scholarly journals The Court for Crown Cases Reserved, 1848–1908

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 259-288
Author(s):  
Phil Handler

Convicted felons at the Old Bailey and on assize in nineteenth-century England had no right of appeal. They had either to submit to their fate or, if they had the means, petition the Crown for a pardon. The legal avenues for redress were limited. A writ of error would lie to a superior court for legal errors that appeared on the face of the record but by the nineteenth century this was seldom used. More significantly, it was open for the trial judge to reserve questions of law for the informal and private consideration of all the common law judges. In their illuminating studies of this practice in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, James Oldham and Randall McGowen elucidate the ways in which the judiciary used reserved cases to develop legal doctrine and to shape the operation of criminal justice. The trend toward increased formalization of procedure that they identify, culminated in 1848, when Parliament created the Court for Crown Cases Reserved (CCCR). The new court adopted the existing method of reserving cases, but was a court of record that sat and gave judgment in public. It became the highest judicial forum for the determination of questions of criminal law until 1908, when it was superseded by the Court of Criminal Appeal.

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Seyed Mohammad Mousavi ◽  
Arash Babaei ◽  
Shamsollah Khatami ◽  
Yousef Jafarzadi

<p>One characteristic of the force of law in the country, the integrity of the rules in all areas of all aspects of creation into account the distinction between crime and the crime and failed or incomplete in acts of crime and crime as the withdrawal. In this respect the rules on penalties culpability in the crime has been proposed that the content of the crime with absolute responsibility of these categories has manifested. Under the Articles 144 and 145 of the Latest version Islamic criminal law (2013), Create unintentional offenses, subject to verification of the fault committed. In crimes ranging from quasi-intentional unintentional deviation as retaliation book rules apply. Legislator to commit a fault, the reason for the error is considered criminal, which has always been considered an objective measure and a ruler (in Article 145), while the common law under subsection (1) "criminal law to crimes" adopted 1981 crime start as the offense is punishable total. This study showed that certain similarities between the laws. In this context, the two internal laws and the common law can be found, in which the underlying offense of absolute liability is not fixed in the courts. Always treat judges and lawyers in the face of legal texts are not consistent because of the lack of transparency and clarity of the rules. In particular, in the common law, when a crime for the first time in cour t, and a warrant has been issued about it in terms of predicting the law and with regard to the interpretation of judges, procedural difference is more tangible.</p>


2019 ◽  
pp. 551-590
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Friedman

This chapter discusses the development of criminal law in the second half of the nineteenth century, covering the statute law of crimes, crime rates, insanity, punishment and correction, and victimless crimes. The formal criminal law in the late nineteenth century was by and large a matter of statute. The concept of the common-law crime had been wiped out in federal law. The concept also decayed on the state level. As of 1900, some states still technically recognized the possibility of a common-law crime. Other states, by statute, had specifically abolished the concept. Only acts listed in the penal code were crimes, and nothing else. In some states, the courts construed their penal codes as (silently) abolishing common-law crime. Where the concept survived, it was hardly ever used; the penal codes were as a practical matter complete and exclusive—the total catalog of crime.


2009 ◽  
pp. 253-256
Author(s):  
M.H. Ogilvie

Cases of duress in contract law are few and far between. Most are concerned with improper threats or taking advantage of a weaker party to procure a contract rather than with actual physical threats of the “[y]our money or your life” variety, which are more likely to be controlled by the criminal law. A recent decision on a preliminary issue of law in relation to duress in the English Court of Appeal answered an interesting question that appears never to have been raised in earlier cases about duress, that is, whether rescission of a contract can be granted where restitution is impossible because one of the parties has destroyed documents relating to the contract as required by the contract so that they could not be restored. The trial judge found that rescission could not be granted and that no other remedy was available in the common law for duress, but the Court of Appeal reversed that finding by assimilating the fact situation with those in which equity has done “practical justice,” thereby further fusing the common law and equity relating to duress and undue influence, and possibly also fraud as well. The facts of this highly complex case, which also involved conflict of laws, mistake, frustration, and uncertainty have yet to be resolved at trial, but the Court of Appeal entertained two preliminary questions of law, duress, and conflict of laws before sending the case to trial. This comment is focused on the duress point.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136571272110022
Author(s):  
Jennifer Porter

The common law test of voluntariness has come to be associated with important policy rationales including the privilege against self-incrimination. However, when the test originated more than a century ago, it was a test concerned specifically with the truthfulness of confession evidence; which evidence was at that time adduced in the form of indirect oral testimony, that is, as hearsay. Given that, a century later, confession evidence is now mostly adduced in the form of an audiovisual recording that can be observed directly by the trial judge, rather than as indirect oral testimony, there may be capacity for a different emphasis regarding the question of admissibility. This article considers the law currently operating in Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia to see whether or not, in the form of an audiovisual recording, the exercise of judicial discretion as to the question of the admissibility of confession evidence might be supported if the common law test of voluntariness was not a strict test of exclusion.


1999 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khaled Fahmy

AbstractThe reform of the Egyptian criminal justice system in the nineteenth century traditionally has been viewed as forming an important step in the establishment of a liberal and just rule of law. By studying how forensic medicine was introduced into nineteenth-century Egypt, I argue that the need to exercise better control over the population and to monitor crime lay behind the reform process as much as liberal ideas borrowed from Europe did. Drawing on a wide range of archival material, both legal and medical, I analyze the role played by autopsy in the criminal system and argue that the practice of autopsy was viewed differentially by 'ulamā', by Arabic-speaking, French-educated doctors and by the mostly illiterate masses. And contrary to the common wisdom, I conclude that the "modernization" of the Egyptian legal system was intended not to displace the sharīa but to support it.


Author(s):  
Kenneth McK. Norrie

The earliest criminal law dealing with children differently from the adult population was that concerned with sexual offences. This chapter explores the changing policies of the law, from the late 19th century fear of girls being exposed to immorality and boys being exposed to homosexuality, through the more protective 20th century legislation which nevertheless hung on to old ideas of immorality and criminality, until the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009 focused almost (but not quite) exclusively on protection from harm and from exploitation. The chapter then turns to the crime of child cruelty or neglect from its earliest manifestation in the common law to its statutory formulation in Prevention of Cruelty to, and Protection of, Children Act 1889, which, re-enacted in 1937, took on a form that, for all intents and purposes, remains to this day. The last part of the chapter explores the legal basis for the power of corporal punishment – the defence previously available to parents, teachers and some others to a charge of assault of a child, known as “reasonable” chastisement. Its gradual abolition from the 1980s to 2019 is described.


2021 ◽  
pp. 61-84
Author(s):  
Omri Ben-Shahar ◽  
Ariel Porat

This chapter illustrates personalized law “in action” by examining it in three areas of the law: standards of care under the common law tort doctrine of negligence, mandated consumer protections in contract law, and criminal sanctions. In each area, the chapter examines personalization of commands along several dimensions. In tort law, standards of care could vary according to each injurer’s riskiness and skill, to reduce the costs of accidents. In contract law, mandatory protections could vary according to the value they provide each consumer and differential cost they impose on firms, to allocate protections where, and only where, they are justified. And in criminal law, sanctions would be set based on what it takes to deter criminals, accounting for how perpetrators differ in their motives and likelihood of being apprehended, with the potential to reduce unnecessary harsh penalties.


Author(s):  
John Baker

This chapter examines the history of case-law, legislation, and equity, with particular reference to legal change. The common law was evidenced by judicial precedent, but single decisions were not binding until the nineteenth century. It was also rooted in professional understanding, the ‘common learning’ acquired in the inns of court. It was based on ‘reason’, operating within a rigid procedural framework. Legal change could be effected by fictions, equity, and legislation, but (except during the Interregnum) there was little systematic reform before the nineteenth century. Legislation was external to the common law, but it had to be interpreted by common-law judges and so there was a symbiotic relationship between statute-law and case-law. Codification has sometimes been proposed, but with limited effect.


Author(s):  
Janet McLean

The authority claims of the administration have undergone radical change with consequences for the shape and content of administrative law. In the seventeenth century, authority was claimed in office, as a means to limit the imposition of the King’s will and to secure the independence of officials, especially the judges. In the eighteenth century, virtue, property, and independence became the basis for office, and the common law sought to enhance such authority through notions of public trust. After the nineteenth-century transition to more centralised and bureaucratic hierarchy, democracy became the new source of authority for the administration, reinforced by the ultra vires doctrine. In each era, the authority claims of the administration have been reflected in the frameworks for judicial supervision. In this way the common law has simultaneously constituted and controlled authority. In the present day we are in the process of rethinking whence administrators derive their legitimate authority and the theoretical foundations of judicial review. Beginning with the authority claims of the administration and framing a juridical response which reflects and tests such claims would be a good place to start.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document