"Common law" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Colonies are based on those of England, for these are part of the Englishman's rights. All personal relations are controlled by Statute Law and Common Law. Roman Law is recognized only in Courts of Admiralty. The light of trial by a Jury of twelve men is recognized just as in England. It was one of the grounds of complaint against the Stamp Act, that questions arising under it were not tried by Jury, ...
— Achenwall's Observations on North America • Gottfried Achenwall
... than a century, and it still left an unwritten law set up by custom, habit, and characteristics most aptly nourished to the ends reached in 1776, 1787, and 1789. While our written constitution was made, we still retained the common law of England as the basis of our own, and, like England, proceeded gradually to build upon this broad foundation ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... the authority of those cases where a deceased man's representatives have been held entitled to restrain the publication of his private letters by the recipients or persons claiming through them. The Court expressly affirmed the common law right of the writer and his representatives in unpublished letters. It did not follow that because the copyright, if there was publication, would be in the person who, being proprietor of the author's manuscript, first published, that that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... brother-in-law. He proved to be such a clever tactician, that though Mme. Acquet had for some time been suing for a separation, he managed to live on the Combray estates; fortifying his position by means of a store of quotations drawn, as occasion demanded, from the Common Law of Normandy, the Revolutionary Laws and the Code Napoleon. To deal with these questions in detail would be wearisome and useless. Suffice it to say that at the period at which we have arrived, all that Mme. Acquet had to depend ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... therefore, if the lad was to be executed on my estate, (which I consider as an unhandsome thing, seeing it is in the possession of females, to whom such tragedies cannot be acceptable,) he ought, at common law, to have been delivered up to my bailie, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... punished by Federal law, that law, and not the State law, is to govern. It is only when the offense does not happen to be within the purview of Federal law that the Federal courts are to try and punish him under any other law. Then resort is to be had to "the common law, as modified and changed" by State legislation, "so far as the same is not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States." So that over this vast domain of criminal jurisprudence ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... under arrest to-day. His trial comes on to-morrow, but I believe will be postponed, as the court-martial will consult the judges, whether a man who is not in the army, may be tried as an officer. The judges will answer yes, for how can a point that is not common sense, not be common law! ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... election of Rudolph of Hapsburg. The last great work undertaken by Alfonso was a kind of code known as "Las Siete Partidas," or The Seven Parts, from the divisions of the work itself. This is the most important legislative monument of the age, and forms a sort of Spanish common law, which, with the decisions under it, has been the basis of Spanish jurisprudence ever since. Becoming a part of the Constitution of the State in all Spanish colonies, it has, from the time Louisiana and Florida were added to the United States, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... low civilization all societal regulations are customs and taboos, the origin of which is unknown. Positive laws are impossible until the stage of verification, reflection, and criticism is reached. Until that point is reached there is only customary law, or common law. The customary law may be codified and systematized with respect to some philosophical principles, and yet remain customary. The codes of Manu and Justinian are examples. Enactment is not possible until reverence for ancestors has been so much ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... comparatively recent creation. "The poor" we have had "always with" us, but they have not always been dealt with as they now are. By statute 23 Edward III. (1349), it was enacted that "none should give alms to a beggar who was able to work." By common law the really deserving poor were to be assisted "by parsons and parishioners, so that none should die for default of sustenance." By Act, 15 Richard II. (1392), impropriators (i.e. laymen holding church property) were bound to contribute ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... English common law derived from the feudal period, that anything through the instrumentality of which death occurred was forfeited to the crown as a deodand; accordingly down to the year 1840 and even later, we find, in all cases where persons were killed, records ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... established and is difficult to act upon, but it is certainly just that those who have been contaminated and injured in this way should easily be able to obtain reparation. Although it is admitted in principle that the communication of syphilis is an offence even under common law he is in agreement with those who would treat it as a special offence, making a new and more practical law.[248] Heavy damages are even at the present time obtained in the French courts from men who have infected young women in sexual intercourse, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the common law that souls in Purgatory, during the whole time that they are there, cannot come out from the prison, even if they wish; The constant closing of the prison-doors is a part of the severity of their punishment. So teach St. John Chrysostom, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... may be well, while the materials for investigation remain, to inquire into the causes of success, so brilliant and so fairly attained by powers which have left so little traces of their progress. Erskine was never more decidedly at the head of the common law bar than Follett; compared with Follett he was insignificant in the house of commons; his career was chequered by vanities and weaknesses from which that of Follett was free; and yet even if he had not been associated with the greatest constitutional ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... Brass himself, who has already appeared in these pages. The other was his clerk, assistant, housekeeper, secretary, confidential plotter, adviser, intriguer, and bill of cost increaser, Miss Brass—a kind of amazon at common law, of whom it may be desirable to offer ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... been petitioning and holding conventions and demanding that certain relief should be granted them, to the extent of allowing them to exercise the right of suffrage. In that thirty-five years we have seen great things accomplished. We have seen some of the subtleties of the Common Law, which were spread over this country, swept away. There is hardly anybody anywhere who now adheres to the doctrine that a married woman can not make a contract, and that she has no rights or liabilities except those which ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... also said, on the same occasion: "Upon this so great trial, I pray let us not belittle ourselves with the analyses of the common law courts, or the criminal courts, because nothing is so ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... the United States. Either from some defect in the law or in its administration every effort to bring the accused to trial under its provisions proved ineffectual, and the Government was driven to the necessity of resorting to the vague and inadequate provisions of the common law. It is therefore my duty to call your attention to the laws which have been passed for the protection of the Treasury. If, indeed, there be no provision by which those who may be unworthily intrusted with its guardianship can be punished for ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... miner to follow his vein, "with its dips, angles and variations under the adjoining land of his neighbor," which policy is declared to be the source of incalculable legislation. The Commission, in short, urged the adoption of the principles of the Common Law and the employment of the appropriate machinery of the Land Department, as a substitute for the frontier regulations which Congress made haste to nationalize in 1866. It declared that under these regulations "title after title hangs on a local record which ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... ambition in the matter of consolidating the laws went much further. Imperial constitutions made up but a comparatively small part of the body of the law. The bulk of it (what might be called the common law) was contained in the writings of the jurists, that is, of text-writers and commentators. Of these writers there were at this time many hundreds of volumes in existence, and, owing to want of agreement in the opinion of the various writers, the law was in a state ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... a conspiracy to injure another person, and as such indictable at common law. A strike, if a conspiracy only to raise wages or to reduce hours of labor, may not be indictable, if its object cannot be shown to be the injury of another, though that may be incidentally its effect. But in its incidents, such ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... criminal cases, where the Queen is treated as plaintiff, there was anciently no such method of reviewing the judge's decision. Now a special court has been established, embracing all the common law judges of the High Court, who sit in a body to decide these questions. It was to this tribunal that Tressamer had ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... life moved on uneventfully. He applied himself studiously to his work in the office. He was getting hold of some common law, and a great deal of common sense, for the Judge was strong ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... Firing Line The Younger Set The Fighting Chance Some Ladies in Haste The Tree of Heaven The Tracer of Lost Persons A Young Man in a Hurry Lorraine Maids of Paradise Ashes of Empire The Red Republic Outsiders The Common Law Ailsa Paige The Green Mouse Iole The Reckoning The Maid-at-Arms Cardigan The Haunts of Men The Mystery of Choice The Cambric Mask The Maker of Moons The King in Yellow In Search of the Unknown The Conspirators A King and a Few ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... Archdeacon of Winchester, and Rector of Bishop's Waltham, and of Horewood. Wood, in his Athenae, says, "he was accounted learned in divinity, in the civil and common law, and very knowing in vegetables, and all appertaining thereunto. He published The History of the Propagation and Improvement of Vegetables, by the concurrence of art and nature. Oxford, 1660, 8vo., and 1672, 8vo.: an account of which ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... world. Grotius makes the like remark in respect to the Lord's Prayer, that the single clauses of which it is composed were already in use in the time of Christ, in the Rabbinical forms. He picked out the grains of gold. The nervous language of the Common Law, the impressive forms of our courts and the precision and substantial truth of the legal distinctions, are the contribution of all the sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who have lived in the countries where these ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... carefully to the "bell' effetto di prospettivo," the whole merit of the picture being, in the eyes of the intelligent public, that there is a long table in it, one end of which looks further off than the other; but there is more in the "bell' effetto di prospettivo" than the observance of the common law of optics. The table is set in a spacious chamber, of which the windows at the end let in the light from the horizon, and those in the side wall the intense blue of an Eastern sky. The spectator looks all along the table, at the farther ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... under cover of the planking. "Treat him civil," he whispered, "Lord Justice Stowell of the Hadmir'lty. 'Tother's Baron Garrow of the Common Law; a beast; him as hanged that kid. You can sass him; it ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... people that, from the basaltic pillars of Ulster to the lakes of Kerry, the Saxon settlers were trampling on the children of the soil. The colony in Ireland was therefore emphatically a dependency; a dependency, not merely by the common law of the realm, but by the nature of things. It was absurd to claim independence for a community which could not cease to be ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Justinian. It is my duty to protect your treasure and my own, and ensure that each man shall receive his share. After the division you may do what you please with the money, for you will then be under the common law, and I should not presume even to advise concerning ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... Homeric gods on Olympus.' Perhaps, and indeed probably, this constitution may be that of the primitive tribe which Romans left to go one way, and Greeks to go another, and Teutons to go a third. The tribe took it with them, as the English take the common law with them, because it was the one kind of polity which they could conceive and act upon; or it may be that the emigrants from the primitive Aryan stock only took with them a good aptitude—an excellent ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... heart of Truth. If a student at Harvard College has studied a textbook written by his teacher, is he entitled, when he leaves the University, to write out as his own the substance of this textbook? There is no warrant in common law and no permission in the gospel for plagiarizing an author's ideas and their words. Christian Science is not copyrighted; nor would protection by copyright be requisite, if mortals obeyed God's ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... blended with principles drawn from the revived study of Roman law and with Frankish and Norman customs. The legal rules thus elaborated by the king's court were applied by the justices in eyre where-ever their circuits took them, and became in time the common law of England, common because it admitted no local bars and no provincial prejudices. One great stride had been taken in the making of the English nation, when the king's court, trespassing upon local popular and feudal jurisdiction, dumped upon the Anglo-Saxon ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... planets; the difference of their magnitudes compared with that of their distances is not explicable otherwise; but this, though, as it were, blindly and unconsciously seen, led immediately to fortune- telling and other nonsense. So alchemy is the theoretic end of chemistry: there must be a common law, upon which all can become each and each all; but then the idea was turned to the ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... Persons in particular Occasions, which could not be foreseen when a Law was made. To remedy this however as much as possible, the Court of Chancery was erected, which frequently mitigates and breaks the Teeth of the Common Law, in Cases of Men's Properties, while in Criminal Cases there is a Power of pardoning still ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... independent of the Act of 1845, and unaffected thereby; and also that the District Courts of the United States, having under the Constitution and Acts of Congress, exclusive original cognizance of all civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, the Courts of Common Law are precluded from proceeding in rem to enforce ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... life, or in the books we were reading, to give us fresh topics for argument. They would read passages from the British classics quite as aggravating as the laws. They delighted in extracts from Shakespeare, especially from "The Taming of the Shrew," an admirable satire in itself on the old common law of England. I hated Petruchio as if he were a real man. Young Bayard would recite with unction the famous reply of Milton's ideal woman to Adam: "God thy law, thou mine." The Bible, too, was brought into requisition. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the interior gyrations and details to be filled up by ordinary legislation. 'Conventions intended to regulate the conduct of nations,' said Chief Justice Tilghman, in the Farmers' Bank versus Smith, 3 Sergt. and Rawl. 69, 'are not to be construed like articles of agreement at the common law. It is of little importance to the public, whether a tract of land belongs to A or B. In deciding these titles, strict rules of construction may be adhered to; and it is best that they should be adhered to, though sometimes at the expense of justice. But where multitudes ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the company's ships, seized an interloper called the "William" and "Jane" off the coast of New Callabar in Guinea. When Pepperell appeared at Barbadoes with his prize, one of the owners of the captured ship brought suit in a common law court against the company's commander for damages to the extent of 500,000 pounds of sugar. The company's factors at once went bail for Pepperell. Ordinarily the case would have been tried by a jury ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... partisan origin to be forgotten, and for it to become assimilated to the habits of thought and manner of life of the people that it is deeply respected. The English reverence is not for statute law, but for the common law which is the slow accretion of ages. A new enactment is treated like the new boy at school. He must submit to a period of severe hazing before he is given a place of ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... well understood that a man's property cannot be used without his consent. This is an old established principle in common law which holds ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... The constitution of this court relatively to the legislative power of the king in council, is analogous to that of the courts of common law relatively to the parliament of the kingdom.—High Court of Admiralty, a supreme court of law, in which the authority of the lord high-admiral is ostensibly exercised in his judicial capacity for the trial ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... name in common appellation this syllable "Sir," which is the title whereby we call our knights in England. His wife also of courtesy so long as she liveth is called "my lady," although she happen to marry with a gentleman or man of mean calling, albeit that by the common law she hath no such prerogative. If her first husband also be of better birth than her second, though this latter likewise be a knight, yet in that she pretendeth a privilege to lose no honour through courtesy yielded to her sex, she ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... me down to a besotting work," continued he, "but I won't have it. I know what I want! It is independence of thought, bent on the solution of great problems—that is, a wide field to apply my discoveries. But a fixed rule, common law, I ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mature years. The articulate South was, therefore, in economic and social life a unit in 1845, and this unit was the strongest group in the country as a whole. Its demand for expansion towards the southwest was based upon the common desire, the common law of growth, and this growth was the only means of winning new votes in Congress and in the electoral college. It was the same motive which actuated the farmers of the Northwest and the commercial ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... transgressed; which seldom happens—for no one is entrusted with the work unless he has bound up in his knowledge the accumulated experience of the past; yet the transgressors of these natural laws are punished with all the severity of the common law. When a bridge is opened and tested, the written laws in some countries and the unwritten in others, and the pride and the sense of responsibility of the designer and builder of the bridge demand that he, the creator of the bridge, be the first to enter it and the last to leave it; ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... Sir E. Grey that the provision conflicts with the principle of the English common law that an enemy subject is not entitled to bring an action in the courts to sustain a contract, commerce with ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... once every ten minutes to snore and snort." "Some were like Evan's mill, which was a gentlemanly mill; it would go when it had nothing to do, but it refused to work." The legal proceedings, both in equity and at common law, which now became necessary, were numerous. One bill of costs, from 1796 to 1800, amounted to between L5,000 and L6,000; and the mental and bodily labor, the anxiety and vexation, which were superadded, involved a fearful tax on ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... furnished and decorated daintily, and set in pleasant places, in bright light, and good air, being able to choose for themselves that at least as well as swallows. And when the houses are grouped together in cities, men must have so much civic fellowship as to subject their architecture to a common law, and so much civic pride as to desire that the whole gathered group of human dwellings should be a lovely thing, not a frightful one, on the face of the earth. Not many weeks ago an English clergyman,[198] a master of this University, a man not given ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... common law, except in Quebec, where civil law system based on French law prevails; accepts ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 1902, the endorsement of the State Central Trades and Labor Unions was secured. Harry Parsons Cross, a leading lawyer, gave two courses of lectures on the Legal Status of Women and Parent and Child in Common Law. This year the organization met with a great loss in the removal from Rhode Island of the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer, who had served the society from its inception, officially and unofficially, with signal devotion. Henry B. Blackwell gave a notable address at the annual meeting. To him, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... Lords had various privileges and constitutional rights of their own: as individuals, of trial by peers, of being represented by proxies, of entering individual protests, of audience with the sovereign, of certain advantages of procedure in the courts of common law; as a body, of trying impeachments brought by the House of Commons, and of acting as a final court of appeal for all lower courts whether of law or equity. [Footnote: Pike, Constitutional History of the House of Lords, chaps. ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... children, as he does in the intermediate stage of the Br[a]hmanas; and [a]tm[a] (brahma) too is recognized to be the real being of Brahm[a], as in the Upanishads.[10] But none of this touches the practice of the common law, where the ordinary man is admonished to fear Yama's hell and Varuna's bonds, as he would have been admonished before the philosopher grew wiser than the Vedic seers. Only personified Right, Dharma, takes his seat with shadowy Brahm[a] among the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... motor vehicles is but one illustration of the way in which an old vice may become such a great evil in altered circumstances that stern measures have to be taken. Stealing was reprehended in the Ten Commandments, and so was covetousness. Theft was always punishable at common law; but, soon after company promotion became a feature of our commercial life in the latter part of the nineteenth century, firm action had to be taken by the Legislature to protect the public from the effects of a misleading or ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... Our common law rests upon the Roman law, which, recognized persons only as property-holding beings. The old German law, which treated woman more worthily, has preserved its force only partially. In the French language, the human being and the man are designated by the same ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... Dickens has been called on the jury, but he has not answered. If his great Chancery suit had been still going on, I certainly would have excused him, but, as that is over, he might have done us the honour of attending here, that he might have seen how we went on at common law." ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... things over earth A common law obey, And rarity and worth Pass, arm in arm, away; And even so, to-day, The printer and the bard, In pressless ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... allow the blunt old Burrus to discipline her boy, and Seneca's plan was one of concession—he loved peace. He hated to thwart the boy, because he knew that it would arouse the ire of the mother, whose love had run away with her commonsense. Love is beautiful—soft, yielding, gentle love—but the common law of England upholds wife-beating as being justifiable and desirable on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... weakened, until, under Edward VI, being no longer able to defend themselves, they were ruthlessly and savagely plundered; and fifty years later the Court of King's Bench gravely held that a royal grant of a monopoly had always been bad at common law.[4] ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... But, yielding to Dr. Royce's influence, he took the same position, and still tried to shield the libeller from the just and lawful consequences of his libel. No principle is more firmly established in the public conscience, as interpreted by the common law, than that the fact of an attack by A involves the right of self-defence by B. Whoever, therefore, has permitted an attack which he might have prevented is bound to permit the self-defence, also; and Dr. Adler, having granted to Dr. Royce ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... Mansfield, who had ceased to be an efficient member in 1765, no chief justice had been a member of the cabinet, and it was argued in parliament by the opposition that a seat in the cabinet was inconsistent with the independence which a common law judge ought to maintain. It is also important to observe that Sidmouth when accepting office gave express notice to Grenville and Fox that under all circumstances "he would ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... always as a man who preferred attaining the end to being known as the means,—and finally, as Chief Justice, reforming the loose habits of the bar, intolerant of gabble, and leaving the permanent impress of his energetic mind and impatient logic on the Common Law of the country. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... and practice of the law was his skilful draftsmanship whether in wills, conveyances, or clauses in Acts of Parliament. His vast knowledge and his judgment as to what was the proper interpretation of the Statutes, of the rules of Equity, of the principles of the Common Law, and of the practice ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... vindicated this act of severity, as requisite to intimidate the blacks; but he solemnly pledged his government to equal justice, and that the law should take its course on individuals of either race, who might violate "the common law of mankind." ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... fee of all the land was, by gift of Providence, in the governor, and that his patent, or sign-manual, was necessary for passing the title into other hands. This theory had an affinity to that of the Common Law, which made the prince the suzerain, and rendered him the heir of all escheated estates. But Mark's humility, not to say his justice, met this doctrine on the threshold. He admitted the sovereignty and its right, but placed it in the body of ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... was raised to be a chancellor, and a peer, without passing through any of the intermediate steps, which in late times hath been the constant practice, and little skilled[36] in the nature of government, or the true interests of princes, further than the municipal or common law of England; his abilities, as to foreign affairs, did not equally appear in the council. Some former passages of his life were thought to disqualify him for that office, by which he was to be the guardian ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... any opinion on the subject worth attending to. But for the credit of the lawyers who presided at the trial, I may point out that the assertions that the statute of Edward VI., requiring two witnesses in cases of treason, had been repealed, and that the trial at common law was by examination, and not by a jury and witnesses, were not as incomprehensibly unjust as they appear to us. A statute of Philip and Mary enacted that cases of treason should be tried according to the due order and course of common law, and the statute of Edward VI., being regarded ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... custom, and that to alter it by legislation was a sort of impiety. We in England still conceive that there is something in the breast of the judge, and the belief is a lingering shadow of the tribal custom, the source of the common law. Now what conditions would be most favourable to this critical effort, so fraught with momentous consequences to humanity? Apparently a union of elements belonging to different tribes such as would compel them, for the preservation of peace and the regulation of daily intercourse, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... to this extent. By the-common law of England all such money, so discovered, belongs to the Crown: though I understand it is usually shared equally among the Crown, the finder, and the lord of the manor on which it was hidden. Therefore by concealing your knowledge of this money you are illegally defrauding His Majesty, ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... throughout all the freedom of her wildest foliage, Nature is resolved on expressing an encompassing limit; and marking a unity in the whole tree, caused not only by the rising of its branches from a common root, but by their joining in one work, and being bound by a common law. And having ascertained this, let us turn back for a moment to a point in leaf structure which, I doubt not, you must already have observed in your earlier studies, but which it is well to state here, as connected with the unity of the branches in the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... acts of Congress with the approval of even the Jeffersonian opposition. Instead, they enforced the Sedition Act, often with gratuitous rigor, while some of them even entertained prosecutions under a supposed Common Law of the United States. The immediate sequel to their action was the claim put forth in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions that the final authority in interpreting the National Constitution lay with the local legislatures. Before the principle of judicial review was supported by a single authoritative ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... of the Knights Templar was suppressed in Edward the Second's reign, their London estate on the bank of the Thames was given over to the Knights of St. John; by these it was leased to the students of the Common Law, who, not finding a home at Cambridge or Oxford, were at that time ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... Norfolk people, it must be admitted, Camden gives the palm. The goodness of the soil of that country, he argues, 'may be gathered from hence, that the inhabitants are of a bright, clear complexion, not to mention their sharpness of wit and admirable quickness in the study of our common law. So that it is at present, and always has been, reputed the common nursery of lawyers, and even amongst the common people you shall meet with a great many who (as one expresses it), if they have no just quarrel, are able to ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... the common law, falls sometimes heavily in individual cases; but for that reason would we do away with it altogether? The law of the indissoluble tie of marriage does, we admit, fall heavily upon some, yea, many lives; should we, therefore, infer God's dictation ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... the right of the war-vessel stops. It has absolutely no right to sink the merchant-ship without warning and without making efficient provision for the safety of the passengers and crew. That is the common law of civilized nations. To break it is to put one's ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) period, royal decrees, and acts of the legislature, with influences of customary law and remnants of communist legal theory; increasing influence of common law in recent years; accepts ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... wrung from him as much by a sense of his offended moral superiority as by the gratuitous insult and betrayal that he had suffered. We gave the accusers a glance of stern reproach: had they not delivered us over to the common enemy? If the common law of school entitled them to thrash us, did it not require them to keep silence ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... of late than of ancient days, but we still very frequently err in their patterns and colours. The soul of the apartment is the carpet. From it are deduced not only the hues but the forms of all objects incumbent. A judge at common law may be an ordinary man; a good judge of a carpet must be a genius. Yet we have heard discoursing of carpets, with the air "d'un mouton qui reve," fellows who should not and who could not be entrusted with the management of their own ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Thirlby, fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, published an edition of Justin Martyr, and, I think, wrote something against Middleton. He communicated several notes to Theobald for his Shakspeare, and in the latter part of his life, took to study the common law. He lived chiefly for his last years with Sir Edward Walpole, who had procured for him a small place in the Custom house, and to whom he left his papers: he had lost his intellects some time before his death. [He died a martyr to intemperance, in 1751, in his sixty-first year. Mr. Nichols says, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... their clients. They rise in winter long before it is light, to read over their briefs; dress, and prepare themselves for the business of the day; at eight or nine they go to Westminster, where they attend and plead either in the Courts of Equity or Common Law, ordinarily till one or two, and (upon a great trial) sometimes till the evening. By that time they have got home, and dined, they have other briefs to peruse, and they are to attend the hearings, either at the Lord Chancellor's ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... seem to have something more than a sciolist's temerity of indulgence in the terms of an unfamiliar art. No legal solecisms will be found. The abstrusest elements of the common law are impressed into a disciplined service. Over and over again, where such knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law, Shakespeare appears in perfect possession of it. In the law of real property, its rules of tenure and descents, its entails, ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... allowed elsewhere than in London (except one in each University); and no book was to be printed until first seen and perused by the Archbishop of Canterbury or Bishop of London; with an exception in favour of the queen's printer, and books of the common law, which were to be allowed by the Chief Justices and Chief Baron, or one of them. Extensive and arbitrary powers of search for unlicensed books and presses were also given to the wardens of the Stationers' Company. (Strype's Life of Archbishop Whitgift, 222.; Records, No.XXIV.) On the 1st ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... was not fit for the shock and hum of men and the greater or lesser legerdemain of life, and so turned shyly away to live and follow his plans and reveries apart, after the law of his being, violating in this way what may be called the common law of society, and meeting the fate of all nonconformists. He was slighted and ridiculed, and even suspected; for people in general, when they see a man go aside from the highway, maundering and talking to himself, think there must be a reason for it; ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... the information. These suggestions made no more impression than if they had been uttered in a desert. Those who were secure in their number, asserted that the house of commons was not restricted by the forms or proceedings at common law; and that it was necessary to vindicate their own honour and dignity, by making examples of those who seemed to hold them in contempt. Mr. Murray was committed to the custody of the sergeant-at-arms, and found bail; and Gibson was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... eyes, by turns, cast down towards his struck standard, or piteously lifted to Louisa, seemed to require at her hands what he had so sensibly parted from to her, and now ruefully missed. But the vigour of nature, soon returning, dissipated the blast of faintness which the common law of enjoyment had subjected him to; and now his basket re-became his main concern, which I looked for, and brought him, whilst Louisa restored his dress to its usual condition, and afterwards pleased him perhaps more by taking all his flowers off his hands, and paying him, at his ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... lines he laid down for it; his plans underlie all. Thus, when Jesus is challenged on the question of marriage and divorce, with that clear thought and eye of his, he goes right back to God's intent—not to man's usage, not to the common law and practice of nations, but to God's intent and God's meaning. God ordained marriage; he thought it out (Matt. 19:4). Marriages will be better, if we think of them in this way. God gave men their food, does still, ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... basis of our civilized jurisprudence, in which the rights of all center or unite and are equally protected, every reasonable mind must admit. But where do we get our ideas of what is morally right, and what is morally wrong, as the basis of our common law and jurisprudence? What book or books contain the best code of morals? We answer, the Bible. For the excellency of the morality of the Bible has been admitted by the most distinguished men who have opposed its supernatural revelation, among ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... the armor, that precluded any view of him; but when he had overthrown the Gaul, and was going to gather the spoils, Brennus knew him; and invoking the gods to be witnesses that, contrary to the known and common law of nations, which is holily observed by all mankind, he who had come as an ambassador had now engaged in hostility against him, he drew off his men, and, bidding Clusium farewell, led his army directly ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... it was the common law of the land that the islanders should purchase their corn only of him. They grumbled, but he growled; he swore that it was the constitution of the country; that there was an uninterrupted line of precedents ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... the wondering circle. He, too, was an officer, and appreciated their sentiments. They were unfeignedly sorry for him, a man so brave and modest, such a splendid type of the soldier and gentleman, yet, by their common law, an outcast. Nor could they wholly understand his demeanor. There was a noble dignity in his candor, a conscious innocence that disdained to shield itself under a partial truth. He spoke, not as a wrong-doer, but as one who addresses ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... but the Rue des Tournelles strove against Saint Cyr. The world fluctuated between these two systems established by women, both of them—shall it be said—courtesans? The legality and morality of our modern common law marriages and the ease and frequency of trivial divorces forbid it. Ninon prevailed, however, and not only governed hearts but souls. The difference between the two courts was, the royal salon was thronged with women of the most infamous character ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... the higher courts with a very doubtful case, began his plea as follows: "May it please the court, there is only one point in this case favorable to my client, but that, may it please the court, is a chink in the common law which has been worn smooth by the multitude of scoundrels who have escaped ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... The provision cited by Ralegh from Philip and Mary's repealing statute, Popham ruled, applied solely to the specific treasons it mentioned. The Act ordained that the trial of treasons in general should follow common law procedure, as before the reign of Edward VI. But by common law one witness was sufficient. The confession of confederates was full proof, even though not subscribed, if it were attested by credible witnesses. Indeed, remarked Popham, echoing Coke, 'of all other proofs the accusation of ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... that the object of the process of impeachment was the purification and preservation of the civil service. In the opinion of the majority, it was the necessity of the situation that the power of impeachment should extend to acts and offences that were not indictable by statute nor at common law. The report of the Judiciary Committee, made the twenty-fifth day of November, was rejected ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... through the mind of the English people causing established forms to give way to something better. Dispensing with the blood feud, which hardly deserves the name of trial, the oldest form of such institution was trial by ordeal which, according to Thayer in his "Evidence at the Common Law," seems to have been "indigenous with the human creature in the earliest stages of his development." This form gradually fell into disuse before the more rational form of compurgation introduced into Teutonic courts in the fifth century. In 1215 it was formally abolished. ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... rule was, when the degree of serjeant-at-law was to be conferred, for the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, with the consent of the other justices, to nominate for the purpose seven or eight of the most experienced professors of the common law. Thereupon the Lord Chancellor issued a writ to each of them, summoning them to appear under a heavy penalty, and take upon themselves the state and degree of serjeant-at-law. On duly presenting themselves they affirmed on oath ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... one hundred and fifty years has been cashiered by cultivated Englishmen as attorneys' English, and is absolutely frightful unless in a lease or conveyance, ought (we do not scruple to say) to be made indictable at common law, not perhaps as a felony, but certainly as a misdemeanour, punishable by fine ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... held to result by necessary implication from several sections of the law establishing the court. One of these sections declares that the laws of Maryland, as they existed at the time of the cession, should be in force in that part of the District ceded by that State, and by this provision the common law in civil and criminal cases, as it prevailed in Maryland in 1801, was established in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... matter, the very distance at which they seem to stand from each other will do much, if properly considered, to illustrate the principle by which they are held in one common bond, and subject, as they must be, to one common law. ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... enabling townships, incorporated towns and cities to vote a five per cent. tax in aid of railroad construction. He favored always such legislation as would most encourage the building of railroads, believing that with an increase of competitive lines the common law and competition could be relied upon to correct abuses and solve the rate problem. He has since become convinced of the falsity of this doctrine, and now realizes the truth of Stephenson's saying that where combination is ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... monuments, and statues, erected in honor of gods, heroes, and conquerors. In the very midst stood the great temple of Jupiter, which contained the colossal gold and ivory statue of the god, the masterpiece of the sculptor Phidias. Hence, by the common law of Greece Elis was deemed a sacred territory, and its cities were unwalled, as they were thought to be sufficiently protected by the sanctity of the country; and it was only when the ancient faith began to give way that the sacred character of Elis ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... that have arisen to the public from inconsiderate alterations in our laws, are too obvious to be called in question; and how far they have been owing to the defective education of our senators, is a point well worthy the public attention. The common law of England has fared like other venerable edifices of antiquity, which rash and unexperienced workmen have ventured to new-dress and refine, with all the rage of modern improvement. Hence frequently it's symmetry has been destroyed, it's proportions ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... the intention of the framers of the Constitution to prohibit perpetual forfeiture of property from being 'declared' by Congress, but only to prohibit 'attainder of treason' from 'working' of itself that effect by necessary consequence—as it did under the Common Law of England. It has also been argued that the constitutional restriction does not relate to perpetuity of forfeiture, but only requires that the forfeiture or act of alienation take place, have effect, and be accomplished 'during the life of the person attainted,' and not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... minute variations, which, as Darwin repeatedly pointed out, have often no significance for the origin of species. In the phenomena, described by Quetelet's law nothing "happens to arise"; all is governed by the common law, which states that small deviations from the mean type are frequent, but that larger aberrations are rare, the rarer as they are larger. Any degree of variation will be found to occur, if only the number of individuals studied is large ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... destroyed—if the birth of a being is never more than the first step towards its end; how is it possible to expect that man, whose machine is so frail, of which the parts are so complicated, the whole of which possesses such extreme mobility, should be exempted from the common law; which decrees, that even the solid earth he inhabits shall experience change—shall undergo alteration—perhaps be destroyed! Feeble, frail mortal! Thou pretendest to exist for ever; whit thou, then, that for thee alone eternal Nature shall change her undeviating course? Dost thou not behold ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... were consultations in counsel's rooms, and the common law of the realm was ransacked to find a legal method of inspecting Priam's moles, without success. Priam arrived safely at the courts with his usual high collar, and was photographed thirty times between the ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... specifications, and secured against molestation by the governmental interests; more particularly and scrupulously among those peoples that have taken the lead in working out that system of free or popular institutions that marks the modern civilised nations. So it has come to be embodied in the common law of the modern world as an inviolable natural right. It has all the prescriptive force of legally ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... our sympathy are redoubled by the thought that whatever differences there may be between the Old World and the New, citizens of the United States and ourselves are the Sons of a Common Mother and jointly inherit the treasure of the Common Law. And we cannot part with Mr. Beck on this occasion without a personal word. Plato records a saying of Socrates that the dog is a true philosopher because philosophy is love of knowledge, and a dog, while growling at strangers, ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... a unanimous vote by a jury was not always required. Growing wealth and the consequent multiplication of litigants necessitated an increase in the number of judges in most courts. Efforts were made, with some success, by combining common law with equity procedure, and in other ways, to render lawsuits more ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... and chronicles. Record sources for the period. Chancery Records:— Patent Rolls Close Rolls Rolls of Parliament Charter Rolls Inquests Post-Mortem Fine Rolls Gascon Rolls Hundred Rolls Exchequer Records Plea Rolls and records of the common law courts Records of local courts Scotch and Irish records Ecclesiastical records Bishops' registers Monastic Cartularies Papal records Chroniclers of the period. St. Alban's Abbey as a school of history. Matthew Paris. Later ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... lawsuit was to be tried in the Court of Common Pleas, a division in which Serjeants-at-Law had the exclusive right to practise. At this time, 1827, and indeed up till 1873, every common law judge was turned into a Serjeant, if he were not one ere he was promoted to the Bench. It was a solemn kind of ceremony. The subject of the operation was led out of the precincts of the Inns of Court; the church bell tolled as ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... in reference to their causes, will cease to value them according to their results. Thus the jurisprudence of every nation will show that, when law becomes a science and a system, it ceases to be justice. The errors into which a blind devotion to principles of classification has led the common law, will be seen by observing how often the legislature has been obliged to come forward to restore the equity its scheme ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... appetitive powers, however, no habit is natural in its beginning, on the part of the soul itself, as to the substance of the habit; but only as to certain principles thereof, as, for instance, the principles of common law are called the "nurseries of virtue." The reason of this is because the inclination to its proper objects, which seems to be the beginning of a habit, does not belong to the habit, but rather to the very nature ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... work, a very brief synopsis of the common law upon these subjects is given, as the principles of the common law underlie our entire statute law, and a knowledge of the former is absolutely essential to render much of the latter intelligible. The statute law ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... thirteen states the common law of England remained in force, as it does to this day save where modified by statute. British and colonial statutes made prior to the Revolution continued also in force unless expressly repealed. The system of civil and criminal courts, the remedies in common ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... organizations were based upon ties of kinship and primary group contacts. Village life in all ages and with all races exhibits absolute standards and stringent primary controls of behavior. The Blue Laws of Connecticut are little else than primary-group attitudes written into law. Common law, the traditional code of legal conduct sanctioned by the experience of primary groups, may be compared with statute law, which is an abstract prescription for social life in secondary societies. Here also should ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... here argued by the learned counsel of the parties, with a vehemence of language and gesticulation with which I thought the legal learning and acumen displayed did not correspond. The proceedings were a mixture, made up of common law, equity, and a sprinkling of military despotism—which last ingredient the court was compelled to employ, when entangled in the intricate meshes woven by the counsel for the litigants, in order to extricate itself. The jury, after the case was ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... us through; but they're only a boy's foolishness, they are not unusual or unforgivable. I've gone over the evidence your son brings, with extreme care, so has father. Both of us are quite familiar with common law. He has every proof you can possibly desire. You can't get around it, even if your heart wasn't worn out with rebellion, and you were not crazy to have the loving sympathy of ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter |
