Atrocious Judges : Lives of Judges Infamous as Tools of Tyrants and Instruments of Oppression

Contemporaneously with the new organization above described of the courts of common law, the British Parliament had taken upon itself that organization which it still retains – an upper house, (House of Lords,) composed of great nobles and bishops,12 successor of the Anglo-Saxon Wittenagemote and of the Anglo-Norman Great Council, and a lower house, (House of Commons,) in which met together the elected representatives of the smaller landed proprietors, holding by knight’s service immediately of the crown, (knights of the shire,) together with the newly-admitted representatives of the cities and chief towns, (burgesses.) The Parliament thus constituted claimed and exercised, probably as successor of the Wittenagemote, appellate jurisdiction from the decisions of all the courts of law. In the time of Edward III. it was even a common practice for the judges, when any question of difficulty arose in their several courts, to take the advice of Parliament on it before giving judgment. Thus in a case mentioned in the Year Book, 40 Ed. III., Thorpe, chief justice of the King’s Bench, went with another judge to the House of Lords, to inquire the meaning and effect of a law they had just passed for amending the system of pleadings;13 and many other instances occur of the same sort.

This appellate power vesting in Parliament from the decisions of all the courts was the first of the circumstances above alluded to as serving to prevent the monopoly of the administration of justice by the lawyers. But this check with the process of time has almost entirely disappeared. In England this appellate power in Parliament has long since fallen into the hands exclusively of the House of Lords, who themselves in giving judgment are ordinarily only the mouthpiece of the judges called in to give their advice. In what are now the United States of America the same appellate jurisdiction was originally exercised by the colonial assemblies. With us, however, it has entirely vanished under the influence of the idea of a total separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial functions.

The other, and by far the most important check upon the monopoly of the lawyers, was the introduction and gradual perfecting of the trial by jury, by which the more ancient methods – the compurgation and ordeal of the Anglo-Saxons, and the trial by battle, the favorite method of the Anglo-Normans – were entirely superseded. The history of the trial by jury is exceedingly obscure. The petit jury may, however, be traced back to the old Anglo-Saxon method of trial by compurgation, the jury in its origin being only a body of witnesses drawn from the vicinage, who founded their verdict not upon the evidence of witnesses given before them, but upon their own personal knowledge of the matters in dispute.14

The grand jury seems to have originated in the old Anglo-Saxon custom imbodied in one of the laws of Ethelred, by which was imposed upon the twelve senior thanes of every hundred the duty of discovering and presenting the perpetrators of all crimes within their district – a custom revived by the constitution of Clarendon, enacted A. D. 1164, by which twelve lawful men of the neighborhood were to be sworn by the sheriff, on the requisition of the bishop, to investigate all cases of suspected criminality as to which no individual dared to make an accusation. At first this accusing jury seems also to have served the purpose of a jury of trial. In what way the grand jury came to be separated from the petit jury, and how the former came to be increased to a number not exceeding twenty-three, of whom at least twelve must concur in order to find an indictment, is a point which still remains for the investigation of legal antiquaries.15

The trial by jury, though of the progress of its development little is known, appears to have taken on substantially its existing form, both in civil and criminal cases, nearly contemporaneously with the new organization of the English courts, with the rise of the legal profession as distinct from that of the clergy, and with the commencement of the series of English statutes and law reports – all of which, as well as the existing constitution of the British House of Commons, may be considered as dating from the accession of Edward I., A. D. 1272, or somewhat less than six hundred years ago. In certain cases of great importance this trial took place and still takes place in bank, as it is called; that is, in Westminster Hall, before all the judges of the court in which the suit is pending;16 but in general, the trial is had in the county in which (if a criminal case) the offence had been committed, or (if a civil case) in which the venue is laid, before certain commissioners sent into the counties for that purpose, and who, under the new system, were the successors of the justices in eyre, or itinerant justices, who had formed a part of the ancient Aula Regis. Originally, separate commissions appear to have issued for criminal and civil cases – for the former a commission of oyer and terminer, (to hear and determine,) and of general jail delivery; and for the latter a commission of assize, so called from the name of a peculiar kind of jury trial introduced as a substitute for trial by battle, in real actions, that is, pleas relating to land, villainage, and advowsons. In the times in which land, villains, and the right of presentation to parishes, constituted the chief wealth, these real actions constituted also the chief business of the Common Pleas, which then had exclusive jurisdiction of civil controversies; but to this commission of assize was annexed another, called a commission of nisi prius, authorizing the commissioners to try all questions of fact arising in any of the courts of Westminster. This latter commission was so called because the writ issued to the sheriff of the county in which the cause of action was alleged to have originated, to summon a jury to try the case, directed such jury to be summoned to appear at Westminster on a day named, unless before (in Latin, nisi prius) that day commissioners should come into the county to try the case there. Hence the term nisi prius employed by lawyers to designate a trial by jury before one or more judges, commissioned to hold such trials within certain circuits, but whose directions to the jury, and other points of law decided by them in the course of the trial, are liable afterwards to be reviewed by the whole bench.

Ultimately these commissions for both criminal and civil trials were given to the same persons, who also received a commission of the peace; and the whole territory of England being divided into six circuits, two of the judges, to whom other assessors were added, held assizes twice a year in each county,17 for the trial of issues found in Westminster Hall – a system closely imitated in all our American states.

But the distribution of authority above described as having been originally made to the different courts of Westminster Hall, into which the Aula Regis was divided, did not long remain undisturbed. Courts have at all times, and every where, exhibited a great disposition to extend their jurisdiction, of which we have already had an example in the authority over marriages, wills, and the personal property of intestates, assumed by the English ecclesiastical courts; and considering the double jurisdiction under which we citizens of the United States live, – that of the federal and that of the state courts, – and the disposition so strongly and perseveringly exhibited by the federal courts to enhance their authority, while the state courts continue to grow weaker and tamer, this is, to us, a subject of no little interest.

Besides the general love of extending their jurisdiction characteristic of all courts, and indeed only one of the manifestations of the universal passion for power, the English Courts of King’s Bench and Exchequer had a special motive for seeking to encroach on the exclusive civil jurisdiction of the Common Pleas. The salaries of the judges were very small – originally only sixty marks, equal to £40 sterling, or about $200 a year; nor was their amount materially increased down to quite recent times; but to this small salary were added fees paid by the parties to the cases tried before them; and the judges of the two other courts were very anxious to share with their brethren of the Common Pleas a part of the rich harvest which their monopoly of civil cases enabled them to reap from that source. Not only did the Court of King’s Bench start the idea that all suits in which damages were claimed for injuries to person or property, attended by violence or fraud, came properly within its jurisdiction as “savoring of criminality;” it found another reason for extending its jurisdiction, by suggesting that when a person was in the custody of its officers, he could not, with a due regard to “legal comity,” be sued on any personal claim in any other court, since that might result in his being taken out of the hands of their officer who already had him in custody, and was entitled to keep him. If any body had any claim against such a person, (such was the position plausibly set up,) it ought to be tried before the court in whose custody he already was. Having thus prepared the way, the Court of King’s Bench did not stop here; but by a fiction, introduced into the process with which the suit was commenced, that the defendant was already in the custody of their marshal for a fictitious trespass which he was not allowed to deny, jurisdiction was gradually assumed in all private suits except real actions.

The Court of Exchequer in like manner claimed exclusive jurisdiction of suits for debt brought by the king’s debtors, since by neglecting to pay them they might be prevented from paying their debts to the king; and under the pretence, which nobody was allowed to dispute, that all plaintiffs were the king’s debtors, that court, too, gave an extent to their jurisdiction similar to that of the King’s Bench. The exclusive jurisdiction of real actions, which alone remained to the Common Pleas, by the disappearance of villainage and the great increase of personal property, every day declined in importance; but even this was at last taken from the Common Pleas by the invention of Chief Justice Rolle, during the time of the Commonwealth, of the action of ejectment, which proceeds from beginning to end upon assumptions entirely fictitious, but which by its greater convenience entirely superseded real actions in England and in most of the Anglo-American States.

But while these three common law courts were thus exercising their ingenuity to intrench upon each other’s jurisdiction, their pertinacious adherence to powers and technicalities, and their unwillingness, except in matters where the alleged prerogative of the crown was concerned, to do any thing not sanctioned by precedent, led them to refuse justice or relief to private suitors in many crying cases. Such cases still continued to be brought by petition before the king, and by him were referred to his chancellor, who in the earlier times was commonly his confessor, and who since the abolition of the office of chief justiciary had become the first official of the realm. Undertaking in these cases to prevent a failure of justice by rising above the narrow technicalities of the common law, and guided by the general principles of equity and good conscience, the chancellor gradually assumed a most important jurisdiction, which in civil matters ultimately raised his court to a rank and importance above that of all the others. With the advance indeed of wealth and civilization, appeals to chancery became more and more frequent; and if the common law courts had not altered their policy, and adopted upon many points equitable ideas, it seems probable that so far as civil suits were concerned, those courts would long since have been superseded altogether.18 What indeed of and the practice in the Equity Court entirely into the hands of lawyers bred in Westminster Hall, by whom equity itself was made subservient to precedent, and the whole procedure involved in forms and technicalities even more dilatory and expensive than those of the common law courts.

The same disinclination on the part of these common law courts to go beyond the strict limit of technical routine, led, with the progress of commerce and navigation, to the erection, in the time of Edward III., of the Admiralty Court, mainly for the trial of injuries and offences committed on the high seas, of which, on technical grounds, the courts of common law declined to take jurisdiction. After the foundation of English colonies,19 branches of this court, to which also was given an exchequer jurisdiction, were established in the colonies, and on that model have been formed our federal District Courts.

While the common law courts, through their preference of technicalities to justice, thus enabled the chancellors to assume a civil jurisdiction by which they themselves were completely overshadowed, driving the Parliament also to the necessity of creating, for both civil and criminal matters, a new Court of Admiralty,20 they gave at the same time the support of their acquiescence and silence to other innovations, prompted not by public convenience, but by the very spirit of tyranny.

In every reign, at least from the time of Henry VI. down to that of Charles I., torture to extort confessions from those charged with state crimes was practised under warrants from the Privy Council. In the year 1615, by the advice of Lord Bacon, then attorney general, the lustre of whose philosophical reputation is so sadly dimmed by the infamy of his professional career, torture of the most ruthless character was employed upon the person of Peacham, a clergyman between sixty and seventy years of age, to extort confessions which might be used against him in a trial for treason, as to his intentions in composing a manuscript sermon not preached nor shown to any body, but found on searching his study, some passages of which were regarded as treasonable, because they encouraged resistance to illegal taxes. Thirteen years afterwards, when it was proposed to torture Fenton, the assassin of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, to extort from him a confession of his accomplices, the prisoner suggested that if tortured he might perhaps accuse Archbishop Laud himself. Upon this, some question arose as to the legality of torture; and the judges being called upon for their advice, thus at length driven to speak, delivered a unanimous opinion that the prisoner ought not to be tortured, because no such punishment was known or allowed by the English law; which English law, it now appeared, had for two hundred years been systematically disregarded under the eye and by the advice of judges and sworn lawyers, members of the Privy Council, and without any protest or interference on the part of the courts!

Another instance of similar acquiescence occurred in regard to the Court of Chivalry, which in the reign of Charles I. undertook to assume jurisdiction in the case of words spoken. Thus a citizen was ruinously fined by that court because, in an altercation with an insolent waterman, who wished to impose upon him, he deridingly called the swan on his badge a “goose.” The case was brought within the jurisdiction of the court, by showing that the waterman was an earl’s servant, and that the swan was the earl’s crest, the heavy fine being grounded on the alleged “dishonoring” by the citizen of this nobleman’s crest. A tailor, who had often very submissively asked payment of his bill from a customer of “gentle blood” whose pedigree was duly registered at the herald’s college, on a threat of personal violence for his importunity, was provoked into saying that “he was as good a man as his debtor.” For this offence, which was alleged to be a levelling attack upon the aristocracy, he was summoned before the earl marshal’s court, and mercifully dismissed with a reprimand —on releasing the debt!

No aid could be obtained from the common law courts against this scandalous usurpation, by which, without any trial by jury, enormous damages were given.21 Legal “comity” perhaps prevented any interference. Presently, however, the long Parliament met, and a single resolution of that body stopped forever this usurpation.

But while a scrupulous adherence to technicalities and to legal etiquette prevented the common law courts, on the one hand, from doing justice in private cases, and on the other from guarding the subject against official injuries and usurpations, they showed themselves, as the following biographies will prove, the ready and willing tools on all occasions of every executive usurpation. If the people of Great Britain and America are not at this moment slaves, most certainly, as the following biographies will prove, it is not courts nor lawyers that they have to thank for it.

How essential to liberty is the popular element in the administration of criminal law – how absolutely necessary is the restraint of a jury in criminal cases – was most abundantly proved by the proceedings of the English courts of Star Chamber and High Commission. The Court of Star Chamber, though of very ancient origin, derived its chief importance from statutes of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., by which it was invested with a discretionary authority to fine and imprison in all cases not provided for by existing laws, being thus erected, according to the boasts of Coke and Bacon, into a “court of criminal equity.” The Court of High Commission, whose jurisdiction was mainly limited to clergymen, was created by a statute of Elizabeth as the depository of the ecclesiastical authority as head of the church assumed after the reformation by the English sovereigns. Both these courts consisted of high officers of the crown, including judges and crown lawyers; and though not authorized to touch life or member, they became such instruments of tyranny as to make their abolition one of the first things done after the meeting of the Long Parliament. The only American parallel to these courts is to be found in the authority conferred by the fugitive act of 1850, upon certain commissioners of the Circuit Court of the United States, to seize and deliver over to slavery peaceable residents in their respective states, without a jury, and without appeal.

History is philosophy teaching by example. From what judges have attempted and have done in times past, and in England, we may draw some pretty shrewd conclusions as to what, if unchecked, they may attempt, and may do, in times present, and in America. Nor let any man say that the following pages present a collection of judicial portraits distorted and caricatured to serve an occasion. They have been borrowed, word for word, from the Lives of the Chief Justices and of the Chancellors of England, by Lord Campbell, himself a lawyer and a judge, and though a liberal-minded and free-spoken man, by no means without quite a sufficient share of the esprit du corps of the profession. Derived from such a source, not only may the facts stated in the following biographies be relied upon, but the expressions of opinion upon points of law are entitled to all the weight of high professional authority.

Nor let it be said that these biographies relate to ancient times, and can have no parallelism, or but little, to the present state of affairs among us here in America. The times which they include are the times of the struggle in Great Britain between the ideas of free government and attempts at the establishment of despotism; and that struggle is precisely the one now going on among us here in America, with this sole difference, that over the water, among our British forefathers, it was the despotism of a monarch that was sought to be established; here in America, the despotism of some two hundred thousand petty tyrants, more or less, in the shape of so many slaveholders, who, not content with lording it over their several plantations, are now attempting, by combination among themselves, and by the aid of a body of northern tools and mercenaries, such as despots always find, to lord it over the Union, and to establish the policy of slaveholding as that of the nation. In Great Britain, the struggle between despotism and free institutions closed with the revolution of 1688, with which these biographies terminate. Since that time the politics of that country have consisted of hardly more than of jostlings between the Ins and the Outs, with no very material variance between them in their social ideas. Among us the great struggle between slaveholding despotism and republican equality has but lately come to a head, and yet remains undetermined. It exhibits, especially in the conduct of the courts and the lawyers, many parallels to the similar struggle formerly carried on in Great Britain. That struggle terminated at last with the deposition and banishment of the Stuart family, and the reëstablishment in full vigor of the ancient liberties of England, as embodied in the Bill of Rights. And so may ours terminate, in the reduction of those who, not content with being brethren seek to be masters, to the republican level of equal and common citizenship, and in the reëstablishment of emancipation, freedom, and the Rights of Man proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence, as the national and eternal policy of these United States!