502
Interpreting and Preserving the Constitution
to Sir Edward Coke, or Lord Coke as he was known by his contemporaries. Coke, we will recall, was Queen Elizabeth’s Attorney General and
Chief Justice of both the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of King’s
Bench under James, first Stuart King of England.
A handsome country gentleman with considerable wealth, Coke was
the personification of English law. On the courtroom floor, he could be
raucous, witty, and ruthless. As Judge and as Speaker of the House of
Commons, he risked his life for principles that are now embodied in our
Constitution: a prisoner’s right to public trial and the writ of habeas corpus, the right of the accused against self-incrimination in a court of law,
and the right not to be jailed without cause shown. When Coke was seventy, James I imprisoned him in the Tower of London for championing
these rights, complaining that ‘‘he had become an oracle amongst the people.’’ In 1628, at the age of seventy-six, Coke led the fight in Parliament for
the Petition of Right.