Judicial Functions Of The House Of Lords
The House of Lords, in addition to having a legislative function, historically also had a judicial function. It functioned as a court of first instance for the trials of peers, for impeachment cases, and as a court of last resort within the United Kingdom. In the latter case the House's jurisdiction was essentially limited to the hearing of appeals from the lower courts. Appeals were technically not to the House of Lords, but rather to the Queen-in-Parliament. By constitutional convention, only those lords who were legally qualified (Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, or Law Lords) heard the appeals, since World War II usually in what was known as the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords rather than in the chamber of the House.
During the 20th and early 21st centuries, the judicial functions were gradually removed. The final trial of a peer in the House of Lords was in 1935, and in 1948, the use of special courts for trials of peers was abolished. In 2009 the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom assumed the functions as the new court of final resort in the UK.
Read more about Judicial Functions Of The House Of Lords: Reform, In Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words judicial, functions, house and/or lords:
“Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“Platonic England, house of solitudes,
rests in its laurels and its injured stone,”
—Geoffrey Hill (b. 1932)
“The lords of life, the lords of life,—
I saw them pass
In their own guise,
Like and unlike,
Portly and grim,—
Use and surprise,
Surface and dream,
Succession swift, and spectral wrong,
Temperament without a tongue,
And the inventor of the game
Omnipresent without name;—”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)