Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 142

We have already noticed the close connection which once existed between the courts and the council, and indeed with the King himself. The result, while it lasted, was that the judges normally exercised a considerable amount of discretion, particularly in procedural matters. It must not be rashly assumed that the further back we go the more rigid was the law. On the contrary, investigation has shown the wide discretion which was allowed to the courts both in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.¹ It is not until the middle of the fourteenth century that this discretion begins to disappear. A great step in this development was the solemn enactment of the Statute of Northampton² in 1328 which declared that no royal command under the Great or the Smaller Seal shall disturb the course of the common law, and that if such a command is issued, the judges shall ignore it. Slowly but steadily the judges ventured to enforce the plain words of this important act,³ and so to assume the detached position which is typical of most modern judiciaries.

The remarkable political crisis⁴ of 1340 took matters a stage further by showing the unseemliness of treating judges as though they were politicians, and about the years 1340 to 1350 we find several expressions from the bench and bar which seem to indicate that the position of the courts is changing. In cases where we know that discretion was once exercised we now find it refused. Instead of bending the rules of procedure to the broad requirements of justice, we find the courts declaring that “we will not and cannot change ancient usages”; “statutes are to be taken strictly”; an innocent man might lie indefinitely in prison, or a creditor might be deprived of his remedy through the manipulation of procedural rules, and all the court will say is that “we can do nothing without a statute”.⁵ In short, the judges attempted to cast upon parliament the responsibility for future legal reform.

Similarly, there were difficult cases where the judges could not make up their minds—to the great delay of litigants. Already, in theory, Fleta had attributed to parliament the duty of resolving judicial doubts,⁶ and in 1311 the Ordinances, c. 29, required the termination of such cases in parliament—instances occur of the ordinance being applied.⁷

In the next reign Parliament passed a curious statute in 1340 giving powers to commissioners (evidently non-lawyers) to decide cases which had been delayed because the judges found them too difficult.⁸ So public an expression of distrust in the judiciary could only have the effect of making the benches retire still more strictly into the seclusion of their courts and the technicalities of their procedure. Moreover, if the five could not agree, the lords at large undertook to settle the matter—and from this date the lords assert their ascendancy, and treat the judges (and the councillors) as merely assistants in their house.¹

The common law is therefore beginning to retire to a definite and limited field, resigns its flexibility and declines to be drawn into attempts to remove its own defects: that will henceforth be the province of Parliament. Later still, when Parliament fails to keep pace with the needs of litigants, it will be the Chancellor who will take up the task. This loss is compensated to some extent by the growing independence of the judges. Less and less often do we find them at the council board or giving effect to royal commands from the bench.