Abstract

This article examines the practice of law as a social practice. Especially at a time when there were only a few professional courts, the interaction at court also has a social component. Courts come together and are formed by actors for whom the judicial service was only one of many (often vassal) tasks. This means: at the moment of the court, at the moment of the trial, a group is formed for a certain purpose. It will be observed how these groups form, how they are composed, and how the decisions of the actors for a particular jurisdiction influence these processes. A case in point will be the so-called Justices in Eyre and their session in Huntingdon in 1286, representing a royal court journeying into the localities to challenge local courts and to provide royal justice for the population.