English court

“ Hence it was important that the judge presiding over the prize court should be bold enough to develop the law to meet the new conditions, while preserving an even balance between the interests of his own country and those of neutrals, and at the same time should be able to express the reasons for his decisions in a form which, if it did not convince a disappointed litigant, would at least demonstrate to the world the determination of the English courts to render impartial justice. ”

“ The tenant-in-chief of the king who was rich enough had his cause carried to the King's Court of barons, where he was tried by his peers. The poorer vassals, with the mass of the people, sought such justice as was to be had in the old English courts, the Shire Court held by the sheriff, and, where this survived, the Hundred Court summoned by the bailiff. The lowest orders of the peasant class, shut out from the royal courts, could only plead in questions of property in the manor courts of their lords. ”

“ If, as in England, judicial precedents are held to be binding, so that the law of the land consists in part of judge-made law, a similar result is produced; an English court must follow English precedents on the application of foreign law or the refusal to apply it, to the same extent to which it would be bound to follow them on any other point. So far as our matter remains open for a judge, he has, to assist him towards a just decision, the treaties, written laws and judicial precedents of other countries as examples, and a vast literature which has grown up in all Christian countries. ”

“ The inns of court of London became virtually a legal university, where highly trained men studied a juristic system, which was not the less purely English in spirit because its practitioners used the French tongue as their technical instrument. There were no longer lawyers in England who, like Bracton, strove to base the law of the land on the forms and methods of Roman jurisprudence. There were no longer kings, like Edward I., with Italian trained civilians at their court ready to translate the law of England into imperialist forms. ”

“ In the farce here played, under the management of that youthful renegade,—Pitt, we have a fair specimen of the way in which the English have been treated. But there is a time rapidly approaching when the supporters of despotism cannot thus delude their countrymen. The whole nest of court sycophants, however, seem determined rather to see England reduced to a state of the most grievous bondage than imagine one of their own ill-gotten acres endangered, or the least of their absurd and exclusive privileges called in question. ”

“ The extraordinary deference paid to precedents is the source of the most striking peculiarities of the English common law. There can be little doubt that it was the rigid adherence of the common law courts to established precedent which caused the rise of an independent tribunal administering justice on more equitable principles—the tribunal of the chancellor, the court of chancery. And the old common law courts—the king’s bench, common pleas and exchequer—were always, as compared with the court of chancery, distinguished for a certain narrowness and technicality of reasoning. ”

“ When the middle of the century is past the signs that English law has a new lease of life become many. The medieval books poured from the press, new books were written, the decisions of the courts were more diligently reported, the lawyers were boasting of the independence and extreme antiquity of their system [62] . We were having a little Renaissance of our own: or a gothic revival if you please. The Court of Requests in which Prof. Smith and Prof. Haddon had done justice was being tried for its life. ”

“ In most of the United States the English law on this subject is adhered to as the rule of practice. But in others it has been changed either by usage and decisions of the courts founded thereon, or by positive statutes. ”

“ Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, II., Pt. 1., Chap. 10; Marriott, English Political Institutions, Chap. 14; and Macy, The English Constitution, Chap. 7. As is stated elsewhere (p. 169) , the first volume of Holdsworth's History of English Law contains an excellent history of the English courts. A useful handbook, though much in need of revision, is F. W. Maitland, Justice and Police (London, 1885) . Perhaps the best brief account of the development of the English judicial system is A. T. Carter, History of English Legal Institutions (4th ed., London, 1910) . ”

“ We do not admit that our tribunals legislate; we imply that they have never legislated; and yet we maintain that the rules of the English common law, with some assistance from the Court of Chancery and from Parliament, are coextensive with the complicated interests of modern society. ”

“ The history of English courts affords a remarkable illustration of the continuity that characterizes English institutions. It might perhaps be too much to say that all the courts now sitting in England may be traced back to a common origin, but at any rate the higher courts are all offshoots from the same original judicature. Leaving out of account the local courts, we find the higher jurisdiction after the Norman Conquest concentrated along with all other public functions in the king and council. ”

“ The Judicature Acts and Rules have had the effect of abolishing all the forms of “action” used at the common law and of creating one common form of legal proceeding for all ordinary controversies between subjects in whatever division of the High Court. The stages in an English action are the writ, by which the persons against whom relief is claimed are summoned before the court ”

“ The drawling style of speech sometimes heard on the stage as typical of a certain kind of Englishman, seems to have disappeared in real life; it certainly is not to be found in the Courts. An American stenographer reporting an English argument, would have to increase his accustomed speed at least one-third.
The methods of the Divisional Court are the same as those of the Court of Appeal, but the low limit of its jurisdiction renders it of little interest. ”

“ Much was borrowed from our English brethren. Although our own practice has limited the jurisdiction of courts and justices to issue the Great Writ, we have never abandoned the English system as to the ad prosequendum writ, Cf. ”

“ Young men who go out to India without much experience of English Courts are often disgusted—and rightly disgusted,—with the perjury committed in Indian Courts, and often judge the nation's character from falsehood uttered in courts. Men, however, who have experience of Courts in England say that the offence is by no means rare here. London newspapers occasionally complain bitterly of the amount of perjury committed daily in the English Country-courts. ”

“ It encroaches upon the jurisdiction of the State tribunals.
1st. It takes away the trial by jury.
Nothing can be clearer than that our ancestors attached a high value to the right of trial by jury. But there is a wide difference between an English admiralty judge and one appointed under the Constitution of the United States. The reasons for entertaining a jealousy against the former do not apply to the latter. ”

“ As the nation had its assembly of wise men acting as a high court, so each shire, hundred, and town had its court, which all freemen might attend. There, without any special judge, jury, or lawyers, cases of all kinds were tried and settled by the voice of the entire body, who were both judge and jury in themselves. ”

“ If such was once the habit of the English courts, it was because of social conditions with which they had to deal which no longer exist either in their country or in ours. It is for the judge to adapt old principles rather than adopt new ones. ”

“ It was provided, agreed, and ordained, that whereas the Realm of England of late had been disquieted with manifold Troubles and Dissensions; for Reformation whereof Statutes and Laws be right necessary, whereby the Peace and Tranquillity of the People*2 must be observed:Wherein the King, intending to devise convenient Remedy, hath made these Acts, Ordinances, and Statutes underwritten, which he willeth to be observed for ever firmly and inviolably of all his Subjects, as well high as low."
Who shall do Suit of Court. Suit of Court by Coparceners. ”

“ In England, all the higher courts where open to applicants for the writ, and it is hardly supposable that, under the new government, founded on more liberal ideas and principles, any court would be, intentionally, closed to them. ”

“ Henry transformed it from an occasional assembly of warlike nobles into a regular body of trained lawyers, and at the same time opened its doors to all except serfs. In the king's court any freeman could find a justice that was cheaper and speedier than that dispensed by the feudal lords. The higher courts of England have sprung from this institution. ”

“ Thus, no Court in the universe, which professed to be governed by principle, would, we presume, undertake to say, that the Courts of Great Britain, or of France, or of any other nation, had misunderstood their own statutes, and therefore erect itself into a tribunal which should correct such misunderstanding. We receive the construction given by the Courts of the nation as the true sense of the law, and feel ourselves no more at liberty to depart from that construction, than to depart from the words of the statute. ”

“ One is also struck, as in all courts, by a certain ring of sincerity, an attitude of respect for the administration of law and the quick and cheerful co-operation of all concerned. The Englishman truly appears to the best advantage in his court, where he leads the world. ”

“ Again, "The trial by jury has ever been, and I trust ever will be looked upon as the glory of the English law. As it has so great an advantage in regulating civil property, how much must that advantage be heightened, when it is applied to criminal cases! It is the most transcendent privilege which any subject can enjoy or wish for, that he cannot be affected either in his property, his liberty, or his person, but by the unanimous consent of twelve of his neighbours and equals. ”

“ That nobleman never practised in an Equity Court, nor received a solid classic education, whence he might extract those literary powers, which render profound legal research a matter of real amusement, and enable barristers to unravel and retain law's subtlest intricacies with electric rapidity and philosophic strength. ”

“ Higley to be the almost uniform rule, among the people who make the common law of England the basis of their jurisprudence, to have a distinct tribunal for the establishment of wills, and the administration of the estates of men dying either with or without wills, which tribunals are variously called 'prerogative courts,' 'probate courts,' 'surrogate courts,' 'orphans' courts,' etc. ”

“ Those courts are epitomes of human life, and their walls, within their bounded space, contain beings full of the passions, infirmities, resentments, self-deceits, self-interests, fears, hopes, triumphs, and defeats, incident to our common nature, and the proofs and results of which are there painfully brought before us.
A court of justice may be likened to a stage, the principal performers on which are the barristers; and happiest are they who have the most frequent opportunities of moving the feelings, and influencing the convictions, of that respectable audience—a British jury. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An Englishman cannot be sued except before the ordinary judge.' Having drawn this contrast between the French and English, the old judge continued: 'These advantages are due to the political mixed government which prevails in England. ”

“ If you pass over to France, where certainly the judicature is admirably arranged on principles of science, where I believe justice is assured, you have the highest court, known as the Court of Cassation, composed of persons set apart exclusively for appeals,—never leaving Paris, and never hearing any other business except that which comes before them on appeal. ”

“ A stranger is left to speculate how far such views may reflect some past grudge and he will probably come to the conclusion that the high standing of the English judiciary, in the opinion of all the world, is fully deserved, but that there are some few exceptions to this general excellence. ”

“ By the act of August, 1873, the several superior courts of England, including the courts of chancery, admiralty, probate and divorce, and London court of bankruptcy, are consolidated into one supreme court, to consist of two parts or divisions, one the high court of justice, and the other the court of appeal. All the judges of the old courts are made judges of the supreme court, and as vacancies occur in their number appointments are made in their stead, but not until the number is reduced to 21. ”