Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/777

 SfO. VEEDER: A CENTURY OF JUDICATURE 763 worth, who frequently sat without a third peer, were so notoriously at odds that judgments were constantly affirmed on appeal in consequence of a dead-lock. To such grounds of complaint may be added the intermittent sittings of the court and consequent delays, its extreme disregard of the proceedings and engagements of the other courts, its abso- lute irresponsibility, and the immense expense attendant upon its procedure. Its habit of transacting legal business through the legislative form of general debate has always been a serious drawback. It always conduces to the dignity of a court, and to the authority of the rules which it lays down for future guidance, to formulate a single considered opinion clearly expressing the grounds upon which the judgment is based. Under the practice of the House, where each judge usually gives independent expression to the rea- sons upon which his vote is based, it is often extremely dif- ficult to extract the ratio decidendi. The judicial functions of the Privy Council arise out of its ancient position as the concilium ordinarium of the King, which decided cases that were too important for the ordinary courts but not of sufficient importance for the House of Lords. From this source sprang the Star Chamber and the Court of Requests as off-shoots. The first instance of the exercise of independent appellate jurisdiction by the Privy Council occurs in the reign of Elizabeth, when it took juris- diction of an appeal from the Channel Islands. Coke calls the Council a board, not a court ; and Hale, in treating sys- tematically of all the existing jurisdictions, mentions it only in connection with its subservience to the House of Lords. By gradual encroachment, however, the Council built up a formidable jurisdiction. In the reign of Charles II it ac- quired jurisdiction of ecclesiastical and maritime appeals. Its judicial functions were placed upon a modern basis by the establishment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Coun- cil (3 and 4, Wm. IV, c. 41), with jurisdiction principally over appeals from the colonies and in ecclesiastical and ad- miralty cases.^ sional decisions contained in the early House of Lords reports, were
 * Prior to this time the only Privy Council reports, aside from occa-