4 quotes by Henry de Bracton (-),

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Henry de Bracton

But the king should not be under any man, only under God and the law, for the law makes the king. Let the king therefore attribute to the law what the law attributes to him, namely lordship and power, for there is no king where will rules and not the law.

Henry de Bracton

I have written this treatise because there are judges who decide cases according to their own will rather than by the authority of the laws

Henry de Bracton

The king has no equal within his realm.

Henry de Bracton

The crime of homicide, be it either accidental or voluntary, does not permit of suffering the same penalty, because on one case the full penalty must be exacted and in the other there should have been mercy.

He was the first person to make the distinction in English law between murder and accidental homicide. Earlier they both carried the same death penalty. Bracton, with murder and with theft, wrote of the concept of “mens rea”—criminal mind or intent which is a fundamental principle of modern law. Aristotle, in his Nichomachean Ethics, made similar distinctions of responsibility depending on intent, but Bracton codified it in English law.

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Henry de Bracton

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Biography

Henry of Bracton, also Henry de Bracton, also Henricus Bracton, or Henry Bratton also Henry Bretton (c. 1210 – c. 1268) was an English cleric and jurist.

HENRY DE BRACTON

(Henry of Bracton)