[citation needed] The common law had a procedure whereby title to land could be put in direct issue, called the "writ of right".
The fiction of Doe, Roe, and the leases was not challenged by the parties unless they wished to stake their life on a trial by combat.
[7][note 2] In England, a legal fiction extended the jurisdiction of the Court of the Exchequer to all types of cases involving debt.
Litigants would commence an action in the Exchequer Court by pleading that they owed money to the King, which they could not pay because their debtor had in turn wrongfully withheld payment to them.
The debt owed to the King became a legal fiction in that the original debtor was not entitled to controvert this allegation in order to oust the Exchequer from jurisdiction.
However, an MP who accepted an "office of profit" from the Crown (including appointment as a minister) was obliged to leave the House and seek re-election, because it was thought their independence might be compromised if they were in the monarch's pay.
[8] Some legal fictions have been invalidated due to increased historical knowledge and changes in social norms, as in the Mabo case, where the High Court of Australia rejected previous authorities that held that Indigenous Australians were too "low in the scale of social organization" at the time of British settlement to be capable of holding title to land.
[9][10][11] William Blackstone defended legal fictions, observing that legislation is never free from the iron law of unintended consequences.
The interior apartments, now converted into rooms of convenience, are cheerful and commodious, though their approaches are winding and difficult.Henry Maine, on the other hand, argued that legal fictions seem an ornate outgrowth of the law that ought to be removed by legislation.
"[12] In the novel Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) by Hope Mirrlees, the concept of the legal fiction as a secular substitute for spiritual mysteries and magical illusions is a central theme.
Legal fictions in the novel include referring to fairy fruit, mention of which is taboo, as woven silk fabric in order to allow the law to regulate it; and declaring members of the country's Senate "dead in the eyes of the law" in order to remove them from office, since the senators serve for life.
Historically, many legal fictions were created as ad hoc remedies forged to meet a harsh or an unforeseen situation.