Court Days

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Virginia Standards

Program Information

Program: Judicial Independence in the New World
Segment Number: 7 (Watch entire program)
Duration: 00:06:22
Year Produced: 2009
Description:

Monthly Court sessions, known as “Court Day,” became woven into the fabric of society as a primary meeting place in the county. Court Day was a time to conduct business, vote or seek entertainment.

The court system is an ever-changing and evolving entity, and there are key moments of history when Virginia's people and its judicial system made everlasting impressions on the country. JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE IN THE NEW WORLD tells the story of the development of the court system in the early years of our nation's history. Historians take us back to the Court Days and Pre-Revolution and Post-Revolution periods to explain the rule of law and the basics of the court system we know today.

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Transcript

Narration:
As the population rose, newly-formed counties would be established to make justice more accessible. Monthly Court sessions, known as “Court Day,” became woven into the fabric of society as a primary meeting place in the county. Court Day was a time to conduct business, vote or seek entertainment.

Shepard:
The interesting thing about court, and we talk about Court Day, which really was often a series of days, the court, particularly in the 18th century, had a lot of work to do. Judicial, administrative, executive, in the sense of creating local ordinances. It took a while to get all of that done. In a rural community, and most of Virginia remained rural all through the period we are talking about, this was the place where the community came together. People of every level of society would gather at the sessions of the court. Because that’s when there was an opportunity to have a number of things take place.

Court Day was so common to people, that unfortunately they didn’t talk about it. Unfortunately from our perspective they didn’t talk about it that much. But it was just such a common activity for them. You see entries in diaries where people will say “Well, I went to court today, paid my debt to Mr. Randolph, spoke with Colonel Byrd, bought a horse.” Very cryptic kinds of things that don’t really tell you much about what went on. And this is a justice keeping a diary doesn’t say anything about “Well I also sat on the bench and I heard thirteen cases of debt.” But we do get little snippets of information about Court Days here and there, and the thing that is so intriguing about it, I think, is that whole idea of the community getting together and all of the activity that takes place there. We know there were horse races, a lot of drinking and gambling, that there were militia musters. Essentially, what we would today probably call county fairs with lots of people coming in and selling their wares. This was the opportunity for a rural community to get together and do a lot things that would be very difficult to do when you are separated by miles and miles from your nearest neighbor. The Court Day sessions then became the crux of that communal gathering. And most of the time when a jury was empanelled, the twelve persons who were empanelled for a jury, they would be empanelled for the entire day. And they would hear all the cases no matter what they were. And most of the time, again, these were cases of debt or contract breech or something like that. And they would hear each case in succession and make their judgment. Of the justices, most counties would have at least a dozen justices and usually more than that. But among that group would be a number of them who would be assigned to what was called the quorum. They were the most senior justices, and the law said that at least one of those justices had to be on the bench. The idea was that, at least among these most senior people, is you would have someone with a great deal of knowledge about how to operate the court. So most of the time you had at least four justices sitting on the bench and many times it would be more than that. And the court records are full instances where justices step down from the bench, are involved in a court case themselves, and then come back to the bench. So there was a very interesting approach to how that was handled. But it was a very fluid kind of situation, and certainly not as formal as we would say today, as far as rules are concerned.

Narration:
Because Court Day held many social implications, courthouses were often built near a local tavern. And in some cases, if a county had no court building, court would be held inside the tavern.

Shepard:
You wanted to get the county up and running but didn’t have the facilities necessarily right away. So you would find a place that was more or less centralized and then hold court there until you had the opportunity to build a structure that would really serve the purposes of the community.

Pagan:
The courts were often held in taverns. Great for the tavern keeper because you have got the litigants and the witnesses and the judges staying there, buying their meals there. And they would simply hold court in the taproom.

Shepard:
Usually that didn’t last a very long time because you can imagine the difficulties of trying to undertake all of those activities in a very confined space. Or particularly at a tavern where there was access to liquor and other kinds of things that might have gotten in to the wrong hands.

There were a lot of people in the 18th century that were pretty smart about offering land to the county for the courthouse. There were a lot of instances you read where a tavern keeper would have some extra land to the side of the tavern he was operating, and would say “I’ll give this to the county if you set up a courthouse here.” And then he would have sort of a monopoly on the services that would be provided to the people who were coming to court, whether it was the justices or the litigants or the people, just the hangers-on. And it was a wise business move. Very rapidly, once a courthouse was settled, the land about it became settled as well.

Billings:
One of the things that always fascinated me about Court Days in the 17th and even into the 18th century was that things were much closer to the bone. You know people, they got drunk and fought in the yard. The distance between the judge and a plaintiff or petty criminal or something of that sort was no further than from me to you. They didn’t wear robes or any of that sort of stuff, they just looked like kind of ordinary folks. They lacked some of the trappings of authority, and those trappings inspire some measure of control, social control. I mean, why do you think capitol buildings are built on such a grand scale? That wasn’t done for the heck of it, it was done with a certain malice of forethought. And there was this understanding too, that courthouses could inspire something of that sense of awe and respect for the dignity of the law and you know all those good things that lawyers and judges always like to talk about.

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Court Days

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