A Study On The Reform Of Writs In England Under Henry Ⅱ

The writ first appear in the9-10century. At first, it is used as the executive documentwith which the king conveys his orders and then it gradually develops into the judicialdocument which is necessary for the British subjects to request judicial relief from the royalcourt. The writs corresponding to different lawsuits provide different procedure and judge way.The king make the royal court access the judicial jurisdiction over the related cases, so as toinitiate and ensure the legal procedures with promulgating the writs corresponding to differentlawsuits to his subjects. As the great fruit of wisdom in the history of British legal system, thesystem of writs has played an irreplaceable important role in the development of early societyin the UK. It has been not only widely used in administrative, judicial and other fields by theking, but also become the core of origins of the common law. There is no exaggeration to saythat this system affects the trajectory of the development of the British law, and still plays animpact on British society until today. Research on the system of writs will help us to sort outthe trajectory of the developments of medieval English political and legal which hasimportant theoretical and practical significance.The Henry II period was a major turning point of the writ system. After the judicialreforms of Henry II, the writ system finished its translation from administrative writs tojudicial ones and eventually built the norm system. As a result, this paper selects the time ofHenry II period as the target of the research which could help us to explore the essence of thewrit system.This article is composed by three parts: the introduction, the body and the conclusion.The introduction includes the important role of the writ system in British legal history,the feasibility and significance of the article topics, as well as domestic and internationalresearch status of the writ system.The body is divided into four parts. In the first part, the origin of the writ system hasbeen inspected, the concepts and classifications of the writ have been introduced, and also thehistorical background of the writ and its development before the reform of Henry II has beenincluded.In the second part, the author analyzes the internal and external factors that make HenryII to start the reform of the writ system. Among these factors, four of the internal ones are the driving force for Henry II to reform the writ system while two of the external factors are thepolitical conditions and the theoretical conditions for the reform.The third part is the centre part of the article. In this part, the specific measures thatHenry II formulated in the reform of the writs system has been elaborated, including theoriginal writ, the petty assize, the praecipe and the formation of the writ.In the fourth part, the author analyzes the impact of the subsequent development of thewrit system and British society and tries to look for the draw for our modern judicial reform.In the conclusion, the author makes a brief summary of the course of developments ofthe writ system in the UK, and reaffirms the important position of the system in British history.In this paper, the author has analyzed the changes during the Henry II period from theperspective of jurisprudence. And the synthesis of the relevant historical data and the guide ofthe historical materialism is the important prerequisite for the article.