ENGLISH AND AMERICAN Courrrs. Originally of wider signification, the term court has come to represent a permanent organization or tribunal for the publio administration of justice, com posed of one or more judges, who, when engaged in the transaction of business, are attended or dinarily by attorneys and counselors, who repre sent the litigants; by clerks, who keep records of what is done; and by marshals, sheriffs, con stables, or like officers, who enforce judicial mandates and preserve order.
In primitive communities, courts perform legislative and executive as well as judicial func tions. The segresgemot, county court, or sher iff's turn of Anglo-Saxon England was not simply a judicial tribunal presided over by a bishop and sheriff, but was an assemblage of freemen for the discussion and transaction of local affairs generally, The Regis, or Great Council of the Kingdom, in the early English history per formed legislative as well as judicial duties; and so did the stated assemblages of the ruling class in some of the English colonies in this country. In Massachusetts the present names of the legis lative and the judicial bodies—the General Court and the Supreme Judicial Court respectively— bear testimony to the fact that the primitive court of the colony performed both legislative and judicial functions.
I. English courts may be classified in various ways. One basis of classification is their rela tive authority; and this divides them into su perior and inferior courts. (a) The latter class includes those tribunals over which courts of the former class may exerei.e a supervisory jurisdiction by writs of mandamus (q.v.), cer tiorari (q.v.), or prohibition. They are of four kinds: (I) Local courts of criminal or quasi-criminal jurisdiction, such as borough sessions, held by a recorder or the justices of a municipal bor ough; licensing sessions, held by borough jus tiees for granting or withdrawing liquor licenses; petty sessions and special sessions, or courts held by two justices or a borough police magistrate in the exercise of a summary jurisdiction over minor offenses; general or quarter sessions of the borough and of the county, for the trial of felonies and misdemeanors within the borough or county jurisdiction, and for appeals from petty and special sessions.
(2) Local civil courts of record, such as bor ough civil courts and county courts. The latter are lineal descendants of the seyresgemots of King Alfred; but their present constitution, jurisdiction, and practice are regulated by the County Courts Act, ISSS (51 and 52 Vict. c. 43). Under this statute, England, with the exception of London, is divided into 491 county-court dis tricts, each court having a judge who must be a barrister of at least seven years' standing, and who is appointed by the Lord Chancellor (except the judge within the Duchy of Lancaster, who is paid by salary), is allowed traveling expenses, is addressed as 'His Honor Judge —,' and ranks 'text after knights bachelors. Some of these judges have a high professional reputation. From the decisions of these courts an appeal lies in many cases to the High Court, and the latter possesses the power of supervising the proceed ings of the former by writs of certiorari and pro hibition, and by orders to show cause, which have been substituted for the old writ of man damus.
(3) The university courts of Oxford and Cambridge, which exercise civil jurisdiction in some cases in which members of the university are concerned.
(4) Manorial courts, having a limited juris diction iu some parts of the kingdom. See (b) The superior courts of England, prior to the Judicature Act of 1S73, embraced those of Common Law and of Equity, the Probate and Divorce Court, the Admiralty Court, and the London Court of Bankruptcy. The superior courts of common law and of equity were evolved from the Aula Regis, or Great Council of the Kingdom. It was provided by Magna Charta that "common pleas shall not follow one court, but shall be holden in some certain place." Accordingly, new justices were appointed, and the Court of 00)11111On Pleas was established at Westminster Hall, with jurisdiction over all civil actions between individual litigants—that is, over all common pleas or suits, as distin guished from pleas of the Crown or criminal ac tions. A century later Edward I. detached from the Aula Regis the Court of King's Bench, the Court of Exchequer, and the Court of Chancery, thus settling the superior courts of law and equity upon the basis which they occupied until recently.