The Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities notes that South African-born Margaret Marshall was appointed to head what it says is the oldest court in the western hemisphere, our own SJC, eight years ago yesterday by Republican Governor Paul Cellucci.
This is a reminder of how far Romney pushed his party to the right during his years on Beacon Hill: a similar appointment by today’s Massachusetts GOP is, I think, hard to imagine.
Ogonowski’s decision to let anti-choice/anti-stem cell research extremist Duncan Hunter speak for his campaign speaks to how radicalized the Massachusetts GOP has become.
Incidentally, can it possibly be true that the SJC is the oldest court in the western hemisphere. It is a flattering thought but, first, there were many complex societies in the western hemisphere before Europeans arrived; and, second, the Spanish were here for many years before Massachusetts was even a glimmer in a religious fanatic’s eye.
…but, I’ll think out loud for a moment about courts and what we consider courts. This is off the top of my head so I don’t claim everything I say to be accurate.
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Modern legal systems seem only to be a European idea springing from the Napoleonic Code, British Common Law, and the German what-ever-it-was-called. I think any Asian Justice systems were tied with either monarchy and/or religion and didn’t have trials as we know them (I imagine Habeas Corpus was introduced to the East by the British Empire). Also, given that Native American civilizations were totalitarian nations or cheifdoms/tribes, I can’t imagine Native Americans have a specialized permanent sitting judiciary.
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And the Spaniards who came here before the English? I don’t know, but weren’t they less about permanent settlements and more about raping the land and the people for resources to finance the throne’s European wars? And was Spain even a constitutional monarchy at the time? Did they have a judiciary in Spain in the 1500/1600s? Which institutions were available to and would benefit Spanish colonies back then?
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So if a Judiciary is only a European idea, and a relatively new European idea at the time of western hemisphere colonization, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that the Mass SJC is the oldest. Provided that my conjecture is to some degree accurate.
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The Mass SJC website claims:
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blockquote>The Supreme Judicial Court, originally called the Superior Court of Judicature, was established in 1692 and is the oldest appellate court in continuous existence in the Western Hemisphere. After the adoption of the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780, the name of the Court was changed to the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC). The SJC operates under the oldest, still functioning written constitution in the world.
Many other countries have changed governments or constitutions since 1692. Viva la revolucion?
Does that count? They certainly do sit in judgement. It is just their bad luck that they are no longer the court of nations, bu just a religion. But they have been continuously “sitting” for over 500 years.
Rome’s not in the Western Hemisphere…
Roman Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith
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…was the fancy name that the RCCi gave to the Inquisition.
seems to have lost it’s illustrios stature and place of honor with me.
That date was the award to Henry Kissinger for “peace with honor” in Vietnam.
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Al’s award simply validiates the fact that his version of global warming is a scam and I need not worry about moving inland. You have no ideal how much that opened up the survivalist possibilities!
They didn’t say it was the first court in the western hemisphere, they said it’s the oldest. That doesn’t imply there weren’t any before it, just that none of those that were around then are still around now.
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Incidentally I believe the Massachusetts Constitution is the oldest still-functioning government constitution in the world. It was the model for the US Constitution, and it was where they got appointed judges, something I wish most other states had copied from MA as well. Credit John Adams, who strongly believed in independent judges, wrote it into the MA Constitution, and advocated its inclusion in the federal one.
…the MA SJC is the oldest continuously functioning civil court in the US. I don’t know whether or not that is true, but that is probably what they meant.
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Regarding British Common Law, that was founded on Roman law. I don’t know exactly where French civil law came from, but it was imported into Louisiana.
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According to my law school instructor, the French civil law contained many conflicts with the Uniform Commercial Code, which made it difficult for the Louisianans to adopt it.
Raj, don’t know where you got the idea that the common law derives from the Roman law. Maybe you are thinking of Bracton, an early English treatise that is influenced by Roman law, and it is of course true that the Norman judges were often churchmen. But almost nothing about the early common law, from the writ system to the art of pleading to the law of tenures, has much if anything to do with Roman law. Here is a short excerpt from Baker’s Introduction to English Legal History.
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TedF
http://en.wikipedia….
Bob,
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If Hunter is “extreme” because he is against abortion and stem-cell research, then those who are in favor of abortion and stem-cell research are extreme on the other end.