be evoked in English recordari facias cases. 85 The extension of this idea both 
to cases of error and of removals from an eyre is at least suggestive that the 
dominion precedents may have played some part in the evolution of the English 
writ of error procedure. 80 
There are certain legal problems connected with the assumption of a review 
jurisdiction over Irish causes that deserve some comment. On its face the 
precedent of 1218-23 is a close approach to a writ of error proceeding, viz., the 
submission of a written record for examination of errors of law by the sovereign 
judicial authority—a procedure which did not then exist in England. Contemporary 
recordari facias cases had already contributed something to the 
establishment of a principle that a judgment founded upon error was correctible. 
But this had been done with reference to vulnerable records— ad hoc 
statements open to traverse. The subjection of judgments of the King's own 
courts to a corrective process was a very different thing, for their record was 
unimpeachable. There is no reason to believe that the record of the King's 
courts in Ireland was not thus privileged, and consequently the justification 
for review of Irish causes was a problem of the same nature and magnitude as 
the review by certification of errors in English assizes. A phrase used by the 
Council in our Irish case, "our court is not above ourselves," 87 suggests that 
because the immunity of the King's record was a matter of prerogative, there 
inhered in the crown an ultimate discretion over it. If this was so, the nature 
of the discretion needed definition, for although qualitative distinctions between 
courts within the royal judicial structure might be tacitly recognized, 88 
and so lead to an admission that rule of an unimpeachable record was too broad 
to fit all circumstances of the administration of justice, nevertheless, such an 
admission would imperil the pillars upon which the royal system rested—the 
parity of all adjudication done in the King's name and stability of the principle 
of res iudicata. 
85 E.g., Close Rolls 1251-53, 426; Close Rolls 
1254-56, 202; Close Rolls 1264-68, 260. 
86 Examples of what may be called certiorari 
for transfer (although not in ultimate form) 
are to be found in Close Rolls 1251-53, 176 (to 
Common Bench); 223 (to Justice in Eyre); 
196, 444 (to assize judges); Close Rolls 
1253-54, i°3 ( to a n assize judge). Examples 
of the error form are ibid., 140; Close Rolls 
1261-64, 301-2. They should be compared 
with the certiorari in 1 Sayles, op. cit., 16 
(1273); error, ibid., 140 (1285), 153 (1285); 
168 (1287) (the last a criminal case). 
87 Rot. Lit. Claus., 549b. The expression is used 
with respect to royal immunity from summons. 
The principle implicit in the expression is so 
much broader than the circumstances of its 
utterance that "it seems proper to use it out of its 
context. Cf. the equally large prerogative of 
record by the King's own recollection (4 CRR 
114; Bracton's Notebook., pi. 857). As late as 
Edward I's time a scire facias will issue upon 
such a record (1 Rot. Pari,, 112). 
88 Hinted at first by Glanville, De legibus VIII, 
5, in the distinction made respecting proof of 
concords in terms of place made. Bracton, De 
legibus, 108, points to differences within the 
royal system, but without hierarchical implications.