Hundred court

“ The Supreme Court, where most of the jury trials are held, is authorized to appoint official stenographers to take notes of the evidence and rulings of the court, who are to be paid seven dollars a day by the county where the court is held, and any transcript from their notes furnished to the parties is to be paid for by such party by an additional sum of seven cents for every hundred words. ”

“ Side by side with the reeve and four men of the rural townships appeared the twelve legal men of each of the chartered boroughs which owed no suit to the ordinary county court. In the formation of the jury of presentment for criminal cases, each hundred sent twelve legal men and each township four to make report to the justices. Women did not serve on juries. Compurgation was not used; accused persons were sent directly to the ordeal. In 1194, twelve knights or legal men from each hundred answer before any itinerant justice for their hundred in all criminal, civil, and fiscal cases. ”

“ The sheriff afterwards became the sole presiding officer of the county court.
Sir Thomas Smith, Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth, writing more than three hundred years after Magna Carta, in describing the difference between the Civil Law and the English Law, says:
"Judex is of us called Judge, but our fashion is so divers, that they which give the deadly stroke, and either condemn or acquit the man for guilty or not guilty, are not called judges, but the twelve men. ”

“ In the little town one man could readily perform all these duties. He also presided in Court. An offender could thus be arrested, prosecuted, and judged, by one and the same person, which seems to us scarcely judicious; but the bench of magistrates had one useful power, that of mitigating and altering the sentence demanded by the schout. Often a fine of one hundred guilders would be reduced to twenty-five ”

“ On a summer's day in 1649, at the boat-landing not far from the Great House, the power of this General Court was under discussion by Jonathan Low and Thomas Berry, as they threw their lines into the river and waited for the fish to bite.
"The Court can make a man do anything!" ”

“ Art. I, § 7, limits itsguarantee to courts ofrecord, but the delineation of jurisdiction is not clear. Montana.
prosecution by information and provides that if a grand jury be established it shall have seven persons, five of whom can indict. Art. III, § 16, 23. The latter section providesthat in criminal actions not amounting to a felony a two- thirds vote is sufficient to convict. Art. III, § 23, provides for a two-thirds verdict. Furthermore the jury in a Justice's court is composed of not more than six persons. Such courts have jurisdiction up to three hundred dollars. Art. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To recognize that disorder can convert a trial into a ritual without meaning is not to pay homage to order as an end in itself. Rather, it recognizes that the courtroom in Anglo-American jurisprudence is more than a location with seats for a judge, jury, witnesses, defendant, prosecutor, defense counsel and public observers; the setting that the courtroom provides is itself an important element in the constitutional conception of trial, contributing a dignity essential to 'the integrity of the trial' process. ”

“ In the constitution of that state of 1776, it was declared that 'in all controversies at law, respecting property, the ancient mode of trial by jury is one of the best securities of the rights of the people, and ought to remain sacred and inviolable.' 2 Charters and Constitutions, 1410. ”

“ The principle that a State conviction is a bar to a federal prosecution, and that, where there is concurrent jurisdiction, the tribunal first taking jurisdiction afterwards holds that jurisdiction, and exercises it throughout, to the exclusion of all others, necessarily leads to this result. ”

“ We therefore conclude that circuit courts of appeals do have the power under § 262 of the Judicial Code to issue an order in the nature of a writ of habeas corpus commanding that a prisoner be brought to the courtroom to argue his own appeal. ”

“ All these halls of justice are thronged by such a compact and democratic crowd that one of the attributes of the magistrates is a little flask of vinegar or smelling-salts placed on the bench, by the side of the Code, before each of the three judges of the Tribunal and before the Substitut. The avocats do not enjoy this privilege, nor the Greffiers unless they have been very long in the service of the court. Here, also, the pressure of affairs is so great that the judges leave the bench, saying to their consciences: "Well! those who are innocent can appeal!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whatever may be the power of the states in respect of grand and petit juries, it is firmly settled that the Constitution absolutely forbids the trial and conviction, in a Federal civil tribunal, of any one charged with crime, otherwise than upon the presentment or indictment of a grand jury, and the unanimous verdict of a petit jury, composed, as at common law, of twelve jurors. ”

“ A body of men, so free from judicial control, was not a common-law jury; nor was a trial by them a trial by jury, within the meaning of the seventh amendment to the constitution. It was no more a jury, in the constitutional sense, than it would have been if it had consisted, as has been more usual in statutes authorizing trials by a jury before a justice of the peace, of less than 12 men. ”

“ That the acts and proceedings of these special tribunals need not be according to the course of the common law, but must be according to the exigencies of the state. Such has been the practice from the earliest period of the commonwealth, allowing finally, on appeal or otherwise, a trial by jury, since 1785. 7. That the proceedings of such tribunals, however constituted, are entitled to respect; they are not to be collaterally questioned; and after a length of time, everything is to be presumed in their favor, as in favor of any other tribunal. ”

“ Provided, that nothing in this section shall be construed to prevent any Circuit Judge holding District Court or serving in the Commerce Court, or otherwise, as provided for and authorized in other sections of this act.'
Sections 751 and 752, Rev. Stats. give authority to grant writs of habeas corpus only to judges and justices of the courts therein specified-Supreme, Circuit and District. The Judicial Code abolished the Circuit Courts. Only justices of the Supreme Court and judges of District Courts remain within the ambit of the statute. ”

“ The next year the act (Criminal Appeal Act 1907) , which was ultimately carried, was introduced into the House of Commons. By this act a court is established consisting of the lord chief justice and eight judges of the king’s bench division, the jurisdiction of the court for crown cases reserved being transferred to the new court. The court to be duly constituted must consist of not less than three judges and of an uneven number of judges. The court may sit in two or more divisions if the lord chief justice so directs. ”

“ EMPLOYER shall pay to EMPLOYEE, as salary, Two Thousand Five Hundred Dollars ($2,500.00) per month for the duration of this Agreement. Said compensation shall be reviewed and discussed annually on each October 4 or on such other date as may be mutually agreed upon by the parties hereto and said amount may be increased or decreased at any such meeting for the ensuing yearly term but shall at no single meeting be increased or decreased more than Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00) per month. Each party agrees to and guarantees a good faith participation in said annual compensation discussions. ”

“ The king’s courts of justice shall be stationary, and shall no longer follow his person: they shall be open to every one; and justice shall no longer be sold, refused, or delayed by them. Circuits shall be regularly held every year: the inferior tribunals of justice, the county court, sheriff’s turn, and court-leet shall meet at their appointed time and place: the sheriffs shall be incapacitated to hold pleas of the crown ”

“ Much stronger is the case at bar, for the tribunal was composed of officers of the government of the United States. It was created by the land department in pursuance of express authority from the acts of congress. This perjury was not merely a wrong against that tribunal or a violation of its rules or requirements; the tribunal and the contest only furnished the opportunity and the occasion for the crime, which was a crime defined in and denounced by the statute. ”

“ The creation of the Court of Cassation and of the three courts of appeal is specifically provided for within the constitution. All inferior tribunals are created by law, and none are permitted to be established otherwise. For the trial of criminal cases there are special tribunals, in three grades: police courts, correctional courts, and courts of assize.
All judges and justices of the peace are appointed by the king for life. ”

“ There are two jails, one for the boys, one for the girls; a library, a school-house, a chapel, bank, and a well-organized banking and currency system. There is a court, and there is a judge, who is elected every year by the citizens. From this court an appeal lies in certain cases to a Supreme Court chosen by the boys from the Board of Trustees, but this court only passes on the regularity of the proceedings in the court below, that is, on what might be regarded as equivalent to constitutional and jurisdictional questions. ”

“ This is a term frequently applied throughout the South and West to bodies of men who constitute themselves into a tribunal for the purpose of exercising a species of vicarious jurisdiction over those offences to which the ordinary courts of justice administer neither so swift nor so severe a punishment as they conceive them to merit. In other words, they are usually a set of scoundrels, who, having no legitimate occupation, have formed themselves into a peripatetic court, presided over by Judge Lynch; and are at once a terror and a scourge to the locality they infest. ”

“ If relief on equitable grounds is to be obtained it is right that it should be sought by a formal suit upon adequate pleadings and should be granted only after a trial of issues according to the usual course of the trial of questions of fact. A court of first instance is the appropriate tribunal, and the only tribunal, equipped for such a trial. Appellate courts have neither the power nor the means to that end. ”

“ Judge Sprague, in the district court of the United States for the district of Massachusetts, said: 'The constitution secures a trial by jury, without defining what that trial is. We are left to the common law to learn what it is that is secured. Now, the trial by jury was, when the constitution was adopted, and for generations before that time had been, here and in England, a trial of an issue of fact by twelve men, under the direction and superintendence of the court. ”

“ Under this subsection, the district courts would remain free to experiment in the assignment of other duties to magistrates which may not necessarily be included in the broad category of 'pretrial matters.' This subsection would permit, for example, a magistrate to review default judgments, order the exoneration or forfeiture of bonds in criminal cases, and accept returns of jury verdicts where the trial judge is unavailable. ”

“ Where the verdict and judgment are set aside on a writ of error in an appellate tribunal, if the law of the jurisdiction makes no provision for a second trial the prisoner must be discharged, but it is settled law that it is competent for the legislature to provide that on reversing the judgment in such a case the court, if the prior proceedings are regular, shall remand the case for the proper sentence. ”

“ The contention is that the law giving jurisdiction, as against a person not a citizen of the district where suit is brought to remove a cloud from the title to real estate situated therein, applies only to cases where there are two or more defendants, at least one of whom must be found in the district where the suit is brought; that the jurisdiction exists to entertain a suit, like the one before us, where there are two or more defendants, but not where there is only one. ”

“ Each man who sits in the law-court has to have two men to give him advice, one in front of himself, and the other behind him and his Thingmen; then the benches are fully occupied, with forty-eight men on each bench. No man shall sit inside the benches on the space of the law-court except those who have cases; but at other times they can sit there, and the lawman has to dispose of the seats. The people shall sit outside the benches. Only those who have cases ... have the right to rise in the law-court when laws or licenses are considered. ”