COURT (Fr. colic, It, conic, from Lat. colors, inelosure, from co- together + *hors, connected with Lat, hortus, garden, Gk. x6pros, churius, hay, 01r. yort, sedge, Goth. yards, court, 01111. gall°, tier. Garten, AS. geard, Engl. yard). Courts. in the legal sense—i.e. authorities em powered to try and punish persons charged truth offenses against the public or State, and to settle disputes regarding the rights and duties of indi viduals—have existed among all peoples that have emerged from savagery. There is no single root from which early judicial authority springs; nor is there, among the Aryan peoples, any single typical form of primitive court. The right of the community to punish offenses against the community—a right which expresses itself originally in lynch law—may beget a popu lar jurisdiction in criminal cases; and the in terest of the community in preventing feuds may make the popular assembly competent to decide civil eases. The belief that flagrant breaches of the social order are niffenses against the gods may rust criminal jurisdiction in the priests; and the duty of the priests to see that VOWS and promises under oath are performed may be expanded into a fairly broad civil juris diction. The attribution to the king of disci plinary powers over the popular army, and the concentration in his hands of the power of pre serving internal peace„ may create an extensive royal jurisdiction over crimes and also over torts; and the king's civil jurisdiction may be widened by ascribing to hinm a patriarchal au thority analogous to that exercised by the heads of houses and of clans. Private disputes may be referred, voluntarily at first, to the decision of king or priest or assembly, and when such references have become customary the duty of decision may be transformed into judicial au tho•ity. Traces of all these ideas and influences
are discernible in the early judicial systems of the Aryan peoples.
Sir Henry .Maine has called attention to the great importance given to courts and their ma chinery in every ancient code. It is due, he thinks, to the fact that the authority of a court of justice overshadowed all other ideas and con siderations in the minds of those early code makers, The dominant notion in their minds, when they undertook to classify legal rules, was not a law, or a right, or a sanction, as they are now considered by an ;Analytical jurist, but a court of justice. "The great fact is that there now exists an alternative to private reprisals. a mode of stanching personal or hereditary blood-feuds other than slaughter or plunder. Bence, in front of everything they place time de scription of a court. of its mechanism. of its procedure, of its tests of alleged facts." This conscious reverence for courts of justice, and this sense of their paramount importance, have diminished, Sir henry believes, as civili zation has advanced and peace has become more prevalent. Some doubt of the correctness of this opinion may be entertained. In the first place, the fact that the term 'court,' which, as we have seen, originally designated a body exer cising legislative as well as judicial powers, has been limited in most countries to the designation of a tribunal exercising, judicial powers only, indicates that such powers are deemed of prime importance. lm the second place, the authority of courts, especially in federal governments der written eonstituthms, and, throughout. Ch•is tendom, under international arbitration treaties, is very great, and destined to be still greater.