Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 146

At all times judges of the common law courts have discussed important and difficult cases in meetings consisting of all the judges of both Benches, and sometimes the Lord Chancellor and the barons of the Exchequer.⁵ Sometimes the Council is also mentioned, and the judgment proceeded from this impressive assembly as a whole.⁶ The several benches might sit together on other occasions to debate legal points referred to them by the Crown. At the beginning of the fifteenth century such meetings were often in the “Exchequer Chamber” and the courts slowly developed the practice of themselves referring difficult cases to the Exchequer chamber. On such occasions a decision was reached by the judges and serjeants together,⁷ but the judgment was formally pronounced in the court where the case originated. Moreover, an argument in the Exchequer chamber could take place only at the instance of the judges hearing the case; it could not be demanded by either party. There might be less formal meetings at Serjeants’ Inn, where the judges and serjeants lodged together during term time, and obviously such talks are simply the usual professional conversation of men engaged in a common task; they are not in any sense the proceedings of a court.

The system had merits which unfortunately were not conserved. While it lasted it did much to take the place of a system of appellate courts. Instead of burdening litigants with the expense and delay of taking a case through several courts, in each of which a few judges gave perhaps hurried decisions, under this system the case went at once for discussion by all the judges of all the courts sitting together in order to reach a definitive ruling, which very naturally was accepted with the greatest respect as settling the point.