The University of Chicago Law School Roundtable Volume 8 | Issue 2 Article 2 1-1-2001 Ethical Standards for Royal Justices in England, c. 1175-1307 Paul Brand Follow this and additional works at: http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/roundtable Recommended Citation Brand, Paul (2001) "Ethical Standards for Royal Justices in England, c. 1175-1307," The University of Chicago Law School Roundtable: Vol. 8: Iss. 2, Article 2. Available at: http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/roundtable/vol8/iss2/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Chicago Unbound. It has been accepted for inclusion in The nivU ersity of Chicago Law School Roundtable by an authorized administrator of Chicago Unbound. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ETHICAL STANDARDS FOR ROYAL JUSTICES IN ENGLAND, c. 1175-1307 PAUL BRANDt No legal system can operate successfully without certain standards of behavior for the judges who administer it. In the case of the fledgling English common law system of the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however, it is difficult to discover from the surviving evidence what those standards were, and more difficult still to find much evidence for their enforcement and application. As this paper -will show, at least a rudimentary judicial ethical code certainly ex- isted from at least the later twelfth century onwards and there is some evidence of royal justices being punished for failing to observe its prescriptions. It is, however, only during the middle years of the reign of King Edward I (King of England from 1272 to 1307), and through a series of legal proceedings brought against a group of royal justices around 1290, that we are able to see for the first time detailed norms of judicial behavior being enunciated and royal justices be- ing punished for failure to observe them.