The Courts of Quarter Sessions or Quarter Sessions were local courts traditionally held at four set times each year in the United Kingdom and other countries in the former British Empire. They generally sat in the seat of each county and county borough.
Quarter Sessions were abolished in England and Wales in 1972, when the Courts Act 1971 replaced them together with the Courts of Assize (Assizes) with a single permanent Crown Court of England and Wales. They were abolished in Scotland in 1975 and replaced with District Courts and subsequently Justice of the Peace Courts.
The Quarter Sessions were named after the four annual meetings they held in England and Wales from 1388. These days were later settled as Epiphany, Easter, Midsummer (The Translation of St. Thomas) and Michaelmas sessions.
Read more about Quarter Sessions: Reputation, Jurisdiction, Staff, Civil Jurisdiction, Changes, Scotland, Quarter Session Courts in Ireland, Courts of Quarter Sessions in Upper Canada, Other Colonial Administrations
Famous quotes containing the word quarter:
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)