Editing Edward Coke (section)

==Writings==
Coke is best known for his written work – thirteen volumes of [[law report]]s, and the four-volume ''[[Institutes of the Lawes of England]]''. John Marshall Gest, writing in the ''Yale Law Journal'' at the start of the twentieth century, noted that "There are few principles of the common law that can be studied without an examination of Coke's ''Institutes'' and ''Reports'' which summed up the legal learning of his time", although "the student is deterred by the too common abuse of Coke's character and the general criticism of his writings as dry, crabbed, verbose and pedantic".<ref>{{Harvnb|Gest|1909|p=505}}</ref> [[John Campbell, 1st Baron Campbell|John Campbell]], in ''The Lives of the Chief Justices of England'', had said that "His reasoning... is narrow minded; [he had] utter contempt for method and style in his compositions",<ref>{{Harvnb|Campbell|1849|p=239}}</ref> and says that Coke's ''Reports'' were "tinctured with quaintness and pedantry".<ref>{{Harvnb|Campbell|1849|p=289}}</ref> Gest, noting this criticism, points out that: {{blockquote|Coke, like every man, was necessarily a product of the age in which he lived. His faults were the faults of his time, his excellencies those of all time. He was diffuse; he loved metaphor, literary quibbles and verbal conceits; so did Bacon, and so did Shakespeare. So did all the writers of his day. They were creative, not critical. But Coke as a law writer was as far superior in importance and merit to his predecessors, at least if we except Bracton, as the Elizabethan writers, in general, were superior to those whom they succeeded, and, as the great Elizabethans fixed the standard of our English tongue, so Coke established the common law on its firm foundation. A modern lawyer who heaps his abuse on Coke and his writings seems as ungrateful as a man who climbs a high wall with the aid of the sturdy shoulders of another and then gives his friend a parting kick in the face as he makes the final leap.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gest|1909|p=506}}</ref>}}

===''Reports''===
[[File:Coke's Reports.jpg|thumb|left|The [[Book frontispiece|frontispiece]] to the first volume of ''Coke's Reports'' (1600)|alt=The front cover of Coke's Reports. In the centre, the title of the book ("Les Reports de Edward Coke") with a large subtitle. Around the outside is a collection of images centred on a pair of pillars.]]

His ''Law Reports'', known as ''Coke's Reports'', were an archive of judgments from cases he had attended, in which he had participated or about which he had been informed. They started with notes he made as a law student in the winter of 1572, with full reporting of cases from October 1579.<ref>{{Harvnb|Baker|1972|p=59}}</ref> The ''Reports'' were initially written down in seven notebooks, four of which are lost; the first notebook contains not only law reports, but also a draft version of Coke's first ''Institutes of the Lawes of England''.<ref>{{Harvnb|Baker|1972|p=61}}</ref> Coke began reporting cases in the traditional manner, by copying out and repeating cases found in earlier law reports, such as those of [[Edmund Plowden]]. After being called to the Bar in 1578 he began attending court cases at Westminster Hall, and soon drew the attention of court officials – many early reports have noted that he was told "by old Plowden" or "by [[Christopher Wray (English judge)|Wray CJ]]". The original reports were kept in a generally chronological order, interspersed with personal memos, obituaries and notes on court practices.<ref>{{Harvnb|Baker|1972|p=67}}</ref> They are not entirely chronological; during his career, Coke took note of earlier cases which had drawn his attention. These were written down with the [[plea rolls|plea roll]] reference and the year in which Coke recorded them, but later editions failed to include the plea roll reference and led to inaccuracies.<ref>{{Harvnb|Baker|1972|p=68}}</ref>

The ''Reports'' have gained significant academic acclaim; writing in the ''Cornell Law Quarterly, ''Theodore Plucknett describes them as works of "incomparable richness" with a "profound influence upon the literature, and indeed the substance, of English law".<ref>{{Harvnb|Plucknett|1942|p=190}}</ref> John Baker has described them as "perhaps the single most influential series of named reports",<ref name=bak183>{{Harvnb|Baker|2002|p=183}}</ref> and even [[Francis Bacon]], Coke's rival, wrote in praise of them, saying "Had it not been for Sir Edward Coke's Reports (which though they may have errors, and some peremptory and extrajudicial resolutions more than are warranted, yet they contain infinite good decisions and rulings over of cases), for the law by this time had been almost like a ship without ballast; for that the cases of modern experience are fled from those that are adjudged and ruled in former time".<ref>{{Harvnb|Coquillette|1992|p=108}}</ref>

Although loaned to friends and family, and therefore in slight public circulation, Coke's ''Reports'' were never formally used during his lifetime. Select cases were published in 1600, containing the most famous of his decisions and pleadings, while the second volume in 1602 was more chronological in nature.<ref>{{Harvnb|Baker|1972|p=72}}</ref> The third part, published in the same year, was also chronological, while the fourth, published in 1604, was arranged by subject. The fifth part, published in 1605, is arranged similarly, as is the sixth, published in 1607.<ref>{{Harvnb|Baker|1972|p=73}}</ref> Five more volumes were published until 1615, but Coke died before he could publish a single-bound copy. No trace has been found of the draft manuscript.<ref>{{Harvnb|Baker|1972|p=75}}</ref>

Some academics have questioned the accuracy of the ''Reports''. Coke's famous ''Case of Proclamations'', and his speech there, was first brought into the public consciousness through its inclusion in Volume&nbsp;12 of his ''Reports'', and Roland G. Usher, writing in the ''[[English Historical Review]]'', notes that "Certain manuscripts at Hatfield House and elsewhere seem to throw some doubt upon this famous account of a famous interview".<ref>{{Harvnb|Usher|1903|p=664}}</ref> One of the reasons given for possible inaccuracies in the later volumes of the ''Reports'' is that they were published posthumously. In July 1634, officials acting on the order of the King had seized Coke's papers, but a 1641 motion in the House of Commons restored the extant papers to Coke's eldest son. The twelfth and thirteenth volumes of the reports were based on fragments of notes several decades old, not on Coke's original manuscript.<ref>{{Harvnb|Usher|1903|p=665}}</ref>

===''Institutes''===
{{main|Institutes of the Lawes of England}}

Coke's other main work was the ''Institutes of the Lawes of England'', a four-volume treatise described as his "masterwork". The first volume, the ''Commentary upon Littleton'', known as ''Coke on Littleton'', was published in 1628.<ref>{{Harvnb|Woolrych|1826|p=175}}</ref> It is ostensibly a commentary on [[Thomas Littleton (judge)|Sir Thomas Littleton]]'s ''[[Treatise on Tenures]]'', but actually covered many areas of the law of his time. The other three volumes were all published after his death, and covered 39 constitutional statutes of importance (starting with Magna Carta), the law relating to criminal law, and constitutional and administrative law, respectively.<ref>{{Harvnb|Boyer|2004a|p=xiii}}</ref> While the ''Reports'' were intended to give an explanation of the law chronologically, Coke's purpose was to provide an English language tutorial for students studying law at the [[Inns of Court]]. This served as an alternative to the Roman law lectures at university, which were based on Latin;<ref>{{Harvnb|Hostettler|1997|p=159}}</ref> according to Bowen, it was "a double vision; the ''Institutes'' as authority, the ''Reports'' as illustration by actual practise".<ref>{{Harvnb|Bowen|1957|p=438}}</ref>

Part one, the ''Commentary upon Littleton'', was undoubtedly the most famous; copies were exported to the United States early in the colonial era. The work was first printed in an American edition in 1812, by which point the English version was in its sixteenth edition, and had been commented on itself by various later legal authorities.<ref>{{Harvnb|Bowen|1957|p=439}}</ref> As with the ''Reports'', Coke's ''Institutes'' became a standard textbook in the United States, and was recorded in the law libraries of [[Harvard College]] in 1723 and [[Brown University]] in 1770; [[John Jay]], [[John Adams]], [[Theophilus Parsons]] and [[Thomas Jefferson]] were all influenced by it.<ref>{{Harvnb|Bowen|1957|p=443}}</ref> [[John Rutledge]] later wrote that "Coke's ''Institutes'' seems to be almost the foundations of our law", while Jefferson stated that "a sounder Whig never wrote more profound learning in the orthodox doctrine of British liberties".<ref>{{Harvnb|Ryan|2005|p=9}}</ref> The ''Third Institutes'' has been described as "the first really adequate discussion of treason, a work which went far towards offering the remedy of a humanized common law to the injustices of trial procedures".<ref name=bod471>{{Harvnb|Bodet|1970|p=471}}</ref>

The work had its detractors, with some writers criticising it for "repulsive pedantry" and "overbearing assertions", as well as incorrect citations to works that were later discredited.<ref>{{Harvnb|Bowen|1957|p=444}}</ref> There are also factual inaccuracies; Kenyon Homfray in the ''Ecclesiastical Law Journal'' notes that, despite being considered the supreme legal authority on the subject of consecration, which Coke covered in the third volume of the ''Institutes'', he offered no legal support for his opinion and ignored those pieces of case law which rejected his interpretation.<ref>{{Harvnb|Homfray|2009|p=6}}</ref>

===Jurisprudence===
Coke's jurisprudence centres on the hierarchy of the judges, the monarch, and Parliament in making law. Coke argued that the judges of the common law were those most suited to making law, followed by Parliament, and that the monarch was bound to follow any legal rules. This principle was justified by the idea that a judge, through his professional training, internalised what political historian and theorist Alan Cromartie referred to as "an infinity of wisdom", something that mere politicians or laypersons could not understand due to the complexity of the law.<ref>{{Harvnb|Cromartie|1995|p=14}}</ref> Coke's ''Commentary on Littleton'' has been interpreted as deliberately obtuse, with his aim being to write what Cromartie called "a sort of anti-textbook, a work whose very form denied that legal knowledge could be organised. The original edition could not be used for reference purposes, as Coke had published it without an index&nbsp;... It is a book to be 'read in' and lived with, rather than consulted, a monument to the uselessness of merely written knowledge unless it is internalised in a trained professional mind".<ref>{{Harvnb|Cromartie|1995|p=15}}</ref> This theory – that judges were the natural arbiters of the law – is known as the "appeal to reason", with "reason" referring not to rationality but the method and logic used by judges in upholding and striking down laws.<ref>{{Harvnb|Cromartie|1995|p=17}}</ref> Coke's position meant that certainty of the law and intellectual beauty was the way to see if a law was just and correct, and that the system of law could eventually become sophisticated enough to be predictable.<ref>{{Harvnb|Cromartie|1995|p=19}}</ref>

[[John Selden]] similarly thought that the common law was the proper law of England. He argued that this did not necessarily create judicial discretion to alter it, and that proper did not necessarily equal perfect. The law was nothing more than a contract made by the English people; this is known as the "appeal to contract".<ref>{{Harvnb|Cromartie|1995|p=32}}</ref> [[Thomas Hobbes]] and Francis Bacon argued against Coke's theory. They were proponents of [[natural law]], created by the King's authority, not by any individual judge. Hobbes felt that there was no skill unique to lawyers, and that the law could be understood not through Coke's "reason" (the method used by lawyers), but through understanding the King's instructions. While judges did make law, this was only valid because it was "tacitly confirmed (because not disapproved) by the [King]".<ref>{{Harvnb|Cromartie|1995|p=99}}</ref>