Doctors' Commons

Doctors' Commons

▪ legal society
      formerly a self-governing teaching body of practitioners of canon and civil law. Located in London, it was similar to the Inns of Court, where English common law, rather than civil law, was taught. Members of the Doctors' Commons were those who held degrees either of doctor of civil law at Oxford or doctor of law at Cambridge and who subsequently had been admitted as advocates (similar to admittance to the bar for common lawyers) by the dean of arches, the presiding officer of the Court of Appeal under the authority of the archbishop of Canterbury. Members of the governing body, called fellows, were elected from the advocates by existing fellows. The members practiced in the ecclesiastical courts and in the Court of Admiralty. They also participated in arbitrations involving questions of international law.

      In 1565 the society leased a site in Paternoster Row, near St. Paul's, which served as its headquarters until 1858. In that year, the society was dissolved, under terms of the Court of Probate and Matrimonial Causes acts of 1857. These measures were forerunners of the Judicature Act of 1873, which established a single supreme court of the judicature that inherited the jurisdiction of the courts of civil law as well as those of common law and equity, with a single bar practicing before it. See also Inns of Court.

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Universalium. 2010.

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  • Doctors' Commons — plural noun Before the establishment of the Divorce Court and Probate Court in 1857, the college of the doctors of civil law in London, incorporated by royal charter in 1768 • • • Main Entry: ↑doctor …   Useful english dictionary

  • Doctors' Commons —    Between Knightrider Street north and Queen Victoria Street south. In Castle Baynard Ward (O.S. 1880).    First mention: 1535 (L. and P. H. VIII. IX. p. 182).    Other names : Garden of the capital house lately called Mountjoye place, and now… …   Dictionary of London

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  • Doctors' Commons — An institution near St. Paul s Cathedral, where the ecclesiastical and admiralty courts are held. In 1768, a royal charter was obtained, by virtue of which the members of the society and their successors were incorporated under the name and title …   Ballentine's law dictionary

  • Commons — Com mons, n. pl., 1. The mass of the people, as distinguished from the titled classes or nobility; the commonalty; the common people. [Eng.] [1913 Webster] T is like the commons, rude unpolished hinds, Could send such message to their sovereign.… …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

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