|
The Judicature Acts are a series of Acts of Parliament, beginning in the 1870s, which aimed to fuse the hitherto split system of courts in England and Wales. The first two Acts were the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873 (36 & 37 Vict c. 66) and the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict c. 77), with a further series of amending acts (12 in all by 1899). By the Act of 1873 (ss. 3, 4), the Court of Chancery, the Court of Queen's Bench (known as the King's Bench when there is a male Sovereign), the Court of Common Pleas, the Court of Exchequer, the High Court of Admiralty, the Court of Probate, and the Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes were consolidated into the Supreme Court of Judicature, subdivided into two courts: the "High Court of Justice" ("High Court"), with (broadly speaking) original jurisdiction, and the "Court of Appeal". Besides this restructuring, the objects of the act were threefold: *to combine the historically separate courts of common law and equity; *to establish for all divisions of the new Supreme Court a uniform system of pleading and procedure; and *to provide for the enforcement of the same rule of law in those cases where equity and common law recognised different rules. The enactment was bold and revolutionary. By one section, the Queen's Bench, the Common Pleas (in which only serjeants formerly had the right of audience), and the Exchequer, and all their jurisdiction, whether criminal, legal, or equitable, were vested in the new court. The fusion of the systems of law and equity was not complete, however, as the Chancery (equity) division retained a distinct existence within the new court from the Queen's Bench (common law) division, having a certain range of legal questions under its exclusive control, and possessing to a certain extent a peculiar machinery of its own for carrying its decrees into execution. Nevertheless, all actions could now for the first time be initiated in a single High Court, and (subject to such special assignments of business as mentioned) could be tried in any of its divisions. ==Common law and equity== The procedure of the common law courts had developed along highly technical and stylised lines. For example, to bring an action in the common law courts a litigant had to file a "writ" chosen from a set of standard forms. The court would only recognise certain "forms of action", and this led to the widespread use of legal fictions, with litigants disguising their claims when they did not fit into a standard recognised "form". The emphasis on rigid adherence to established forms led to substantial injustice. On the other hand, the Court of Chancery (a court of equity) ran separately and parallel to the common law courts, and emphasised the need to "do justice" on the basis of the Lord Chancellor's conscience, softening the blunt instrument of the common law. However, by the nineteenth century proceedings before the Court of Chancery often dragged on and on, with cases not being decided for years at a time (a problem that was parodied by Charles Dickens in the fictional case of ''Jarndyce and Jarndyce'' in ''Bleak House''). Also, the practice of the court departed from the original principle of the Lord Chancellor's conscience, with rules of equity restricting the manner in which the courts of equity would intervene. The existence of these two separate systems led to each party "forum shopping", selecting whichever of the two systems would most likely give judgment in his or her favour, and resulting in litigation being tried across both. The solution adopted by the Judicature Acts of 1873 and 1875 was to fuse the administration of the two. Pleadings became more relaxed, with the emphasis shifting from the 'form' of action to the 'cause' (or a set of causes) of action. Writs for action were filled out for a litigant stating facts, without any necessity of pigeonholing them into specific forms. The same court was now able to apply rules of the common law and the rules of equity, depending on what the substantial justice of a case required, and depending on what specific area of law the pleadings involved. The result was that, when the issues arising from the causes of action were decided in favour of one party, that party got relief. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Judicature Acts」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|