Suchergebnisse

"The General Court of Virginia began with the reorganization of the government of the colony of Virginia in 1619. The court was established not for any political motives to control, or for any financial motives to collect lucrative fines, but it was a part of the tradition of good government. Private disputes are better settled in official courts of law rather than by self-help and vendetta. Therefore, access to the courts is good public policy. From its foundation in 1607 until 1624, Virginia was a private corporation that was created by a succession of royal charters; in its organization, it was similar to an English municipal corporation. The first royal charter and the accompanying instructions set up a Council of government, and this Council was given broad and general judicial powers. The model for this was the cities and boroughs of medieval England which had their own courts of law for the settlement of local disputes. In 1624, the charter was revoked, and Virginia came under direct royal control, and, thus, after 1624, all of the Virginia courts were continued as royal courts, even though there was never any formal creation of them as such." [.]

This essay, first presented at the Magna Carta anniversary symposium of the Baronial Order of Magna Charta on April 16, 2015, at The Cosmos Club, in Washington, D.C., takes as its inspiration the spirit of the rule of law, as laid down in the Magna Carta. Specifically, the author argues that the popular election and reelection of judges undermines the rule of law, and democracy in general, by exposing judges to the manipulations of financial corruption, political intimidation, and the often irrational shifts in popular opinion. To correct this problem, the author calls for amendment of the thirty-nine state constitutions that require the popular reelection of judges in favor of another method of removing bad judges.

This article describes the separation of common law and equity in Virginia leading up to the 2006 merger of common law and equity pleading and the problems that remain to be solved by the courts.

The history of the prerogative of the sovereign, the lex prerogativa, in Anglo American jurisprudence is long and complicated. It has exercised the minds of jurists and political philosophers for many centuries, and there has not been universal agreement as to its nature and scope. The purpose of this essay, as prompted by the two quotations just given, is to describe the prerogative law and trace its development from medieval England to modem Virginia.

The political will of the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia is expressed in the Constitution of Virginia, which created the government of Virginia. Every Constitution of Virginia from 1776 to the present has divided the government among the General Assembly of Virginia, the legislature; the governor, who is the chief executive officer; and the judiciary, a system of courts. Each of these three branches of the government was created as a separate, independent branch of the government. However, they are not totally independent; they must of necessity interact. Furthermore, each Constitution of Virginia has put into place various checks and balances among them. The purpose of this essay is to consider the constitutional place of the judiciary of Virginia in relation to the legislative branch of the government. This is because before the Virginia Constitution of 1971, the governor was not given a strong position in the government- a reaction to the very strong position of the governor of Virginia during the colonial period.

The fundamental ideal to which we aspire in the field of civil procedure is the perfect balance between expeditious results and correct results in the administration of justice. Two famous quotations from two famous English Equity judges come to mind. John Scott, Lord Eldon, the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain from 1801 to 1827 who was often criticized for being excessively dilatory, said, 'sat cito si sat bene'. Sir George Jessel, Master of the Rolls from 1873 to 1883, once said, 'I may be wrong and sometimes am, but I never have any doubts'. Jessel had his docket under firm control, and he moved the cases before him to speedy conclusions to the general satisfaction of all concerned. Where the stakes are affordable, most clients prefer to have a quick resolution to their problems so that they can move on with thell· lives and affairs. Lawyers are more willing to wait a reasonable amount of time if the judge will carefully consider the reasons for his decision and publish a learned opinion which will be useful as a precedent for the future. This problem is one truly worthy of serious study. Although the solution is beyond the wisdom and experience of this writer, I would like to offer a few thoughts for the benefit, Deo volente, of others. Part One of this essay points out one of the problems of the past. Part Two addresses methods of solution from the past. Part Three gives a suggestion for the future.

The municipal Jaw of England is divided into common Jaw and equity. This is so because in the middle ages, the judges of the courts of common law (the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of King's Bench) believed that they could not expand the existing law in order to solve new problems. They thought that they were bound by the established Jaw as found in their own earlier judicial opinions. Furthermore, they felt that it was the function of Parliament to change the law; therefore, it would be an unconstitutional usurpation of the legislative power for the courts to expand the law. Since Parliament in the middle ages was not an efficient instrument for law reform, the common Jaw began to stagnate.

Case law, including published cases and cases that have never been published, is the basis of the common law. Professor Bryson discusses the use of manuscript law reports in Virginia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Professor Harold Berman has presented the fascinating thesis that a people's religion influences their laws and that the Puritan religious revolution of seventeenth century England introduced Calvinist ideas into Anglo-American jurisprudence. I fully agree with Professor Berman's observations that religious beliefs and a sense of moral obligation to others are some of the motivations of, or at least influences upon, legal growth. Economic aggrandizement is not the only motivation of the human race. Religion has had a direct effect upon social and political institutions.

An essay on the Virginia bar from 1870 to 1900 rnust begin with a definition of a Virginia attorney-at-law. In 1870 and for the next twenty-five years, a Virginia lawyer was "any person" over the age of twenty-one of "honest demeanor" who had been examined for fitness and licensed to practice law by any two judges of Virginia courts of record. Having been licensed, each attorney must have then "qualified" to practice in each court in which he wished to appear. This was done by swearing in that court to demean himself honestly in the practice of law and to support the Commonwealth.

The common law procedure for initiating actions at law in the English courts required a plaintiff to obtain a writ invoking the jurisdiction of the court and to file a declaration setting forth the facts that justified instigation of the suit and established the cause of the action. This clumsy and archaic system of litigation was abolished by a single chop of the legislative guillotine in New York in 1848. England followed suit in 1875, and the United States federal courts in 1938. Writs and declarations were replaced by simple forms which were copied from the practice of the equity courts. By contrast, Virginia painlessly and imperceptibly reformed the common law pleading over a two hundred year period. This article chronicles the stages of this development in the law of Virginia.

The Exchequer was well established as a court of law in the thirteenth century. For the next three hundred years, the Exchequer court seems to have carried out its duties without much change in function or status. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the judicial business of the Exchequer amounted to about 200 cases per year as compared with about 2500 in the court of King's Bench and 10,000 in the Common Pleas. However, during the middle period of the reign of Henry VIII, the first signs of growth since the thirteenth century appeared. This expansion of the court of Exchequer continued steadily through the reigns of the later Tudors to the beginning of the Interregnum. In 1649 the Exchequer court established itself as a high court of general jurisdiction in both common law and equity. At this point the Exchequer can be said to have come of age as a court oflaw. This development began during the reign of Henry VIII and can be seen as part of the Tudor Revolution in government.

Initial process is an official summons to a person requiring him to appear in court and defend himself or suffer default judgment. The purpose of the summons is notification to the defendant.