[4] After an initial period during which Coke's controversial view enjoyed some support but no statutes were declared void, Bonham's Case was thrown aside as a precedent, in favour of the growing doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty.

William Blackstone, one of the most prominent supporters of the doctrine, argued that Parliament is the sovereign lawmaker, preventing the common law courts from throwing aside or reviewing statutes in the fashion that Coke had suggested.

During the legal and public campaigns against the writs of assistance and the Stamp Act 1765, Bonham's Case was used as a justification for nullifying the legislation, but by 1772, Blackstone's views had gained acceptance.

Academics have used this connection to argue that Coke's views form the basis of judicial review in the United States, but there is no consensus on the issue.

By 1602, he had completed his studies and moved to London, where he practised medicine and associated himself with the Barber-Surgeons' Company, campaigning for it to be allowed to authorise medical practitioners in a similar way to the College of Physicians.

The judges all agreed that "for not well doeing useing or practicing the facultie or arte of physike or for disobedience or contempte donne and committed against anye ordynaunce made by the colledge... they may committ the offenders without bayle or mayneprise".

In a counterattack, Bonham brought a suit in the Common Pleas, requesting £100 (£27,300) damages,[17] and alleging that they had trespassed against his person and wrongfully imprisoned him "against the law and custom of this kingdom of England".

[18] The case was heard in the Court of Common Pleas by Warburton J, Daniel J, Foster J, Walmisley J and the Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, with a decision finally reached in the winter of 1610.

In addition, Bonham had given "an absurd and contemptuous answer" when he claimed that he would not submit to the college, and "it should be a vain law if it did not provide punishment for them that offend against that".

Theodore Plucknett wrote, "Whoever reads the whole of Herle's remarks can see that he did not regard the statute then under discussion as falling within this category; on the contrary, he suggested a perfectly obvious and straightforward interpretation of it.... Coke's first authority is far from convincing".

[29] His second authority, Cessavit 42, "goes much further to support his thesis" and concerns a situation in which William Bereford refused to apply an Act of Parliament because it would undermine several common law principles.

[30] His third example, Annuitie 11, was based on the Statute of Carlisle, which required all religious orders to have seals, placed in the custody of the prior and four of the "worthiest brethren" so that the Abbot could not use it without their knowledge.

[31] That clashed with church law and was incredibly difficult for small religious orders; as such, Sir Anthony Fitzherbert said that the statute was void, as it was "impertinent" or "impossible".

[33] Bonham's Case was deeply unpopular with the Crown;[34] Coke was removed from the Common Pleas and sent to the King's Bench, in theory a more senior office but in practice a less rewarding one in 1613.

Coke claimed that "the words of my report do not import any new opinion, but only a relation of such authorities of law, as had been adjudged and resolved in former times, and were cited in the argument of Bonham's case".

Noah Feldman suggested that the dispute over the two meanings has its origins in 1930s America, where frustration over judicial review of elements of the New Deal spilled into the academic world.

[37] Charles Gray, in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, argues that Coke, as a judge, never intended to advocate the judicial review of statutes.

[41] During Coke's lifetime, he was judicially dominant, and his ideas were upheld by his successor as Chief Justice, Sir Henry Hobart, in Day v Savadge and Lord Sheffield v Ratcliffe.

[42] After Coke's death, however, his jurisprudence "naturally suffered an eclipse", and its next appearance is in Godden v Hales, in 1686, where the doctrine was twisted to argue that the Crown had the prerogative to dismiss government laws.

[47] Outside the judiciary, John Lilburne used Bonham's Case in his book The Legall Fundamentall Liberties of the People of England and then in his 1649 treason trial to justify his attack on the Rump Parliament.

[48] With the growth of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, Coke's theory gradually died out; William Blackstone, in the first edition of his Commentaries on the Laws of England, wrote that "if the parliament will positively enact a thing to be done which is unreasonable, I know of no power that can control it: and the examples alleged in support of this sense of the rule do none of them prove, that where the main object of a statute is unreasonable the judges are at liberty to reject it; for that were to set the judicial power above that of the legislature, which would be subversive of all government".

For example, drawing on Coke's statement, James Otis, Jr., declared during the struggle over writs of assistance that courts had to ignore Acts of Parliament "against the constitution and against natural equity", which had a significant impact on John Adams.

[51] When the Stamp Act 1765 was declared invalid by the Massachusetts Assembly, the rationale was that it was "against Magna Charta and the natural rights of Englishmen, and therefore, according to the Lord Coke, null and void".

[55] In Hurtado v. California (1884), the US Supreme Court discussed Bonham's Case specifically by saying that it had not affected the omnipotence of parliament over the common law.

[57] Gary McDowell, writing in The Review of Politics, called the case's influence "one of the most enduring myths of American constitutional law and theory, to say nothing of history".