finally exonerated by the privy-council from all the charges which had been preferred against him, and retained to the last his office of lord-president of Wales. ”

“ Though the council manifested their present subserviency to Northumberland by proclaiming queen Jane in the metropolis, and by issuing in her name a summons to Mary to lay aside her pretensions to the crown, this leader was too well practised in the arts of courts, to be the dupe of their hollow professions of attachment to a cause unsupported, as he soon perceived, by the favor of the people. ”

“ I have not been able to trace any attempt to assert its privileges later than 1735, when in the July of that 203year the Court of Common Council brought an action against Daniel Watson, for opening a shop and vending shoes in the Blackfriars without being free of the City. The court of King’s Bench gave it in favour of the City. The sheriffs could arrest here many years before” (Cunningham) . ”

“ The crowd of faces that filled the vast space from the body of the court below to the galleries above, turned as we passed on to the bench, at one side of the raised platform near the seat of the judges. A similar bench, but unoccupied, ran along the opposite side; while directly in front of the judges were ranged the advocates in rows, closely packed as they could sit,—a small desk, somewhat advanced from the rest, being the seat reserved for the Procureur-Général of the court.
The vast multitudes of spectators; the pomp and circumstance of a court of justice ”