Kings as Judges

Abstract

Common pleas shall not follow our court but shall be held in some certain place." 1 This was the seventeenth out of the sixty-three conditions that the barons imposed on the king of England in Magna Carta in 1215. Until then, barons seeking to settle disputes under royal jurisdiction, even disputes in which the king was not a party, often had to search for him around the realm.Finding the king could be a wild chase: even after Parliament was fully formed in the 1290s, for instance, Edward I visited more than 1,300 English locations and several Continental ones over a seventeen-year period, spending fewer than four days on average in each (see frontispiece). 2 The image popularized by the economist Mancur Olson of the ruler as "roving bandit" extorting goods and services from the population 3 was not wrong: ruler visits were dreaded across Europe for the destruction they often caused. 4 English kings' retinues accidentally burned down houses; Edward I traveled with lions that killed working animals in Gascony, outraging the locals. Rulers and their retinues (which often numbered in the dozens or hundreds) forced local communities to subsidize these visits with foodstuffs and services. This practice, known as purveyance, was a heavy burden: over three weeks in the 1280s, the Flemish count required 10,600 herrings. 5 But these "visits" were not lawless -Edward I paid compensation for the animals killed, for instancenor was their purpose merely extractive. 6 Most importantly, these roving kings dispensed justice. In this book, I argue that this eager and often desperate demand for justice was fundamental for the development of the parliaments, or polity-wide institutions of representation, that emerged in medieval Europe. Moreover, this demand was tied to the king's status as "lord of all the tenants in the

Representative government and the fiscal-military state in early modern Britain and Austria

“…The ispáns, along with the higher nobility and the bishops, were members of the royal council. 61 Each ispán appointed a vice-ispán who presided over the county court (sedria), which primarily dealt with criminal cases. Enforcement of judgements were the responsibility of the ispán.…”

“…68 Boucoyannis writes that part of the reason that the diet survived until 1848 was that it had a judicial function and thus had to be called regularly. 69…”

Representative government in medieval Austria and Hungary

“…This, as Deborah Boucoyannis points out, was in common with other medieval European representative bodies, where attendance was an obligation instead of a right. 17 In the development of judicial and representative institutions, Austria was similar to other European states. As in medieval England and France, the rulers of Austria were the supreme judges in their land and dispensed justice in their court.…”

Representative Government in Medieval England and France

“…"The key…was that Parliament itself was predicated on this strong royal power, allaying endogeneity concerns." 64 The emergence of Parliament as a legislative body in the medieval and Tudor periods was accompanied by the development of England as one of the most centralized countries in Europe. Since at least the Norman Conquest, England had been governed as a unit, with one administrative system and one system of law.…”