Shire Courts / County Courts (1 jan 410 ano – 11 h 44 m, 5 maio 2025 ano)

Descrição:

- During Anglo-Saxon times.
- Shire Courts were presided by representatives of the church, or by representatives of the king (Shire Reeve, or Sheriff), depending on the matter being heard.
- The word "county" was introduced at the Norman Conquest of England.
- Os normandos mantiveram o sistema legal e administrativo dos Anglo-saxões (e.g. Shire Courts, Hundreds) e incluíram novos institutos (e.g. combate).

DEFINITION
- Shire courts precceed the County Courts.
- Shire (dictionary): a county, especially in England. Used in reference to parts of England regarded as strongholds of traditional rural culture, especially the rural Midlands.

SHIRE
A shire is a traditional term for a division of land, found in Great Britain, Australia and some other English-speaking countries. It was first used in Wessex from the beginning of Anglo-Saxon settlement, and spread to most of the rest of England in the tenth century. In some rural parts of Australia, a shire is a local government area; however, in Australia it is not synonymous with a "county", which is a lands administrative division.

The word derives from the Old English scir, itself a derivative of the Proto-Germanic skizo (cf. Old High German scira), meaning care or official charge.[1] In the UK, "shire" is the original term for what is usually known now as a county; the word county having been introduced at the Norman Conquest of England. The two are nearly synonymous. Although in modern British usage counties are referred to as "shires" mainly in poetic contexts, terms such as Shire Hall remain common. Shire also remains a common part of many county names.

In regions with so-called rhotic pronunciation such as Scotland, the word shire is pronounced /ʃaɪər/. In non-rhotic areas the final R is silent unless the next word begins in a vowel. When shire is a suffix as part of a placename in England, the vowel is unstressed and thus usually shortened and/or monophthongised: pronunciations include /ʃɜːr/, or sometimes /ʃɪər/, with the pronunciation of the final R again depending on rhoticity. In many words, the vowel is normally reduced all the way to a single schwa, as in for instance Leicestershire /ˈlɛstərʃər/ or Berkshire /ˈbɑːrkʃər/. Outside England, and especially in Scotland and the US, it is more common for shire as part of a placename to be pronounced identically to the full word, as a result of spelling pronunciation.

SHIRE COURTS
A shire court or shire moot was an Anglo-Saxon institution dating back to the earliest days of English society. The shire court referred to the magnates, both lay and spiritual, who were entitled to sit in council for the shire and was a very early form of representative democracy. The shire courts themselves met twice a year to allocate shire gold which had been collected by the Shire-reeve. The gathering was headed by nobility, usually Bishops, Earls, Abbots or Lords. The practice of holding shire courts began in Wessex and was later used throughout the rest of England. Similar models were introduced to Wales, particularly after the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284.

Initially, each court would travel and use different locations for its meetings, but after a while, the name began to refer to the building or location where the court would usually meet. Amongst the lay and spiritual members of the shire court was the shire reeve, the king's representative and chief administrative officer.

The shires themselves were divided into hundreds which each had their own hundred court and hundred reeve.

This whole system of government was replaced in 1889 with the introduction of county councils.

COUNTY
A county is a geographical region of a country used for administrative or other purposes,[1] in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French conté or cunté denoting a jurisdiction under the sovereignty of a count (earl) or a viscount.[2] The modern French is comté, and its equivalents in other languages are contea, contado, comtat, condado, Grafschaft, graafschap, Gau, etc. (cf. conte, comte, conde, Graf).

When the Normans conquered England, they brought the term with them. The Saxons had already established the districts that became the historic counties of England, calling them shires;[3] many county names derive from the name of the county town (county seat) with the word "shire" added on: for example, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire.[4]

The Anglo-Saxon terms "earl" and "earldom" were taken as equivalent to the continental terms "count" and "county" under the conquering Normans, and over time the two blended and became equivalent. Further, the later-imported term became a synonym for the native English word scir ([ʃiːr]) or, in Modern English, shire. Since a shire was an administrative division of the kingdom, the term "county" evolved to designate an administrative division of a federal state, as in Germany and the United States, or of a national government in most other modern uses.

In the United States and Canada, founded 600 years later[a] on the British traditions, counties are usually an administrative division set by convenient geographical demarcations, which in governance have certain officeholders (e.g., sheriffs and their departments) as a part of the state and provincial mechanisms, including geographically common court systems.[5]

A county may be further subdivided into districts, hundreds, townships or other administrative jurisdictions within the county. A county usually, but not always, contains cities, towns, townships, villages, or other municipal corporations, which in most cases are somewhat subordinate or dependent upon county governments. Depending on the nation, municipality, and local geography, municipalities may or may not be subject to direct or indirect county control—the functions of both levels are often consolidated into a city government when the area is densely populated.[b]

Outside English-speaking countries, an equivalent of the term "county" is often used to describe subnational jurisdictions that are structurally equivalent to counties in the relationship they have with their national government;[c] but which may not be administratively equivalent to counties in predominantly English-speaking countries.

METHODS OF PROOF
- Oath + oath helpers: The person being tried only needed to swear an oath that it was not guilty, and would need a certain number of people (determined by law) to swear oaths on its behalf. One needs to remember that this was a highly religious society, and that lying on oath could lead to eternal damnation or compromise the good standing in the community. This method of proof could be used in civil and criminal cases (which were not distinguished then). This was a more extreme means of proof, as it could lead to a mortal ending if both parties swore oaths, as one of them would be obviously lying. So, in general, arbitration and compromise were preferable methods of dispute settlement.

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