This “great charter” or Magna Carta of 1215 also required that the King’s entourage of judges hold their courts and judgments at “a sure place” rather than allotting autocratic justice in unpredictable places concerning the nation. A concentrated and elite group of judges acquired a dominant role in law-making underneath this system, and in comparison with its European counterparts the English judiciary turned highly centralised. In 1297, as an example, whereas the highest court in France had fifty-one judges, the English Court of Common Pleas had 5. This powerful and tight-knit judiciary gave rise to a systematised means of creating…
