Adversary Procedure in Eighteenth Century England Stephan Landsman
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Cornell Law Review Volume 75 Article 1 Issue 3 March 1990 Rise of the Contentious Spirit: Adversary Procedure in Eighteenth Century England Stephan Landsman Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Stephan Landsman, Rise of the Contentious Spirit: Adversary Procedure in Eighteenth Century England , 75 Cornell L. Rev. 496 (1990) Available at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr/vol75/iss3/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Cornell Law Review by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE RISE OF THE CONTENTIOUS SPIRIT: ADVERSARY PROCEDURE IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND Stephan Landsmant TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction ........................................... 498 II. Changes in the Criminal Trial: The Old Bailey Experience 1717-1797 ................................. 504 A. The Criminal Trial in the 1560s ................... 504 B. The Criminal Trial in the 1670s ................... 505 C. Impediments to Change ........................... 506 D. A Methodology for Measuring Change ............. 509 E. Change During the Course of the Eighteenth Century ........................................... 513 1. Judicial Activity-Decline of the Inquisition ..... 513 2. Growth of Party Responsibility for the Production and Quality of Proof ............... 524 3. Involvement of Counsel in the Courtroom Contest ........................................ 533 a. The Early Period: 1717-1727 ............... 534 b. Transition: The 1730s ..................... 534 c. A Time of Growing Importance: 1740-1780 .................................. 539 d. Preeminence: 1780-1800 ................... 548 4. The Employment of Forensic Rules to Regulate the Presentation of Proof-The Hearsay Rule .. 564 III. Factors Contributing to the Development of the Adversarial Method .................................... 572 A. Thief Catchers .................................... 572 t Professor of Law, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State Univer- sity. B.A. 1969, Kenyon College; J.D. 1972, Harvard University. This article is dedi- cated to Lewis Jordan (1912-1983) who taught me the love of two arts, writing and fishing. The article grew out of a paper entitled The Rise of the Adversarial Process: Changes in Criminal Procedure at the Old Bailey 1717-1797, presented at the meeting of the Law and Society Association held in 1987 in Washington, D.C. I wish to acknowl- edge the generous support of the Cleveland-Marshall Fund, the Wolfson College of Cambridge University, and the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies of the University of London. I also wish to thank a number of colleagues and friends for their generous assistance in reviewing earlier drafts of this piece, including John Beattie, Thomas Green, Steven Smith, Lloyd Snyder and William Twining. 497 498 CORNELL L4 W REVIEW [Vol. 75:497 B. Reform Movements of the 1760s and 1770s ........ 581 C. The Reconceptualization of the Trial as Adversarial Contest ........................................... 591 IV. Epilogue ............................................... 603 V. Appendix .............................................. 606 A . T able I ............................................ 606 B. Table II. Table of Year by Counsel ............... 607 C. Table III. Table of Year by Prosecution Witness... 608 D. Table IV. Table of Year by Defense Witness ...... 609 ...the bee, midflight, is the instrument of Purpose, though its fuzz and its buzz and its wingedness have knowledge only of their own freedom. 1 I INTRODUCTION Criminal trials in Tudor and Stuart England were, according to J.S. Cockburn, "nasty, brutish, and essentially short." 2 Counsel sel- dom participated, 3 few, if any, rules of evidence constrained en- quiry, 4 judges routinely examined witnesses and defendants in the most vigorous, and at times ruthless, manner,5 only prosecution wit- 1 CYNTHIA OZICK, THE CANNIBAL GALAXY 69 (1983). 2 J.S. COCKBURN, A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH ASSIZES 1558-1714 at 109 (1972). Cockburn especially emphasized the incautious evidence practices of the era and the fact that virtually no trial took more than 20 minutes. As many as 25 cases might be heard by a single judge and jury within a 12 hour sitting. Id. at 124-25, 137-38. The quoted remark quite clearly is a paraphrase of Hobbes's famous description of life in the state of nature. 3 According to John Langbein, it was not until the 1730s that counsel began to appear with any regularity on either side in non-political felony trials. See John H. Langbein, The Criminal Trial Before the Lawyers, 45 U. CHI. L. REV. 263, 307-14 (1978) [hereinafter Langbein I]. On the prosecution side, this was apparently a matter of choice. See J.M. BEATTIE, CRIME AND THE COURTS IN ENGLAND 1660-1800 at 352-56 (1986); John H. Langbein, Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trial: .4 View from the Ryder Sources, 50 U. CHI. L. REV. 1, 126-27 (1983) [hereinafter Langbein II]. Defendants, however, were barred from having counsel. See THOMAS ANDREW GREEN, VERDICT Ac- CORDING TO CONSCIENCE 135-36 (1985). The first formal step taken to lift this prohibi- tion came in 1696 when Parliament authorized defendants to employ counsel in treason trials. 7 & 8 Will. 3, ch. 3 (1696). All restrictions on the employment of defense counsel were finally lifted in 1836. 6 & 7 Will. 4, ch. 114 (1836). 4 "At the trial of Warren Hastings in 1794, Edmund Burke is reported to have said that he knew a parrot who could learn the rules of evidence in a half-hour and repeat them in five minutes." WILLIAM TWINING, THEORIES OF EVIDENCE: BENTHAM AND WIG- MORE 1 (1985) (citing I JOHN HENRY WIGMORE, A TREATISE ON THE ANGLO-AMERICAN SYSTEM OF EVIDENCE IN TRIALS AT COMMON LAW 237 (2d ed. 1923)). While Burke's claim was undoubtedly exaggerated, a number of scholars have suggested that during the Tudor and Stuart eras few evidence rules were utilized to control the presentation of proof at trial. See G.W. KEETON, LORD CHANCELLORJEFFREYS AND THE STUART CAUSE 21 (1965); Langbein I, supra note 3, at 315-16. 5 From at least medieval times onwards, judges functioned as courtroom interro- 1990] ADVERSARY PROCEDURE 499 nesses were allowed to swear testimonial oaths and thereby enhance the credibility of their statements, 6 jurors were free to utilize private knowledge gained outside the confines of the courtroom, 7 judges frequently introduced their political views into proceedings,8 and there was virtually no appellate procedure.9 While civil litigation in this era was more refined, it shared many of the attributes of its criminal counterpart. Civil proceedings were in the hands of the same strong-willed, politically motivated judges who presided in criminal cases. The majority of court time gators. See T. GREEN, supra note 3, at 138; see also J. COCKBURN, supra note 2, at 109 (judges in seventeenth century were vigorous questioners). The absence of counsel fa- cilitated active, in some cases "overactive," judicial enquiry. See G. KEETON, supra note 4, at 22. Jurors also were regularly involved in questioning. Id. at 495. 6 Some seventeenth-century courts appear to have gone so far as to encourage jurors to use the absence of sworn testimony on behalf of defendants against them. See J. COCKBURN, supra note 2,at 121; G. KEETON, supra note 4,at 120. This practice pro- voked condemnatory comment from even the earliest evidence scholars. See GEOFFREY GILBERT, THE LAW OF EVIDENCE 112 (1754) [Facsimile of the 1754 ed. published by Garland Publishing Inc. 1979] (such judicial advice was held to be "Oppression and Injury"); see also 1 LEONARD MACNALLY, THE RULES OF EVIDENCE ON PLEAS OF THE CROWN 10-13 (1802) (2 vols.) (the practice was "partial, cruel, and subversive of public justice"). The asymmetry of access to testimonial oaths was not ended by Parliament until 1702. See 1 Ann 2, ch. 9 (1702). 7 Gilbert accepted the possibility that jurors might be self-informing. See G. GIL- BERT, supra note 6, at 95 ("[TiheJury of their own Knowledge may have further Light in the Fact than what they have from the Witness in Court."). Blackstone, however, viewed this sort of behavior as unacceptable. See 3 WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND 374-75 (1765-69) (4 vol.) [Facsimile of the 1765-69 ed. published by University of Chicago Press 1979] (jurors with private knowledge expected to testify in open court). Modern scholars agree that, at least as to witness reputation, private knowledge was still much relied upon even in the eighteenth century. See T. GREEN, supra note 3, at 245. With respect to questions of fact, however, both Green and Langbein have argued that the jury ceased to be self-informing significantly before 1670. See id.at 239-45; Langbein I, supra note 3, at 298-99 & n.105. 8 Alfred Havighurst concluded that the judges of Charles I's reign were always extremely sensitive to the political questions underlying the legal cases before them and, after 1676, were ever more likely to allow their allegiance to the king to govern their decisions. See Alfred F. Havighurst, The Judiciary and Politics in the Reign of Charles 11, 66 L.Q. REV. 62, 229 (1950) [hereinafter Havighurst I]. Keeton suggested that the same situation existed during the reign of Charles I. See G. KEETON, supra note 4, at 98-99. Looking back from the vantage point of the late eighteenth century (and a decidedly Whig perspective), the great advocate Thomas Erskine was said by MacNally to have condemned the Tudor and Stuart judiciary in the following terms: "There were no judges as there are now, to hold firm the balance ofjustice amidst the storms of state; men could not then, as the prisoner can to day, look up for protection from magistrates independent of the crown, and awfully accountable in character to an enlightened world." 1 L. MACNALLY, supra note 6, at 7.