Hale Commission

Any felony was punishable by death, proceedings were in a form of Norman French (which was no longer a common language even among the ruling class), and judges regularly imprisoned jurors for reaching a verdict they disagreed with.

[2] The Commission consisted of eight lawyers and thirteen laymen, appointed by the Rump Parliament on 26 December 1651,[3] and sat from 23 January 1652 approximately three times a week in the chamber of the House of Lords.

On the criminal law side, they supported reducing the use of the death penalty, although "wilful murderers" were still to be executed, and the abduction of a child under 16 was to be considered a capital crime.

[9] They also supported the creation of a Court of Appeal consisting of laymen chosen by parliament, the formation of a land registry and a permanent law commission.

[11] The Commission also suggested that debtors should no longer be imprisoned, and attorneys should be educated at an Inn of Court and not allowed to practise until they were admitted as members.

Other academics argued that the reform scheme was of great merit,[3] and Hostettler writes that "there is no evidence to confirm the belief of Sir William Holdsworth that the lawyers had a difficult time with the laymen".

[4] Mary Cotterell, writing in the English Historical Review, notes that 13 of the 21 members were certainly not radicals, although Moyer, Bemers, Blount and Peters certainly were.

[19] John Hostettler, in his biography of Hale, has suggested that if the measures had been put into law immediately, "we would have been honouring such pioneers for their farsightedness in enhancing our legal system and the concept of justice".