The qualification for jury service is having land with an income over rents of at least 20 pounds, with leases for 500 years or more, or 99 years, or any term determinable on one or more lives. Being a freeholder is not necessary. In London, the qualification is being a householder and having lands to the value of 100 pounds. No sheriff may excuse a qualified person from jury service for money or other reward. Selection of jurors for each case is to be done by some impartial person pulling their names from a box. Later, persons refusing jury service could be fined.
Poor persons may be paid up to 6d. to give evidence against felons.
Pirates may not be tried again for the same crime or for a certain crime and high treason. When the marine force was raised, the marines were also given protection from double jeopardy.
In Chancery, a plaintiff filed a complaint and interrogatories prepared by counsel. Only in Chancery could there be discovery, such as interrogatories [written questions]. Court officials asked the questions of witnesses without the presence of the parties or their lawyers. Officials wrote down the answers in their own terms So there was no cross-examination possible. Most decrees took many years to be made.
The ordinary administrative court of first instance is that of one or two Justices of the Peace who issued orders in matters of public safety, public order, public morals, health, the poor, highways, water, fields, forests, fisheries, trade, building, fire, begging, and vagrancy. They examined suspicious persons and issued warrants for the removal of any person likely to become a public charge. The Justice of the Peace also regulated wages, servants, apprentices, and day laborers. In his judicial capacity, he tried all crimes and felonies except treason, though in practice death penalty cases were transferred to the assize justices. The Justices of the Peace of a hundred hold special sessions such as for appointment of parochial officers, highway disputes, and the grant of wine, beer, and spirit licenses. The appointment of overseers of the poor, authorization of parish rates, and reading of the Riot Act to mobs to disperse them, required more than one of the Justices of the Peace of the hundred to participate. All the Justices of the Peace of the county met four times a year at Quarter Sessions to hear appeals from penal sentences, to determine the county rate of tax, to appoint treasurers of the county and governors of the county prison and house of correction, to issue regulations on prices of provisions and on wages, to settle fees of the county officials, to grant licenses for powder-mills and other industries, to hear nuisance complaints such as those against parishes failing to keep their roads in repair, to make regulations for the holding of markets, to hear complaints concerning local government, and to register dissenting chapels. In more and more matters specified by statute, the Quarter Sessions heard appeals from the orders of individual Justices of the Peace instead of common law courts hearing them by writ of certiorari. The writ of certiorari allowed administrative decisions to be reviewed by the common law courts for compliance with law, competency of the court, and interpretation of the administrative law. The writ of habeas corpus appealed administrative decisions to imprison not only after arrest for criminal proceedings, but any coercive measure for enforcing an administrative order. The writ of mandamus was available for enforcing the injunctions of administrative law against towns, corporations, and all other authorities and private persons, where the ordinary punishments were insufficient. Justices of the Peace in rural areas were squires and in towns aldermen.
In 1747, Justices of the Peace were authorized to decide issues between masters and mistresses and their employees who were hired for at least one year. If a servant misbehaved, they could authorize reduction of wage, discharge, and hard labor at a house of Correction up to one month. If a servant was not paid, he could authorize payment of wages up to 10 pounds for an agricultural servant, and up to 5 pounds for an artificer, handicraftsman, miner, collier, keelman, pitman, glassman, potter, or ordinary laborer. Later, tinners and miners were added to the last category. In 1758, employees of less than a year were included.
In 1775, Justices of the Peace were authorized to administer any oath for the purpose of levying penalties.
To be a Justice of the Peace, one must have income of 100 pounds a year from a freehold, copyhold, or customary estate that is for life or for a term of at least 21 years, or be entitled to a reversion of lands leased for 1 or 2 or 3 lives, or for any term of years determinable on the death of 1 or 2 or 3 lives. Excepted were peers, justices, and heads of colleges or vice chancellors at the universities. The Justices of the Peace were selected by the superintending Sheriffs and Lords Lieutenant, the latter of whom were usually peer with a ministers' office or a high court official. No attorney or solicitor or proctor could be a Justice of the Peace unless the locality had Justices of the Peace by charter.
A request for Certiorari for removal of convictions, judgments, orders made by Justices of the Peace must be made within six months and after notice to the Justice of the Peace who may argue cause against granting certiorari.
In the common law courts, trespass in ejectment served the purposes of most of the actions involving land. Assumpsit covered the whole province of debt, and much more. Trover more than covered the old province of detinue. Trespass still served for all cases in which the defendant had been guilty of directly applying force to the plaintiff's body, goods or chattels. Trespass on the case covered miscellaneous torts. Replevin was still used. Covenant remained in use for the enforcement of promises under seal. Account gradually came under the equity jurisdiction of Chancery. Common law writs of dower are largely superseded by the relief given to the doweress in the courts of equity, where new and valuable rights were given to her and to her personal representatives against the heir and his representatives. The actions of indebitatus assumpsit is being extended to actions upon quasi-contract, in which the element of contract is not required e.g. quantum meruit, where a contract is implied from the facts of the case.