Henry de Bracton

Henry de Bracton (born, Devon?, England—died 1268, Exeter, Devon?) was a leading medieval English jurist and author of De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae (c. 1235; “On the Laws and Customs of England”), one of the oldest systematic treatises on the common law. While depending chiefly on English judicial decisions and the methods of pleading required by English judges, Bracton enlarged the common law with principles derived from both Roman (civil) law and canon law. De legibus shows the influence of several European continental jurists—notably Azzone (Azo), a Bolognese glossator of Roman law—and its style suggests that he was trained at Oxford, which then was the centre for the study of civil law in England. Bracton’s work did not have a lasting impact on studies of the common law on the European continent, a fact indicative of the comparative unimportance of systematic scholarly exposition of the common law.

By 1245 Bracton was an itinerant justice for King Henry III, and from about 1247 to 1257 he was a judge of the Coram Rege (“Before the Monarch”), which afterward became the Court of Queen’s (or King’s) Bench. Like most other English lawyers of his time, he was a priest; from 1264 he was chancellor of Exeter Cathedral. In 1884 a manuscript collection of about 2,000 English law cases, evidently by Bracton, was discovered. Called the Note-Book, it was edited by the British legal scholar Frederic Maitland and published in 1887.