Colonial Courts

In colonial British America, local county courts functioned as the primary unit of adjudication. The English colonists who came to America failed to transport the English system of common law, prerogative, and ecclesiastical courts to the colonies intact, and no exact counterparts to the English assize, prerogative, and chancery courts existed in 17th-century North America. Instead, local county courts (outwardly similar to English Quarter Sessions) performed a number of tasks that had previously been assigned to different branches of the English court system, ...