Cokes Contribution to Common Law - Essay Example

Introduction Generally, research on the life and works of Lord Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke has highlighted rhetoric, controversy, and disputes. They give emphasis on fierce orations in court, tense altercations with King James I, and nationalistic speeches on the house of the Commons. He should also be viewed as an icon in a particular cultural setting. With his declarations that the common law was predetermined and perpetual, and of the same status with the civil law of the land, he was one of the Elizabethans who greatly contributed to the formation and growth of an English kingdom. Based on the Elizabethan era are Coke’s description of law as the judges’ shared knowledge, a perspective which supports his judgment in Bonham’s Case, and his professional capacity to re-evaluate the historical background of the common law, which allowed him to transform medieval England’s law into principles tailored to a growing economy and evolving society. This research report critically assesses the background biography of Lord Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke. More particularly, this paper focuses on the following topics: his contribution to common law; his influence to law in England; and, his decisions to cases and law and his quotes. Sir Edward Coke was a highly regarded member of the English privileged class, and for two hundred years after his demise, his works wielded great influence on English law. He was not able to take over English politics, but he successfully became the most prominent personality of the Elizabethan and Stuart eras due to his flexibility, his remarkable ability to thrive, and his strong impact on his colleagues and on succeeding generations. Coke was dynamically involved in the legal system for more than four decades. He worked in all parliaments that existed between 1589 and 1628 either as a counsel to the Lords or an associate of the Commons. He also took part in the fragmented political environment of the Elizabethan and Stuart eras while amassing wealth that became the object of resentment of his colleagues. Ultimately, in the concluding phases of the Elizabethan period, he started publishing a variety of legal writings that showed a broad understanding of past English legal references and an unmatched capacity to consolidate the multiple components of English common law; and, alongside his extensive legal experience and his politically powerful status, they finally recognised him as the most important legal expert of his time. None of his opponents and colleagues, except for Bacon, equalled his success in a broad array of literary, political, and legal endeavours. And none wielded such a strong impact on the later progress of English law. Coke’s Contribution to Common Law Sir Edward Coke fervently defended the Common Law. As chief justice of the King’s Bench in the 17th century, Coke explained the duty of the courts and the common law in regulating political authority. On the 13th of November 1608, in reaction to the declaration of the king that he could resolve legal cases on his own, Coke argued that “the King in his own person cannot adjudge any case... but that this ought to be determined and adjudged in some Court of Justice, according to the law and custom of England.” James I was severely frustrated and enraged that a senior barrister considered the common law superior to the king. James warned Coke. But the chief justice remained undaunted. He kept on declaring that Common Law was superior to the king’s discretion. Coke, in Bonham’s Case, emphasised that “It appears in our books, that… when an Act of Parliament is against common right and reason… the common law will control it, and adjudge such Act to be void.” He further claims that the Common Law was ‘beyond definition’, and with ‘an infinity of sources and guises.’ Common Law was basically long-established customs. Coke viewed these customs as fundamentally fixed or predetermined. It was understood that Parliament may modify problematic customs, but a number of common lawyers believed that even parliamentary measures must be disregarded by judges if it challenged custom on important matters. Common law was superior to the law because various English generations had discovered it valuable. In addition, common law was basically based on reason. Its guardians claimed that common law represented fundamentally rational judgments. Given that common law merged reason and custom, particular guidance was required to make sense of its dictums or premises, what Coke referred to as ‘artificial reason’: Then the king said that he thought the law was founded upon reason, and that he and others had reason as well as the judges. To which it was answered by me that true it was that God had endowed His Majesty with excellent science and great endowments of nature; but His Majesty was not learned in the laws of his realm of England, and causes which concern the life or inheritance or goods or fortunes of his subjects are not to be decided by natural reason, but by the artificial reason and judgment of law—which law is an act which requires long study and experience, before that a man can attain to the cognizance of it. Common law was deemed ‘timeless’. Coke also asserted that common law formed a basis for citizenship, property, and individual rights, alongside royal authority and parliamentary ruling. Such historical pattern of judges’ resolutions, together with important legal texts like the Magna Carta, represented a shared knowledge higher than any individual reasoning. This principle in effect place the rule of law above royal power. This infuriated King James I, who took away the chief justice position of Coke in 1616. Nevertheless, Coke’s argument about the common law tradition and the restrictions on royal authority by Parliament were cited by the British parliament against the monarchy in the 1640s and 1680s. Coke’s consideration for previous judgments in English common law became the foundation for the constitutional law of the United States, which looks at earlier court resolutions when dealing with new cases. Coke extolled the common law as the outcome of extensive experience and knowledge as accumulated over time: If all the reason that is dispersed into so many several heads were united into one, yet he could not make such a law as the Law of England is, because by many succession of ages it has been fined and refined by an infinite number of grave and learned men, and by long experience grown to such a perfection. Coke believes that the foundations of the common law were ‘beyond the memory or register of any beginning’. In clarifying this, it should be remembered that Coke was writing as a lawyer, not as an historian. Coke’s objective in the preambles was not only to extol the English law, but to establish that the common law had lived on unchanged by any conqueror. In proving this, he made use of historical proofs to support his arguments, rather than to confirm historical knowledge. Hence, Coke aimed to establish his argument that the common law lived before the conquest by verifying whether instances of the application of four common law principles may be uncovered from that period. By confirming these specific arguments, he thought he would gain substantiation for his bigger proposition. However, the arguments of Coke were not simply those of an apologist who concealed his fundamentally evolutionary perception of law to advance political arguments. He did believe that there were ground rules which were fixed. The earliest common law was the “birth-right and the most ancient and best inheritance” which the people had. It was the law that guaranteed their pleasure, their lives, and certainly their society. According to Coke: For any fundamental point of the ancient common laws and customs of the realm, it is a maxim in policy, and a trial by experience, that the alteration of any of them is most dangerous; for that which hath been refined and perfected by all the wisest men in former succession of ages and proved and approved by continual experience to be good and profitable for the common wealth, cannot without great hazard and danger be altered or changed. He obviously did not view the law as unchanging. In fact, he portrayed his collection of appeals in his Book of Entries as a “greater authority and use, and fitter for the modern practice of the law,” for they were new. Coke did not view the common law as a collection of policies which may be described, or a collection of traditions which may be defined. He argued that the law was the professional wisdom of lawyers. Coke’s Influence on English Law The influence of Coke on the law of England is evident upon the form of law, upon private law, upon constitutional and criminal law, and upon commercial law. The 16th century had witnessed numerous developments in all areas of private law. Hence much interpretation and translation was required to reconcile the medieval and the modern components of private law. The way Coke initiated this task of adaptation and translation can be described along these lines. First, he worked out from the strewn and largely incoherent maxims in the Year Books rules of law consistent with the rules specified by the modern documents; and he carried out his task expertly that succeeding lawyers were glad to recognise his interpretations of the Year Books. Read More