Summary jurisdiction

Summary jurisdiction, in the widest sense of the phrase, in English law includes the power asserted by courts of record to deal brevi manu with contempts of court without the intervention of a jury. Probably the power was originally exercisable only when the fact was notorious, i.e. done in presence of the court. But it has long been exercised as to extra curial contempts.

The term is also applied to the special powers given by statute or rules to the High Court of Justice and to county courts for dealing with certain classes of causes or matters by methods more simple and expeditious than the ordinary procedure of an action. But the phrase in modern times is applied almost exclusively forms of jurisdiction exercised by justices of the peace out of general or quarter sessions, and without the assistance.

Ever since the creation of the office of justice of the peace the tendency of English legislation has been to enable them to deal with minor offences without a jury. Legislation was necessary because, as Blackstone says, except in the case of contempts the common law is a stranger to trial without a jury, and because even when an offence is created by statute the procedure for trying must be by indictment and trial before a jury, unless by the statute creating the offence or some other statute another mode of trial is provided. In one remarkable instance power is given by an act of 1725 (12 Geo. I. c. 29, s. 4) to judges of the superior courts summarily to sentence to transportation (penal servitude) a solicitor practising after conviction of barratry, forgery or perjury (Stephen, Dict. Crim. Law, 6th ed., 113).

In other words all the summary jurisdiction of justices of the peace is the creation of statute. The history of the gradual development of the summary jurisdiction of justices of the peace is stated in Stephen's Hist. Crim. Law, vol. i. ch. 4. The result of legislation is that summary jurisdiction has been conferred by statutes and by-laws as to innumerable petty offences of a criminal or quasi-criminal character (most of which in French law would be described as contraventions), ranging through every letter of the alphabet. The most important perhaps are those under the Army, Game, Highway, Licensing, Merchant Shipping, Post Office, Public Health, Revenue and Vagrancy Acts.

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