Balfour v. Balfour (1919)
Lalman Shukla v. Gauri Datt (1913)
Rose and Frank Co v. Crompton and Brother Ltd (1925)
Harvey v. Facey (1893)
Ramsgate
... [Show More] Victoria Hotel v. Montefiore (1866)
Felthouse v. Bindley (1862)
Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain v. Boots Cash Chemist (1953)
Bhagwandas Kedia v.
for example
1. The Case of Proclamations, 1610
Over 400 years ago, the chief justice, Sir Edward Coke, ruled that King James I could not prohibit new building in London without the support of parliament. King James believed that he had a divine right to make any laws that he wished. But the court opposed his view, and decided that the monarchy could not wield its power in this arbitrary way.
By the end of that century, the Glorious Revolution laid the foundation for today’s constitutional monarchy, whereby whoever is king or queen respects the law-making authority of the elected parliament.
Entick v Carrington, 1765
Author and schoolmaster John Entick was suspected of writing a libellous pamphlet against the government. In response, the secretary of state sent Nathan Carrington, along with a group of other king’s men, to search Entick’s house for evidence. Entick then sued the men for trespass.
The court decided that the secretary of state did not have the legal authority to issue a search warrant, and therefore Carrington had trespassed. This case reflects the principle that “no man is above the law” – not even the secretary of state. To this day, law enforcement agencies may only do what the law allows.
R v Dudley and Stephens, 1884
In this case, the survivors of a shipwreck who killed and ate the youngest and weakest crew member were prosecuted for murder. Their defence was based on “necessity” – that they needed to eat the boy, as they were unlikely to survive and the boy probably would have died anyway.
Tom Dudley’s own sketch of their boat, the Mignonette. Wikimedia Commons.
It may have been a “custom of the sea” that cannibalism was allowed under such circumstances, but the defendants were found guilty on the basis that all life is equal – the law expected them to die, rather than kill another.
But the public was sympathetic to the defendants, and their sentences were later commuted from death to six months imprisonment. The boy was named Richard Parker, as is the tiger in the Man Booker prize-winning novel Life of Pi. [Show Less]