Opinion ID: 2381895
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Common Law Writs of Mandamus and Prohibition

Text: A writ of mandamus is, in general, a command issuing in the king's name from the court of king's bench, and directed to any person, corporation, or inferior court of judicature, within the king's dominions, requiring them to do some particular thing therein specified, which appertains to their office and duty, and which the court of king's bench has previously determined, or at least supposes, to be consonant with right and justice. It is a high prerogative writ, of a most extensively remedial nature.... 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 110 (facsimile ed. 1768; hereinafter Blackstone) [emphasis in original]. The same author describes prohibition as a writ issuing properly only out of the court of king's bench, being the king's prerogative writ ... directed to the judge and parties of a suit in any inferior court, commanding them to cease from the prosecution thereof, upon a suggestion that ... the cause ... does not belong to that jurisdiction, but to the cognizance of some other court.... [The writ also may issue] if, in handling of matters clearly within their cognizance, [the inferior courts] transgress the bounds prescribed to them by the laws of England.... Id. at 112. These writs were two of the common law prerogative or extraordinary writs [1] that issued out of the Court of King's Bench. And the evolution of that court tells us much about the writs themselves, and the power of a court (absent constitutional or statutory authority) to issue them. In its earlier days at least, the King actually sat in the Court of King's Bench, as by later fiction he was supposed to have done. 1 W. Holdsworth, A History of English Law 207 (7th ed. 1956) (hereinafter 1 Holdsworth). Moreover, in the medieval period, the court was closely connected with the Council. Id. at 209. [T]he Curia Regis was a large undifferentiated court, composed both of the leading nobility lay and spiritual and of royal officials, by means of which the king carried on all the business of the central government  judicial, legislative, and executive. Id. at 477 [footnote omitted]. The notion of separation of powers  even today somewhat foreign to British constitutional law  simply did not exist. Thus this body exercised broad supervisory authority over subordinate officials, judicial and otherwise, probably without paying much heed to whether a particular act of supervision was judicial or administrative in nature. It exercised this authority in part through the prerogative writs. Id. at 226. As time passed and government became more sophisticated, or at least more complex, these arrangements began to change. Thus, towards the end of the 14th Century, the Council was becoming more especially the organ of the executive side of the government, and Parliament of the legislative side; while the court of King's Bench was tending to become simply a court of common law, which was concerned with the judicial side of government. Id. at 210 [footnote omitted]. But despite this metamorphosis, the court preserved both in its style and in its jurisdiction traces of the days when it was a court of a very different kind. In its wide powers of control over other courts and officials, and in its wide criminal jurisdiction, it retained powers of a quasi-political nature which came to it from the days when the court held coram rege was both King's Bench and Council. Id. at 211. Thus when King's Bench became established as a common law court, it had original jurisdiction and appellate jurisdiction in both civil and criminal cases. And it had a general superintendence over the due observance of the law by officials and others. Id. at 212. As we have seen, it was generally in the exercise of this power that it issued the prerogative writs. In the 16th and 17th centuries, for instance, [b]y means of these [prerogative] writs ... [and by other means] the doings of the justices of the peace, of the borough Courts, of courts leet, and of parishes were frequently controlled; and rules were laid down for the guidance of these authorities on points of law and procedure. 5 W. Holdsworth A History of English Law 420 (3d ed. 1945).