Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/770

 756 V. BENCH AND BAR from the King's Bench. It was composed of the judges of the Common Pleas and the Exchequer. Both these courts were finally merged by statute (11 George IV and 1 William IV) into a court of appeal from all three common law courts, appeals from one court being heard by the judges of the other two. This continued to be the intermediate court of appeal in common law until the Judicature Act. As thus constituted it was at times a most powerful court. Its prac- tical operation was, however, somewhat restricted. Occupied with the labors of their own courts, the judges were irregular in attendance. And the general satisfaction given by the common law courts in banc was evidenced by a limited right of appeal. During the first half of the life of the court its most active members were Tindal and Parke; but valuable assistance was rendered by Denman, Patteson, Coleridge and Alderson. During the second period the active participants were Willes, Erie, Blackburn, Bramwell, Pollock, Wightman, Cockburn, Williams and Martin. During the forty-five years of the court's existence it heard only about eight hundred appeals, and nearly two-thirds of these were heard during the last half of the period. The Queen's Bench supplied the largest quota of these appeals, although the Exchequer was not far behind. Appeals from the Common Pleas were comparatively few in number. Of the eight hundred judgments reviewed by the court, a little more than one-fourth were reversed — somewhat less than the usual proportion. There was a re- markable consensus of opinion among the judges in this court, the number of cases in which there was a division of opinion being less than fifty. The importance of the House of Lords as a court of final review in civil actions is a matter of recent development. After the break up of the Curia Regis and the establishment of the three courts of common law there remained in the sovereign a residuary power covering cases where the courts were not strong enough to do justice, or were deficient in rules applicable to the case or were alleged to committed error. In time the King in Council (at first the Star Chamber, and latterly the Privy Council) became the tri-