Today's legal system

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Ryan Johnson                Access Business & Computing

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Today’s legal system originates from the reign of Henry II (1154-1189).

1066 saw the Battle of Hastings, after this William the Conqueror gave large areas of land to his supporters. These people were called Barons, they were solely in charge of their area of land and they decided the laws of the land. This is called the Feudal System.

The King decided to impose his own legal system throughout the country due to his growing concern about the barons joining forces and over powering him. He did this by appointing Royal Commissioners, which would visit all local courts. They later became known as Circuit Judges.

Initially local courts continued as well as assizes, which were run by RC’s. People had the choice of which court to been seen by. Local courts died out as the people decided they would prefer to wait for a Circuit judge.

To bring a claim to court the litigant had to use a prescribed form, a Writ. Royal Commissioners created Writ’s. If there were not a Writ in existence that covered the litigants’ problem then they would be denied justice, and if the litigant were to use the wrong writ or even make a small mistake on it the case would be thrown out.

After the Thirteenth Century the Royal Commissioner’s refused to create any new Writs.

Many litigants were very dissatisfied with this, and decided to go the King in London. They were not going to ask the king for new law to be put into place, just to do justice based on conscience in their case.

Due to the RC’s not creating any more Writs, endless amounts of people were going to the King asking for justice. With only one King and so many people asking for this, the King appointed a Lord Chancellor to be keeper of the Kings Conscience. The Chancellor was both a lawyer and a priest, and the decisions he made were based on what seemed ‘right’ in that particular case. Over time equity developed due to problems in common law, and the Court of Chancery came into being which operated these rules of fairness or equity.

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Equity and common law existed side by side for several centuries, but many problems did arise, Equity was expensive and very time consuming. Also common law courts would make an order in favour of one party and the Court of Chancery in the other. This problem was finally resolved in 1615 when the King ruled that equity should prevail.

In the early 19th Century, common law was becoming more flexible, and the King decided to merge the courts so that all courts administered both common law and equity. The merging of ...

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