Description
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Entick v Carrington: 250 Years of the Rule of Law 2015 by Edited by Adam Tomkins Edited by Paul F Scott
In 1762 the Earl of Halifax one of His Majestys Principal Secretaries of State despatched Nathan Carrington and three other of the Kings messengers to John Enticks house in Stepney. They broke into his house and opened his boxes chests and drawers seizing his papers and causing significant damage. Why? Because he was said to have written seditious papers published in the Monitor. Entick sued Carrington and the other messengers for trespass. The defendants argued that the Earl of Halifax had given them legal authority to act as they had. Lord Camden Chief Justice of the Common Pleas ruled firmly in Enticks favour holding that the warrant of a Secretary of State could not render lawful actions such as these - entering and ransacking private property - which were otherwise unlawful. The case is a canonical statement of the common laws commitment to the constitutional principle of the rule of law. In this collection - remarkably the first of its kind on this great case - some of our leading public lawyers reflect on the history of the case on the enduring importance of the legal principles for which it stands and on the broader implications of Entick v Carrington 250 years on.