The Court of Common Pleas was established by an ordinance promoted by New Jersey's first royal governor Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, and modeled on a similar ordinance passed in New York in the previous decade.
Next there was established a Court of Common Pleas to be held in each county at the place where the general Court of Sessions is usually kept, to "begin immediately after the Sessions of the Peace does end and terminate".
The Court of Common Pleas was given general civil jurisdiction at common law, and there was a right of appeal or removal where the judgment was more than twenty pounds, and in cases where the title to land came in question.
[3] Successive ordinances preserved this court through the American Revolution and the establishment of the United States.
The Courts of Common Pleas were eliminated when the most recent New Jersey State Constitution was adopted in 1947.