海事法
English Admiralty law is based not on the common law but on civil law, though with some common law and statutory developments. As such, it was historically administered, not by the practitioners in the common law courts but by the practitioners in the ecclesiastical courts, who were organised in the Doctors' Commons and called "advocates" and "proctors," rather than barristers and solicitors. This demarcation was widely held to be restrictive and by the middle of the nineteenth century there was pressure for reform, culminating in the Court of Probate Act 1857 which started the process of abolition of Doctors' Commons which was completed in 1865.