Letter from Charles Kenyon, Assistant State Public Defender Marinette, Wisconsin From Wins

Letter from Charles Kenyon, Assistant State Public Defender
Marinette, Wisconsin

From Winston Churchill's A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH SPEAKING PEOPLE
the following quotations

[In writing about King Henry II in the twelfth century:]  The jury
system has come to stand for all we mean by English justice,
because so long as a case has to be scrutinized by twelve honest
men, defendant and plaintiff alike have a safe-guard from arbitrary
perversion of the law.  It is this which distinguishes the law
administered in English courts from Continental legal systems based
on Roman law.  Thus amidst the great process of centralization the
old principle was preserved, and endures to this day, that law
flows from the people, and is not given by the King.  [Vol.I,
p.219]...

Even the framers of the Magna Carta did not attempt to lay down new
law or proclaim any broad general principles.  This was because
both sovereign and subject were in practice bound by the Common
Law, and the liberties of Englishmen rested not in any enactment of
the State, but on immemorial slow-growing custom declared by juries
of free men who gave their verdicts case by case in open court.
[Vol. I,p.225]