Norman law, was known already to Glanvill, and gradually grew to its present proportions. The question which I have to consider, however, is not the story of its introduction, but the substantive conception under which it fell when it was introduced.
If you were thinking of the matter a priori it would seem that no reference to history was necessary, at least to explain the client's being bound in the cause by his attorney's acts. The case presents itself like that of an agent authorized to make a contract in such terms as he may think advisable. But as I have hinted, whatever common-sense would now say, even in the latter case it is probable that the power of contracting through others was arrived at in actual fact by extending the analogy of slaves to freemen. And it is at least equally clear that the law had need of some analogy or fiction in order to admit a representation in lawsuits. I have given an illustration from Iceland in my book on the Common Law. There the contract of a suit was transferred from Thorgeir to Mord "as if he were the next of kin."[1] In the Roman law it is well known that the same difficulty was experienced. The English law agreed with the Northern sources in treating attorneys as sustaining the persona of their principal. The result may have been worked out in a different way, but that fundamental thought they had in common. I do not inquire into the recondite causes, but simply observe the fact.
Bracton says that the attorney represents the persona of his principal in nearly everything.[2] He was "put in the place of" his principal, loco positus (according to the literal meaning of the word attorney), as every other case in the Abbreviatio Placitorum shows. The essoign de malo lecti had reference to the illness of the attorney as a matter of necessity.[3] But, in general, the attorney was dealt with on the footing of a servant, and he is called so as soon as his position is formulated. Such is the language of the passage in West's Symboleography which I have quoted above, and the anonymous case which held an attorney not liable for maliciously acting in a cause which he knew to be unfounded.[4] When, therefore, it is said that the "act of the attorney
- ↑ The Common Law, 359. See Brunner, in 1 Holtzendorff, Encyc. II. 3, A. 1, § 2, 3d ed., p. 166. 1 Stubbs, Const. Hist. 82.
- ↑ "Attornatus fere in omnibus personam domini representat." Bract, fol. 342 a. See LL. Hen. I. 42, § 2.
- ↑ Bract., fol. 342 a. Cf. Glanv. XI., c. 3.
- ↑ Anon., 1 Mod. 209, 210 (H. 27 & 28 Car. II.).
