Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 152

The establishment of the justices of the peace marks the end of the practical importance of the old communal jurisdictions which we described in chapter I. Even in boroughs, where such jurisdictions as the court leet survived longest, the competition of the justices of the peace was severe, and ultimately successful. Whether the justices of the peace were deliberately designed to take the place of the local jurisdictions, which had already declined, or whether, on the other hand, they were part of a conscious policy whereby the Crown attempted to supplant local jurisdictions (dependent as they usually were upon the sheriff), it is impossible to say; there may be some truth in both views.² It is certainly significant that the justices of the peace were fairly closely supervised by the central courts and ultimately by the Council; in this way they became not merely the local representatives of the royal jurisdiction, but also to a large extent the administrative and political agents of the King and Council. During the later Stuart period the government tried to exploit to the utmost the political influence of the justices of the peace.

This state of affairs, however, is not to be found in the fourteenth century when the institution was for the first time rapidly developing; in the critical reign of Edward III it is beyond doubt that the demand for the expansion of powers of justices of the peace came from the commons in parliament, and that the opposition to the demand came from the council and the Crown lawyers. It is presumably the Tudors who inaugurated the new policy of making the justices of the peace their instruments in local government.

Politics apart, the justices of the peace were a notable essay in decentralisation in criminal jurisdiction, and the development of the nisi prius system contributed to the same result in matters of civil litigation. The justices from Westminster came down into the county, bringing with them the advantages of metropolitan law administered in every county town. The problem of over-centralisation created at the end of the twelfth century was thus satisfactorily solved—at least for a moment.