Court of King's Bench (England) - Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction

Due to a misunderstanding by Sir Edward Coke in his Institutes of the Lawes of England, academics thought for a long time that the King's Bench was primarily a criminal court. This was factually incorrect; no indictment was tried by the King's Bench until January 1323, and no record of the court ordering the death penalty is found until halfway through Edward II's reign. The court did have some criminal jurisdiction, with a royal ordinance in 1293 directing conspiracy cases to be brought to the King's Bench and the court's judges acting in trailbaston commissions around the country. A.T. Carter, in his History of English Legal Institutions, defines the early King's Bench jurisdiction as "to correct all crimes and misdemeanours that amounted to a breach of the peace, the King being then plaintiff, for such were in derogation of the Jura regalia; and to take cognizance of everything not parcelled out to the other courts". By the end of the 14th century much of the criminal jurisdiction had declined, although the court maintained a criminal jurisdiction over all cases in Middlesex, the county where Westminster Hall stood. The King's Bench's main jurisdiction was over "pleas of the crown"; cases which involved the King in some way. With the exception of revenue matters, which were handled by the Exchequer of Pleas, the King's Bench held exclusive jurisdiction over these cases.

The Court of King's Bench did act as an appellate body, hearing appeals from the Court of Common Pleas, eyre circuits, assize courts and local courts, but was not a court of last resort; its own records were sent to Parliament to be signed off on. The creation of the Court of Exchequer Chamber in 1585 created a court from which King's Bench decisions could be appealed to, and with the expansion of the Exchequer Chamber's jurisdiction in 1830 the King's Bench ceased to be an appellate court. Thanks to the Bill of Westminster and other legal fictions, the King's Bench gained much of the Common Pleas's jurisdiction, although the Common Pleas remained the sole place where real property claims could be brought.