Popular Law-making: A study of the origin, history, and present tendencies of law-making by statuteStimson, Frederic Jesup
History
Popular Law-making: A study of the origin, history, and present tendencies of law-making by statute
Stimson, Frederic Jesup
Legislation -- United States
(1400) Under Henry IV is the first secular law against heresy, making
it a capital offence. Upon conviction by the ordinary the heretic
is to be delivered to the secular arm, _i.e._, burnt. Note that the
trial, however, still remains with the ordinary, _i.e._, the clerical
court. Under Henry IV also we find a statute banishing all Welshmen
and forbidding them to buy land or become freemen in England; and
under Henry VI the same law is applied to Irishmen, and in the next
reign to Scotchmen as well. The Irishmen complained of, however,
were only those attending the University of Oxford. In 1402 we find
Parliament asserting its right to ratify treaties and to be consulted
on wars; matters not without interest to President Roosevelt's
Congress, and in 1407 we find definite recognition of the principle
that money bills must originate in the lower house.
For the purpose of his Chicago speech, it is a pity that Mr. Bryan's
attention was never called to the Statute of the 8th of Henry VI,
which forbids merchants from compelling payment in gold and from
refusing silver, "which Gold they do carry out of the Realm into
other strange Countries." An enlightened civic spirit is shown in the
Statute of 1433, which prohibits any person dwelling at the Stews in
Southwark from serving on juries in Surrey, whereby "many Murderers
and notorious Thieves have been saved, great Murders and Robberies
concealed and not punished." And the statute sweepingly declares
everybody inhabiting that part of Southwark to be thieves, common
women, and other misdoers. Fortunately, this was before the time that
John Harvard took up his residence there.
In 1430 was the first statute imposing a property qualification upon
voters.
In 1452 is a curious statute reciting that "Whereas in all Parts
of this Realm divers People of great Power, moved with unsatiable
Covetousness ... have sought and found new Inventions, and them
continually do execute, to the Danger, Trouble and great abusing of
all Ladies, Gentlewomen, and having any Substance ... perceiving their
great Weakness and Simplicity, will take them by Force, or otherwise
come to them seeming to be their great Friends ... and so by great
Dissimulation ... get them into their Possession; also they will
many Times compell them to be married by them, contrary to their own
liking." A writ of chancery is given to persons so constrained of
their liberty to summon the person complained of, and if he make
default be outlawed--an early example of "government by injunction"
applied to other than labor disputes! I know no example of an American
statute to this effect; presumably our women are lacking in "weakness
and simplicity."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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