Dr. Bonham's Case

Thomas Bonham v College of Physicians, commonly known as Dr. Bonham's Case or simply Bonham's Case, was decided in 1610 by the Court of Common Pleas in England under Sir Edward Coke, the court's Chief Justice. Coke ruled that "in many cases, the common law will control Acts of Parliament, and sometimes adjudge them to be utterly void; for when an Act of Parliament is against common right and reason, or repugnant, or impossible to be performed, the common law will control it, and adjudge such an Act to be void...some statutes are made against law and right, which those who made them perceiving would not put them in execution." Coke's meaning has been disputed over the years; according to one interpretation, Coke intended the kind of judicial review that would later develop in the United States, whereas other scholars contend that Coke only meant to construe a statute without challenging Parliamentary sovereignty. If Coke intended the former, then he may have eventually changed his view.

Whatever Coke's meaning, after an initial period when his decision enjoyed some support (but during which no statutes were declared void), Bonham's Case was thrown aside in favour of the growing doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty. In one of the most prominent early treatises supporting that doctrine, William Blackstone wrote that Parliament is the sovereign law-maker, preventing the common law courts from throwing aside or reviewing statutes in the fashion Coke suggested. Parliamentary sovereignty is now the universally accepted judicial doctrine in the legal system of England and Wales. Bonham's Case met a mixed reaction at the time, with King James I and the Lord Chancellor, Lord Ellesmere, both deeply unhappy with it; it has been suggested as one of the reasons for Coke's dismissal from the Common Pleas in 1613. Academics in the 19th and 20th centuries have been scarcely more favourable, calling it "a foolish doctrine alleged to have been laid down extra-judicially", and simply an "abortion".

In the United States, Coke's decision met with a better reaction. During the legal and public campaigns against the writs of assistance and Stamp Act of 1765, Bonham's Case was given as a justification for nullifying the legislation, although by 1772 Blackstone's views gained acceptance. Marbury v. Madison, the American case which forms the basis for the exercise of judicial review in the United States under Article III of the Constitution, uses the words "void" and "repugnant", seen as a direct reference to Coke, although Marbury used those words in a somewhat different way. Academics have argued that Coke's work in Bonham's Case forms the basis of judicial review and the declaration of legislation as unconstitutional in the United States; other academics disagree, with one scholar calling this "one of the most enduring myths of American constitutional law and theory, to say nothing of history".