The English Law Courts.
65
THE ENGLISH LAW COURTS. I.— THE PRIVY COUNCIL. A SERIES of sketches of the English (912 A. D.). When his other continental Law Courts cannot make a better com possessions had fallen from him, the Chan mencement than with the Privy Council, nel Islands still adhered, or were forcibly which is inferior to few of our legal tribunals linked to the fortunes of King John. In in antiquity, coequal with the House of Lords 1204 the royal conqueror honored Jersey in point of dignity, and superior to every with his presence, granted her a charter, recognized her laws, established a royal court in the land in the range and the vari ety of its jurisdictions. The origin of the court, and directed that the appeals which were formerly brought before him as Duke jurisdictions of the Privy Council has some what acutely divided historical opinion. The of Normandy should now be heard before earliest theory on the subject is that of himself and his Council in England. Now Pownall (Administration of the Colonies, the English sovereign claimed — a claim 1774). In substance it is as follows: At that the colonists acquiesced in," and which the time when the first colonial settlements the House of Commons itself (Pownall, 49; Burge, Colonial Law I., Prelim. Treat.; Jour were effected, the distinction between ad ministrative and judicial functions was very nal Ho. of Com., April 25, 162 1; April 29, imperfectly apprehended. In settlements 1624) had tacitly admitted—that his colonial regulated by royal instructions the governor settlements and . possessions were the de mesnes of the Crown, lying quite beyond the acted also as judge in chancery. In settle ments constituted by charter there was no jurisdiction or cognizance of the state. The court of chancery at all. The governor was historical relation between the feudal duchies not necessarily a lawyer, and only a careful of King John and the. plantations and pos legal training would have qualified him for sessions of King Charles I. being so intimate, deciding as judge questions on which he had no great effort of administrative imagination was necessary to make the analogy com already formed and might even have pro nounced an opinion in his administrative plete. Thus it came to pass that appeals capacity. An appeal from the decisions of from the courts, constituted in the various the colonial governor was therefore clearly colonies after the old Norman model, were essential. Now the one precedent of a taken not to the House of Lords, not to the Courts of Law and Equity, but to the sover judicature within the realm possessing for eign jurisdiction which presented itself to eign himself and the concilium privatum the English sovereign and his advisers was assiduum ordinarium, which plays so impor that of the Privy Council over the Channel tant and intricate a part in the legal history Islands. Jersey,' known to the Romans as of England. Ca:sarca, of which the modern name is prob Pownall's theory, although characterized ably a corruption, had definitely passed with 1 Pownall says (p. 50), "The plantations were settled her sister islands under the yoke of the Nor on (the king's) lands by the king's license and grant; the man in the beginning of the tenth century constitutions and powers of government were framed by the king's charters and commissions; and the colonists, 1 Falle's account of Jersey (Durell's Edition, 1837). understanding themselves as removed out of the realm, Guide to Jersey, 1855. Le Cras, The Laws, etc., and considered themselves in their executive and legislative their administration in Jersey, 1839. Report to the Privy capacity of government in immediate connection and sub ordination to the king, their only sovereign lord." Council on the Laws of Guernsey, 1819.
