The chairman of a county council is ex officio a justice of the peace for the county, and the chairman of an urban or rural district council for the county in which the district is situated. Justices cannot act beyond the limits of the jurisdiction for which they are appointed, and the warrant of a justice cannot be executed out of his jurisdiction unless it be backed, that is, endorsed by a justice of the jurisdiction in which it is to be carried into execution. A justice improperly refusing to act on his office, or acting partially and corruptly, may be proceeded against by a criminal information, and a justice refusing to act may be compelled to do so by the High Court of Justice. An action will lie against a justice for any act done by him in excess of his jurisdiction, and for any act within his jurisdiction which has been done wrongfully and with malice, and without reasonable or probable cause. But no action can be brought against a justice for a wrongful conviction until it has been quashed. By the Justices’ Qualification Act 1744, every justice for a county was required to have an estate of freehold, copyhold, or customary tenure in fee, for life or a given term, of the yearly value of £100. By an act of 1875 the occupation of a house rated at £100 was made a qualification. No such qualifications were ever required for a borough justice, and it was not until 1906 that county justices were put on the same footing in this respect. The Justices of the Peace Act 1906 did away with all qualification by estate. It also removed the necessity for residence within the county, permitting the same residential qualification as for borough justices, “within seven miles thereof.” The same act removed the disqualification of solicitors to be county justices and assimilated to the existing power to remove other justices from the commission of the peace the power to exclude ex officio justices.
The justices for every petty sessional division of a county or for a borough having a separate commission of the peace must appoint a fit person to be their salaried clerk. He must be either a barrister of not less than fourteen years’ standing, or a solicitor of the supreme court, or have served for not less than seven years as a clerk to a police or stipendiary magistrate or to a metropolitan police court. An alderman or councillor of a borough must not be appointed as clerk, nor can a clerk of the peace for the borough or for the county in which the borough is situated be appointed. A borough clerk is not allowed to prosecute. The salary of a justice’s clerk comes, in London, out of the police fund; in counties out of the county fund; in county boroughs out of the borough fund, and in other boroughs out of the county fund.
The vast and multifarious duties of the justices cover some portion of every important head of the criminal law, and extend to a considerable number of matters relating to the civil law.
In the United States these officers are sometimes appointed by the executive, sometimes elected. In some states, justices of the peace have jurisdiction in civil cases given to them by local regulations.
JUSTICIAR (med. Lat. justiciarius or justitiarius, a judge), in English history, the title of the chief minister of the Norman and earlier Angevin kings. The history of the title in this connotation is somewhat obscure. Justiciarius meant simply “judge,” and was originally applied, as Stubbs points out (Const. Hist. i. 389, note), to any officer of the king’s court, to the chief justice, or in a very general way to all and sundry who possessed courts of their own or were qualified to act as judices in the shire-courts, even the style capitalis justiciarius being used of judges of the royal court other than the chief. It was not till the reign of Henry II. that the title summus or capitalis justiciarius, or justiciarius totius Angliae was exclusively applied to the king’s chief minister. The office, however, existed before the style of its holder was fixed; and, whatever their contemporary title (e.g. Custos Angliae), later writers refer to them as justiciarii, with or without the prefix summus or capitalis (ibid. p. 346). Thus Ranulf Flambard, the minister of William II., who was probably the first to exercise the powers of a justiciar, is called justiciarius by Ordericus Vitalis.
The origin of the justiciarship is thus given by Stubbs (ibid. p. 276). The sheriff “was the king’s representative in all matters judicial, military and financial in the shire. From him, or from the courts of which he was the presiding officer, appeal lay to the king alone; but the king was often absent from England and did not understand the language of his subjects. In his absence the administration was entrusted to a justiciar, a regent or lieutenant of the kingdom; and the convenience being once ascertained of having a minister who could in the whole kingdom represent the king, as the sheriff did in the shire, the justiciar became a permanent functionary.”
The fact that the kings were often absent from England, and that the justiciarship was held by great nobles or churchmen, made this office of an importance which at times threatened to overshadow that of the Crown. It was this latter circumstance which ultimately led to its abolition. Hubert de Burgh (q.v.) was the last of the great justiciars; after his fall (1231) the justiciarship was not again committed to a great baron, and the chancellor soon took the position formerly occupied by the justiciar as second to the king in dignity, as well as in power and influence. Finally, under Edward I. and his successor, in place of the justiciar—who had presided over all causes vice regis—separate heads were established in the three branches into which the curia regis as a judicial body had been divided: justices of common pleas, justices of the king’s bench and barons of the exchequer.
Outside England the title justiciar was given under Henry II. to the seneschal of Normandy. In Scotland the title of justiciar was borne, under the earlier kings, by two high officials, one having his jurisdiction to the north, the other to the south of the Forth. They were the king’s lieutenants for judicial and administrative purposes and were established in the 12th century, either by Alexander I. or by his successor David I. In the 12th century a magister justitiarius also appears in the Norman kingdom of Sicily, title and office being probably borrowed from England; he presided over the royal court (Magna curia) and was, with his assistants, empowered to decide, inter alia, all cases reserved to the Crown (see Du Cange, s.v. Magister Justitiarius).
See W. Stubbs, Const. Hist. of England; Du Cange, Glossarium (Niort, 1885) s.v. “Justitiarius.”
JUSTICIARY, HIGH COURT OF, in Scotland, the supreme
criminal court, consisting of five of the lords of session together
with the lord justice-general and the lord justice-clerk as president
and vice-president respectively. The constitution of the court
is settled by the Act 1672 c. 16. The lords of justiciary hold
circuits regularly twice a year according to the ancient practice,
which, however, had been allowed to fall into disuse until revived
in 1748. For circuit purposes Scotland is divided into northern,
southern and western districts (see Circuit). Two judges
generally go on a circuit, and in Glasgow they are by special
statute authorized to sit in separate courts. By the Criminal
Procedure (Scotland) Act 1887 all the senators of the college of
justice are lords commissioners of justiciary. The high court,
sitting in Edinburgh, has, in addition to its general jurisdiction,
an exclusive jurisdiction for districts not within the
jurisdiction of the circuits—the three Lothians, and Orkney and
Shetland. The high court also takes up points of difficulty
arising before the special courts, like the court for crown cases
reserved in England. The court of justiciary has authority to
try all crimes, unless when its jurisdiction has been excluded by
special enactment of the legislature. It is also stated to have an
inherent jurisdiction to punish all criminal acts, even if they
have never before been treated as crimes. Its judgments are
believed to be not subject to any appeal or review, but it may be
doubted whether an appeal on a point of law would not lie to the
house of lords. The following crimes must be prosecuted in the
court of justiciary: treason, murder, robbery, rape, fire-raising,
deforcement of messengers, breach of duty by magistrates, and
all offences for which a statutory punishment higher than
imprisonment is imposed.
JUSTIFICATION, in law, the showing by a defendant in a suit of sufficient reason why he did what he was called upon to answer,
