Edward Coke

Sir Edward Coke

Sir Edward Coke (born February 1, 1552 in Mileham , Norfolk , † September 3, 1634 in Stoke Poges ) was an important English judge and politician.

After studying at Trinity College of the University of Cambridge he practiced from 1578 as a Barrister . For the first time in 1588 he was elected as a member of the House of Commons of the English Parliament for Aldeburgh .

Coke's rise began after his first marriage made him rich in 1589. In 1593 he became Speaker of the House of Commons and the following year English Attorney General . In this capacity he led the indictment against the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 . In 1603 he was ennobled as a Knight Bachelor . From 1606 to 1613 he was Chief Justice on the Court of Common Pleas , then Chief Justice on the Court of King's Bench until 1616 . During this time he campaigned resolutely for the application of common law and thus entered into opposition to the king and the church, who wanted to give greater importance to the law of equity determined by royal decisions and to Roman law . In 1616, Coke was deposed because of this attitude. It was the first recorded case in English history in which a judge was suspended for political reasons.

Coke remained the "opposition leader" in the House of Commons who was critical of the monarch. The first draft of the Petition of Right of 1628 was formulated by him.

Cokes Law Reports documented the case law in specific individual cases. In his institutes he wanted to present the confusing legal works of England in an orderly manner, but at the same time reinterpreted them according to the requirements of his time. Both works represented a systematic review of the legal system that had not been achieved before and are still used today in legal training in countries with common law .

literature

• Allen D. Boyer: Sir Edward Coke and the Elizabethan Age. Stanford University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-8047-4809-8 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
• Allen D. Boyer: Law, Liberty and Parliament: Selected Essays on the Writings of Sir Edward Coke. Liberty Fund, 2004, ISBN 0-86597-426-8 .
• Humphry William Woolrych: The Life of the Right Honorable Sir Edward Coke. J. & WT Clarke, London 1826 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
• The little encyclopedia. Volume 1. Encyclios-Verlag, Zurich 1950, p. 308.

Individual evidence

1. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 2, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 110.