Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Preface to the first edition of ‘The Machinery of Justice in England’
- Abbreviations
- I Historical introduction
- 1 The courts
- 2 The common law
- 3 Trial at common law
- II Civil jurisdiction
- III Tribunals
- IV Criminal jurisdiction
- V The personnel of the law
- VI The European dimension
- VII The cost of the law
- VIII Law Reform
- Appendix A The Report of the Civil Justice Review
- Table of Cases cited
- Table of Statutes cited
- Table of Stationery Office publications cited
- Index
2 - The common law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Preface to the first edition of ‘The Machinery of Justice in England’
- Abbreviations
- I Historical introduction
- 1 The courts
- 2 The common law
- 3 Trial at common law
- II Civil jurisdiction
- III Tribunals
- IV Criminal jurisdiction
- V The personnel of the law
- VI The European dimension
- VII The cost of the law
- VIII Law Reform
- Appendix A The Report of the Civil Justice Review
- Table of Cases cited
- Table of Statutes cited
- Table of Stationery Office publications cited
- Index
Summary
The expression common law originally came into use through the canonists. ‘They use it to distinguish the general and ordinary law of the universal church both from any rules peculiar to this or that provincial church, and from those papal privikgia which are always giving rise to ecclesiastical litigation.’ The phrase passed from the canonists to the lay lawyers. The emergence of the three courts of Common Pleas, King's Bench and Exchequer gave England a system of courts with wide jurisdiction. The judges were appointed to administer the ‘law and custom into the realm’, which meant that (apart from the small amount of law enacted by the King and Council or, later, Parliament) the judges built up their own set of principles and rules. Their material consisted of general and local custom and the juridical ideas of an age in which theology and law shared the hegemony of intellectual effort. The different ‘laws’ that had governed various parts of England tended to disappear. There emerged a general body of principles and rules that were applied in the King's Courts at Westminster and carried through the realm by the Assize judges on their circuits. This part of the law was ‘common’, and was to be contrasted with anything that was particular, extraordinary or special, such as surviving local custom, canon law or Roman law.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Jackson's Machinery of Justice , pp. 11 - 18Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989