The Most Wholesome Law-- The Habeas Corpus Act of 1679
1960; Oxford University Press; Volume: 65; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/1849620
ISSN1937-5239
Autores Tópico(s)Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies
ResumoAN unsolved mystery of the reign of Charles II is the origin and passage of the great constitutional reform of the period-the Habeas Corpus of I679. The statute was enacted at the height of the Popish Plot when men seemingly were more interested in getting their fellow Englishmen into jail than out of it. There is no doubt but that the principle of habeas corpus was hated by the royal family, and James II later designated the act as one of two laws that must be repealed. Yet this important statute, called Shaftesbury's Act and later claimed by the Whigs as their greatest achievement, was scarcely noted by contemporaries, and dissidents of the Exclusion Parliaments made no claim to party sponsorship. In fact, they seemed barely aware of it. There is even some doubt as to whether the bill was legally enacted. Persistent although unofficial were the rumors of the i680's that the bill had passed the Lords only on a teller's trick, and Gilbert Burnet's story of the one fat peer who was counted as ten has since been widely accepted as fact.' The reputation of the Habeas Corpus as the foundation of liberty was born with the Revolution of i688, but men in Parliament, all of them country party leaders, had been fighting for the measure for ten years before its passage. The debates on habeas corpus that took place in the House of Commons between i668 and I679 have not been fully examined. At least, no one has determined the significance that these debates may have either on the act itself
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