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RyanHolmesFirstPaper 2 - 28 Nov 2017 - Main.RyanHolmes
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> | The Englishry of the English Law + | | | | |
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< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | >
> | -Ryan Holmes - 28 Nov 2017 | | | | |
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> | Section I
The Englishry of the English law owes a great deal to the diverse traditions that contributed to its structure and substance. However, to ignore the influence of the larger social, political, and economic pressures shaping the laws of England is to neglect the true drivers of the development of the peculiar nature of the English legal system. Chief among these forces are the consolidation and expansion of royal power, and long running power struggles between the Crown and the nobility.
This inquiry demands a definition of Englishry, or what makes the English legal system historically distinct. Using broad strokes, this quality of the system can be defined as the flexibility derived from its case-driven nature, encompassing both the absence of a comprehensive civil code and the centrality of judicial decisions. Englishry also includes the notion that the power of the monarch, at least to some extent, is constrained by the rule of law. Notably absent are revered institutions like trial by jury and Parliament, for although they are essential to the English system, they are not unique, and have scattered analogues across Europe. | | | | |
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< | -- By RyanHolmes - 28 Nov 2017 | >
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> | The various sources of the English law laid the foundation for legal system and enabled its later development and growth. The primary substantive source for the English law is the Anglo-Saxon law before the Conquest. It was influenced by several Germanic legal traditions and was by no means uniform across the entire country. Its concerns were intensely local, and it was underpinned by collective responsibility and community justice. Though records are sparse, compurgation seems to have played a significant role is the decision of cases. The Normans brought two particularly significant innovations to the English legal system. The first of which was the development of a more robust royal administration, epitomized by projects like the Domesday Book, that allowed for the development of a truly national legal system and more efficient taxation. The second was the imposition of feudal tenure, a radically new system of land ownership. This combination of the Anglo-Saxon focus on local custom and community participation with Norman central governance and the military tenures provided the starting point for the English law, but the distinguishing aspects of the system’s structure and substance was determined by subsequent events. | | | | |
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> | The consolidation and expansion of royal authority and administration in the centuries following the Conquest led to the development of a national court system that governed the entire realm and developed new jurisdictions, causes of action, and novel uses of fictions to fit the legal needs of their times. The latter half of the 12th century saw dramatic increase in both royal power and the reach of national courts. Not only did royal justice begin to travel independently from the person of the king with the development of the eyres and later the assizes, but the judicial functions of the curia regis were functionally shifted to permanent courts with the creation of the Exchequer of Pleas, the Court of Common Pleas, and later the King’s Bench. The reign of Henry II saw the development and subsequent judicial use of novel disseisin and mort d’ancestor to ameliorate the abuses of the Anarchy. Later times saw the Chancery develop to remedy the perceived rigidity of the common law. | | | | |
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> | Once established, these courts adopted new procedures that drove the law forward to meet the legal needs of contemporary society. This was occasionally done in novel ways. The Exchequer and King’s Bench greatly expanded their own respective jurisdictions with the Writ of Quominus and the Bill of Middlesex. In the 14th century, the common law courts drove the development of early tort law by expansively interpreting the vi et armis component of the writ of trespass as was done in Rattesdene v, Grunestone (YB 10 Edw II (54 SS) 140) and later doing away with the need for an allegation of force with the emergence of trespass on the case. A similar process is seen in the King’s Bench with development and affirmation of the use of assumpsit, much to the benefit of plaintiffs and the legal profession. Slade’s case Trin. 44 Eliz. 4 Co Rep 92b. The centrality of judicial action to substantive legal development and the national scope of these royal courts are part and parcel are part and parcel of the English law. Their existence is due in large part to their Norman origins, but the need to meet social, political, and economic needs was the driver of their subsequent development. | | | | |
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> | Struggles between the Crown and the nobility, exacerbated by Britain’s relative physical isolation from the Continent and social and economic changes in the latter medieval period, led to the British monarchy being more constrained by the rule of law than its continental counterparts. For example, the rights of Parliament granted in the Magna Carta were can be temporary compromises to appease an emboldened and restless baronage after the loss of the Angevin’s continental possessions. These rights, through John’s untimely death and their subsequent reaffirmation, grew to eventually topple kings. In the land law, changes in the economy and the irrelevance of knight-service in the face of the yeoman archer led to a crisis of feudalism, and set off centuries of conflict between landowners and the Crown over the collection of incidents and the passage of land. This conflict dragged on for centuries from Quia Emptores, to the respective Statutes of Uses and Wills, ultimately leading to a defeat of royal power with abolition of feudal incidents in the 17th century. | | | | |
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Section II
Subsection A
Subsection B
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> | Though this essay speaks in broad terms and excludes many important themes, it seeks to establish that the diverse sources of the English law, while providing an essential foundation, are not enough to account for the development of the English legal system’s defining characteristics. The development of the medieval and early modern world, and the effect of these pressures on a relatively isolated island society, is more responsible for the distinctive character of the English law than its beginnings in Anglo-Saxon tradition and Norman governance. |
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RyanHolmesFirstPaper 1 - 28 Nov 2017 - Main.RyanHolmes
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
Paper Title
-- By RyanHolmes - 28 Nov 2017
Section I
Subsection A
Subsub 1
Subsection B
Subsub 1
Subsub 2
Section II
Subsection A
Subsection B
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
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