Boston attorney
The term attorney at law is used in the United States to denote a legal adviser or representative in all manner of business.
Advocate:
Advocate, in a general sense, one who pleads for another in a court of law or other tribunal. In England and Wales, professional advocates are called barristers and are permitted to plead or argue cases before the High Court of Justice; a barrister is distinguished from a solicitor, who, until recently, conducted litigation only in inferior courts. However, since 1992, solicitors who have demonstrated competence in advocacy have rights of audience before all courts.
The avocat and avou in France are analogous to the barrister and solicitor in England. Elsewhere, in the United States and some parts of Europe, for example, the two branches of the legal profession are not separate. In a narrower sense, the term advocate was formerly used in Britain to denote a member of the College of Advocates at Doctors Commons (abolished in 1857). These advocates had the exclusive right to plead in the ecclesiastical and admiralty courts and took precedence over all ordinary barristers.
Certiorari (Latin, to be informed, originally, in common law, a writ or written command issued by a superior court to a lower court, or to a public officer or public board, having judicial authority that requires the record of the proceedings in a lower court to be sent to the superior court for review. The writ was abolished in 1938 in England, and replaced with an order, that of certiorari. This order is issued by the High Court to quash decisions of lower courts, tribunals, or other decision-makers. This is not on the basis of disagreeing with the lower courts decision, however, but because the decision-making process is wrong in law. Common Pleas, Court of, one of the great historic tribunals of common law in England. The court was instituted as a separate jurisdiction in the reign of Henry III, king of England, under the name of the Court of Common Bench, but it originated in a clause in Magna Carta that common pleas should no longer be heard in the King's Court (Curia Regis), which moved around the kingdom, but should be heard in a fixed place. From this beginning until the reform of the English judicature in 1875, the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster shared much of the common-law jurisdiction in England with the Court of King's Bench.
The Court of Common Pleas was the court of the common people of the kingdom, having exclusive jurisdiction in all real actions, that is, suits relating to land, and in actions between private people with regard to private rights. It differed from the King's Bench in that the latter was an appeals court which also heard cases involving the nobility. The Common Pleas court was composed of a chief justice and as many common justices as the business of the court required. The number of justices varied between four and eight. The Court of Common Pleas was abolished by the Judicature Acts (1873-1875), and its functions were transferred to the High Court of Judicature
Courts introduction:
Courts, branch of government established to administer the civil and criminal law. The term court is also applied to the international tribunals intended to provide for the resolution at law of controversies among governments, namely, the Permanent Court of International Justice, established by the League of Nations after World War I, and the International Court of Justice, established by the United Nations after World War II.
Courts are classified in many ways. Among the more usual general classifications are courts of record and courts not of record; courts of superior jurisdiction and courts of inferior jurisdiction; courts of first instance and appellate courts; and civil courts and criminal courts. In courts of record the proceedings are recorded completely; no detailed record is made of the proceedings in courts not of record. Courts of superior jurisdiction, often called higher courts or appellate courts, are generally those to which appeals are made from decisions of courts of inferior jurisdiction, referred to as lower courts or courts of first instance. Civil and criminal courts deal with cases arising from infractions of the civil law and the criminal law, respectively. Courts with special, limited jurisdictions are known by the names of those jurisdictions. For example, probate or surrogates courts are tribunals dealing with the probate of wills and the disposition of estates. The judicial organs of military establishments are called military courts. They have jurisdiction over infractions by military personnel. Admiralty courts have jurisdiction over cases arising from maritime contracts and from violations of maritime law. Other courts are designated by the territorial limits of their jurisdictions.
Early courts:
The recognized existence of even so-called primitive courts implies a relatively high degree of social organization and the need for systematic adjudication of disputes on the basis of established customs and consciously formulated rules of social conduct. Archaeologists and anthropologists have established the existence of courts in simple societies over wide areas of Asia, Africa, and Europe; courts were not as widespread among Native Americans. Primitive courts formed part of a complex social structure in which administrative, judicial, and religious functions were intermingled. These courts were held in the open or in religious temples. More often than not, the judges were priests. Those who attended were considered part of the court, whether or not they had an immediate interest in the proceedings or in the judgments rendered. The proceedings consisted largely of rituals designed to secure the redress of grievances presented by individuals against other individuals.
In the highly developed civilizations of antiquity, notably those of Assyria and Egypt, judicial and executive functions were undifferentiated and were centralized in the monarch as head of state. Insight into the structure and functions of Babylonian courts of the 18th century BC was obtained when the ancient legal document known as the Code of Hammurabi was discovered early in the 20th century. A highly developed judicial system also existed among the ancient Hebrews.
In the judicial system of ancient Athens, a unique feature, introduced by the lawgiver Solon in the 6th century BC, was the right of aggrieved litigants to appeal the decisions of magistrates to the people of Athens, assembled as a heliaia ( public assembly). In later years, these assemblies, referred to as heliastic courts, became courts of first resort, presided over by magistrates who prepared cases for trial. The heliastic courts subsequently became unwieldy, and were divided into sections called dicasteries.
The evolution of courts in ancient Rome was marked by the development of a complex structure in which criminal, civil, and other jurisdictions were differentiated and exercised by separate courts and officials. Violations of criminal law were prosecuted by the state; higher and lower courts were organized; the right of appeal was juridically guaranteed; and a corps of professional jurists was established for the first time in the history of Mediterranean civilization. After Christianity became the state religion of Rome, the ecclesiastical courts, previously established by Christians who had refused to have recourse to pagan courts, became a part of the Roman legal system. As the Roman Empire disintegrated, the ecclesiastical courts survived and assumed jurisdiction over secular affairs.
Western european tribunals:
Medieval courts developed from the tribal courts of the Germanic peoples, whose highest judicial authorities were the popular assemblies that met regularly throughout the year. The tribal judges supervised the proceedings and executed the judgments rendered by the assemblies. During the development of the Germanic tribal organization into territorial states, the tribal courts underwent a corresponding evolution, increasing in number and becoming differentiated. Among the new features of this Teutonic system were a royal court, presided over by the king and modelled on the Roman system of courts; special lower courts, under the control of royal officials called Grafen, which handled minor matters; and, later, a corps of permanent lay judges, with power to render judgments.
In the 8th century, when the Germanic territorial states were part of the realm of Charlemagne, the Teutonic judicial system experienced a further significant development: the practice, initiated by Charlemagne, of dispatching royal commissioners to examine the functioning of local courts and, when necessary, to supplement the justice they dispensed. In this innovation were the seeds of three later important legal developments: assize courts, circuit courts, and a central legal authority. This innovation was adopted by other feudal monarchs in their struggles with the landed nobility, who controlled the manorial, or seignorial, courts.
When the Normans conquered England in 1066, they imposed the Carolingian judicial system on the Anglo-Saxons. In the long struggle between the king and landed nobility that ensued, one of the principal weapons of the Crown was the Curia Regis, which was held wherever the royal household was situated. The principal judicial strongholds of the nobility were the manorial courts, chiefly the courts baron and courts leet. Judicial supremacy was eventually won by the Crown, and, since the reign of Edward I, in the 13th century, English courts have been organized on a centralized basis.
Before this victory of the Crown, however, King John had been compelled in 1215 to sign the Magna Carta, which initiated the gradual separation of judicial from executive and legislative governmental powers. The terms of this charter of liberty established the Court of Common Pleas as a court of a fixed location to try cases initiated by commoners against other commoners. The process of separation continued during the reign of Edward I with the establishment of the Court of Exchequer as a tribunal having exclusive jurisdiction over revenue cases arising out of unpaid debts to the Crown, and the establishment of the Court of Kings, or Queens, Bench as the supreme appellate tribunal of the realm, presided over by the monarch. The Court of Kings, or Queens, Bench was also invested with original jurisdiction over both civil and criminal cases and thus encroached on the jurisdiction of the Court of Common Pleas. In fact, the jurisdictions of all three courts overlapped and were not entirely differentiated until much later. These courts eventually became bulwarks in the defence of civil and political liberties against the Crown.
Another momentous innovation during the reign of Edward I was the provision for seeing justice done in situations in which the common law failed to afford a remedy to aggrieved litigants. This supplemental system of justice was administered by the Crown through the Lord Chancellor and was called chancery, or equity, jurisprudence.
In the centuries after the signing of Magna Carta, Parliament acquired appellate jurisdiction over both civil and criminal cases. This function was subsequently confined to the House of Lords and has survived to the present day. In 1701, Parliament enacted legislation establishing tenure of office for judges and made their removal from office conditional on the assent of Parliament, thus completing the separation of judicial from executive and legislative governmental powers. Like many other features of the English judicial system, this separation of powers was incorporated into the courts of the New World.
Later developments in the British System:
Administrative and structural changes in important but secondary features, such as those wrought by the Judicature Act of 1873, have been made. This act, which came into effect in 1875, preserved the role of the House of Lords as the chief appellate tribunal of England and Wales and consolidated all the superior civil courts into a Supreme Court of Judicature with two principal branches: the Court of Appeal, the highest appellate court below the House of Lords, and the High Court of Justice. The latter tribunal comprises three divisions: Chancery Division; Kings, or Queens, Bench Division; and Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division. Enactment of the Criminal Appeal Act of 1907 established the Court of Criminal Appeal as the highest appellate tribunal after the House of Lords in criminal cases. Besides the superior courts, the judicial system of England and Wales includes many lower courts organized into circuits. The highest civil court of Scotland is the Court of Session, and the highest criminal court is the High Court of Justiciary. Appeals may be taken from these courts to the House of Lords.
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