The Genres of Authority

Abstract

Abstract This chapter argues that the authors of Bracton treated the cases they cited in the treatise as if they were the opinions of jurists. In the process of reconstituting the courts’ records as authoritative texts, the justices transformed themselves into jurists on the Roman model. In Bracton, the plea roll entry is assimilated to genres of civilian and canonist texts that were specifically associated with jurists. One of the authors compares the cases drawn from the plea rolls to consilia and responsa, texts in which an important jurist gave his opinion on a legal matter. They took these texts, which the royal courts had already been producing for decades when Martin of Pattishall and William of Raleigh entered the courts, and read them through the lens of the texts they had encountered in the schools, connecting their work in the courts with the culture of Roman and canon law.