breaches of the law and
imposes small penalties. The justices sitting by twos in petty
sessions exercise an extensive summary jurisdiction over offenses
specified minutely by the law.[249] They sit without a jury, but
appeal can be carried, as a rule, to the justices at quarter sessions
and even, on questions of law, to the High Court. Four times a year
all of the justices of the county, or such of them as care to be
present, meet in quarter sessions. The jurisdiction here exercised is
in part appellate and in part original. The court tries, without a
jury, all cases appealed from petty sessions, and it tries, with a (p. 173)
jury, and after indictment by a grand jury, all cases involving
offenses not of a minor nature, save that the most serious offenses,
punishable in most instances with death or life imprisonment, are
reserved for trial in the assizes, i.e., by judges from Westminster
travelling on circuit. By means of the writs of _mandamus_ and
_certiorari_ the actual proceedings of quarter sessions are controlled
not infrequently by the superior courts.[250]

[Footnote 248: See p. 183.]

[Footnote 249: Chiefly by the Summary Jurisdiction
Act of 1879.]

[Footnote 250: Medley, Manual of English
Constitutional History, 392-400. An excellent
monograph is C. A. Beard, The Office of Justice of
the Peace in England, in _Columbia University
Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law_,
XX., No. 1. (New York, 1904).]

*181. Special Borough Arrangements.*--The smaller boroughs, having no
separate commissions of the peace, are for purposes of criminal
justice merely portions of the counties in which they lie. In many of
the larger ones, however, there have been set up judicial arrangements
in consequence of which the borough is withdrawn from the county
jurisdiction. Some have a commission of the peace but no quarter
sessions. In them the justices can exercise, in addition to the usual
functions of police magistrate, only a summary jurisdiction. Others
have a court of quarter sessions; though it is to be observed that
where this tribunal exists its work is performed actually by the
recorder, a barrister appointed by the crown and paid by the borough.

III. THE HIGHER COURTS

*182. Supreme Court of Judicature: the High Court.*--The higher
tribuna