Law and justice

The king, of course, was responsible for law and justice. But kings usually had to leave the administration of this important matter to someone who lived close to the place where a crime was committed. In Saxon times every district had had its own laws and customs, and justice had often been a family matter. After the Norman Conquest nobles were allowed to administer justice among the villages and people on their lands. Usually they mixed Norman laws with the old Saxon laws. They had freedom to act more or less as they liked. More serious offences, however, were tried in the king's courts.

Henry I introduced the idea that all crimes, even those inside the family, were no longer only a family matter but a breaking of the "king's peace". It was therefore the king's duty to try people and punish them. At first the nobles acted for the king on their own lands, but Henry wanted the same kind of justice to be used everywhere. So he appointed a number of judges who travelled from place to place administering justice. They dealt both with crimes and disagreements over property. In this way the king slowly took over the administration from the nobles.

At first the king's judges had no special knowledge or training. They were simply trusted to use common sense. Many of them were nobles or bishops who followed directly the orders of the king. It is not surprising that the quality of judges depended on the choice of the king. Henry II, the most powerful English king of the twelfth century, was known in Europe for the high standards of his law courts.

By the end of the twelfth century the judges were men with real knowledge and experience of the law. Naturally these judges, travelling from place to place, administered the same law wherever they went. This might seem obvious now, but since Saxon times local customs and laws had varied from one place to another. The law administered by these travelling judges became known as "common law", because it was used everywhere.

England was unlike the rest of Europe because it used common law. Centuries later, England's common law system was used in the United States (the North American colonies) and in many other British colonial possessions, and accepted when these became nations in their own right. In other parts of Europe legal practice was based on the Civil Law of the Roman Empire, and the' Canon Law of the Church. But although English lawyers referred to these as examples of legal method and science, they created an entirely different system of law based on custom, comparisons, previous cases and previous decisions. In this way traditional local laws were replaced by common law all over the land. This mixture of experience and custom is the basis of law in England even today.

The new class of judges was also interested in how the law was carried out, and what kinds of punishment were used. From Anglo-Saxon times there had been two ways of deciding difficult cases when it was not clear if a man was innocent or guilty. The accused man could be tested in battle against a skilled fighter, or tested by "ordeal". A typical "ordeal" was to put a hot iron on the man's tongue. If the burn mark was still there three days later he was thought to be guilty. It was argued that God would leave the burn mark on a guilty man's tongue. Such a system worked only as long as people believed in it. By the end of the twelfth century there were serious doubts and in 1215 the pope forbade the Church to have anything to do with trial by ordeal.

In England trial by ordeal was replaced with trial by jury. The jury idea dated back to the Danes of Danelaw, but had only been used in disputes over land. Henry II had already introduced the use of juries for some cases in the second half of the twelfth century. But it was not the kind of jury we know today. In 1179 he allowed an accused man in certain cases to claim "trial by jury". The man could choose twelve neighbours, "twelve good men and true", who would help him prove that he was not guilty. Slowly, during the later Middle Ages, the work of these juries gradually changed from giving evidence to. judging the evidence of others. Juries had no training in the law. They were ordinary people using ordinary common sense. It was soon obvious that they needed guidance. As a result law schools grew up during the thirteenth century, producing lawyers who could advise juries about the points of law.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 2369