The Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1873. It reorganised the English court system to establish the High Court and the Court of Appeal, and also originally provided for the abolition of the judicial functions of the House of Lords with respect to England. It would have retained those functions in relation to Scotland and Ireland for the time being. However, the Gladstone Liberal government fell in 1874 before the Act entered into force, and the succeeding Disraeli Conservative government suspended the entry into force of the Act by means of the Supreme Court of Judicature (Commencement) Act 1874 and the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1875.
Whilst the House of Lords of the United Kingdom is the upper chamber of Parliament and has government ministers, it for many centuries had a judicial function. It functioned as a court of first instance for the trials of peers, for impeachments, and as a court of last resort in the United Kingdom and prior, the Kingdom of England.
The Court of Chancery was a court of equity in England and Wales that followed a set of loose rules to avoid the slow pace of change and possible harshness of the common law. The Chancery had jurisdiction over all matters of equity, including trusts, land law, the estates of lunatics and the guardianship of infants. Its initial role was somewhat different: as an extension of the lord chancellor's role as Keeper of the King's Conscience, the court was an administrative body primarily concerned with conscientious law. Thus the Court of Chancery had a far greater remit than the common law courts, whose decisions it had the jurisdiction to overrule for much of its existence, and was far more flexible. Until the 19th century, the Court of Chancery could apply a far wider range of remedies than common law courts, such as specific performance and injunctions, and had some power to grant damages in special circumstances. With the shift of the Exchequer of Pleas towards a common law court and loss of its equitable jurisdiction by the Administration of Justice Act 1841, the Chancery became the only national equitable body in the English legal system.
The lord chancellor, formally the lord high chancellor of Great Britain, is the highest-ranking among the Great Officers of State in Scotland and England, in the United Kingdom, nominally outranking the prime minister. The lord chancellor is appointed by the sovereign on the advice of the prime minister. Prior to their Union into the Kingdom of Great Britain, there were separate lord chancellors for the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland; there were lord chancellors of Ireland until 1922.
The courts of England and Wales, supported administratively by Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service, are the civil and criminal courts responsible for the administration of justice in England and Wales.
The Judicature Acts are a series of Acts of Parliament, beginning in the 1870s, which aimed to fuse the hitherto split system of courts in England and Wales. The first two Acts were the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873 and the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1875, with a further series of amending acts.
The Exchequer of Pleas, or Court of Exchequer, was a court that dealt with matters of equity, a set of legal principles based on natural law and common law in England and Wales. Originally part of the curia regis, or King's Council, the Exchequer of Pleas split from the curia in the 1190s to sit as an independent central court. The Court of Chancery's reputation for tardiness and expense resulted in much of its business transferring to the Exchequer. The Exchequer and Chancery, with similar jurisdictions, drew closer together over the years until an argument was made during the 19th century that having two seemingly identical courts was unnecessary. As a result, the Exchequer lost its equity jurisdiction. With the Judicature Acts, the Exchequer was formally dissolved as a judicial body by an Order in Council on 16 December 1880.
The Office of the Official Solicitor is a part of the Ministry of Justice of the Government of the United Kingdom. The Official Solicitor acts for people who, because they lack mental capacity and cannot properly manage their own affairs, are unable to represent themselves and no other suitable person or agency is able or willing to act. The Official Solicitor acts for England & Wales only, as Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate legal systems and judiciaries.
The High Court of Ireland is a court which deals at first instance with the most serious and important civil and criminal cases. When sitting as a criminal court it is called the Central Criminal Court and sits with judge and jury. It also acts as a court of appeal for civil cases in the Circuit Court. It also has the power to determine whether or not a law is constitutional, and of judicial review over acts of the government and other public bodies.
The Chancellor of the High Court is the head of the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice of England and Wales. This judge and the other two heads of divisions sit by virtue of their offices often, as and when their expertise is deemed relevant, in panel in the Court of Appeal. As such this judge ranks equally to the President of the Family Division and the President of the Queen's Bench Division.
The Court of Appeal in Ireland was created by the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Supreme Court of Judicature Act (Ireland) 1877 as the final appellate court within Ireland, then under British rule. A last appeal from this court could be taken to the House of Lords in London.
The Court of King's Bench was one of the senior courts of common law in Ireland. It was a mirror of the Court of King's Bench in England. The King's Bench was one of the "Four Courts" which sat in the building in Dublin which is still known as "The Four Courts", and is still in use.
The Chancery Amendment Act 1858 also known as Lord Cairns' Act after Sir Hugh Cairns, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that allowed the English Court of Chancery, the Irish Chancery and the Chancery Court of the County Palatine of Lancaster to award damages, in addition to their previous function of awarding injunctions and specific performance. The Act also made several procedural changes to the Chancery courts, most notably allowing them to call a jury, and allowed the Lord Chancellor to amend the practice regulations of the courts. By allowing the Chancery courts to award damages it narrowed the gap between the common law and equity courts and accelerated the passing of the Judicature Act 1873, and for that reason has been described by Ernest Pollock as "prophetic".
The Master of the Rolls in Ireland was a senior judicial office in the Irish Chancery under English and British rule, and was equivalent to the Master of the Rolls in the English Chancery. Originally called the Keeper of the Rolls, he was responsible for the safekeeping of the Chancery records such as close rolls and patent rolls. The office was created by letters patent in 1333, the first holder of the office being Edmund de Grimsby. As the Irish bureaucracy expanded, the duties of the Master of the Rolls came to be performed by subordinates and the position became a sinecure which was awarded to political allies of the Dublin Castle administration. In the nineteenth century, it became a senior judicial appointment, ranking second within the Court of Chancery behind the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. The post was abolished by the Courts of Justice Act 1924, passed by the Irish Free State established in 1922.
The High Court of Justice in London, known properly as Her Majesty's High Court of Justice in England, together with the Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, are the Senior Courts of England and Wales. Its name is abbreviated as EWHC for legal citation purposes.
Sir James O'Connor, KC PC (I) was an Irish solicitor, barrister and judge. He was appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1914, Attorney-General for Ireland in 1917, and a judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature of Ireland in 1918. After his enforced retirement in 1924, he practised at the English bar until 1929, when he returned to Ireland and was readmitted to practice as a solicitor, a controversial move necessitating a leading judgment on the standard of professional conduct to be expected of a former judge.
Jonathan Christian, SL, QC, PC (I), was an Irish judge. He served as Solicitor-General for Ireland from 1856 to 1858. He was a judge of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) from 1858 to 1867 when he was appointed Lord Justice of Appeal in Chancery. On the creation of the new Irish Court of Appeal in 1878 he served briefly on that Court, but retired after a few months.
The Supreme Court of Judicature Act (Ireland) 1877 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that brought about a major reorganisation of the superior courts in Ireland. It created a Supreme Court of Judicature, comprising the High Court of Justice in Ireland and the Court of Appeal in Ireland. It mirrored in Ireland the changes which the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873 had made in the courts of England and Wales.
The High Court of Justice in Ireland was the court created by the Supreme Court of Judicature Act (Ireland) 1877 to replace the existing court structure in Ireland. Its creation mirrored the reform of the courts of England and Wales five years earlier under the Judicature Acts. The Act created a Supreme Court of Judicature, consisting of a High Court of Justice and a Court of Appeal.
Certain former courts of England and Wales have been abolished or merged into or with other courts, and certain other courts of England and Wales have fallen into disuse.
