Why a law court and courting someone share the same enclosed yard
The word court began as an enclosed yard, where a medieval sovereign and his entourage gathered to settle disputes. People travelled there to win the ruler's favour, which is why courting someone still means seeking approval. The judicial sense of the word is first recorded in the twelfth century.
English court comes from French cour, from Latin cohors, a yard or the people in it, and it is related to Latin hortus and Greek khórtos, garden, the roots of horticulture. A court today is an institution empowered to decide legal disputes in civil, criminal and administrative matters under the rule of law. Most are created by legislation, though some are founded by a constitution. Collectively the courts form the judiciary; judges are called the bench, and the lawyers who appear before them, the bar.
William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England described a civil court as needing at least three parties: a plaintiff who claims an injury, a defendant called on to answer for it, and a judge who examines the facts and applies the law. The key question in any case is jurisdiction, from Latin words meaning to declare the law. It has personal, subject-matter and territorial dimensions, and in American federal courts there is also diversity jurisdiction.
Trial courts, or courts of first instance, hear cases first, with facts decided either by a jury or, in a bench trial, by the judge alone. Appellate courts review lower rulings, and some, like the Crown Court of England and Wales, do both. Juries are far less common outside the Anglo-American tradition.
The two great Western traditions grew apart. Civil law rests on the Roman Corpus Juris Civilis, rediscovered around the end of the eleventh century and taught first at Bologna, and it anchors the French and German systems, where courts are mostly inquisitorial. Common law began after 1066 when English royal judges, travelling the country, merged local customs into one standard; its courts are mostly adversarial. Polls suggest citizens value impartiality, accessibility and speed, while television court shows, usually private arbitration, are criticised for distorting how real courts work.
Source: Court
