the justification for an assumption of political responsibilities not properly 
judicial. 
It should be observed that although the English conceptions of appellate 
function rested upon a body of highly technical learning, the product of the 
courts at Westminster, beyond which review was rarely sought, yet the tribunal 
of final resort in the realm was in essence a court no more than was the Privy 
Council. The antic hand of history had left the House of Lords the "last great 
stage of appeal," 2 where the ultimate correction of errors occurred; thus the 
capstone of the system of judicature for the realm, as for the dominions, was 
in each instance a body where the votes of laymen predominated, a body to 
which only an occasional case was pushed, and a body where because of the 
confusion of functions the range of policy making was broader than would 
have been tolerable in an agency confined to the settlement of issues presented 
solely by litigation. Obviously, if the House of Lords is to be treated as a court, 
the Privy Council is not less entitled. 
While this close correspondence to the House of Lords as respects status, 
constitution, and function justifies application to the Privy Council of the 
same standards of judicial activity, it suggests equally the desirability of keeping 
historical antecedents in constant focus. Neither body could have survived 
as a court unless some awareness of this element of tradition had been constantly 
maintained, because it was intrinsically irrational to commit the final 
word on technical problems to amateurs. When the Lords at the end of the 
seventeenth century sought to make good the claim to hear chancery appeals, 
there was a great ransacking of old books before this right was established; 
similarly when the crown sought to reanimate the judicial power of the Council 
it was by promotion of the oldest title to this authority—the Channel 
Islands appeals. For our own purpose, due recognition of the historical continuity 
of the Council's jurisdiction not only minimizes the episodic character 
of its career as a court between the Restoration and the American Revolution, 
but it also puts in proper balance its actual determinations. Apart from the 
great influence which the procedure, regulations, and conciliar machinery in 
appeals from the Channel Islands exercised upon colonial appellate jurisdiction, 
only a clear apprehension of the parallel treatment of the American colonies 
and the Channel Islands can prevent the attaching of undue constitutional 
significance to events in the former that had their prosaic counterparts in the 
latter. 
2 2 Wynne, Eunomus. (sth ed., 1822), 573-74. 
"There is something so noble and elevated in 
this last great stage of appeal, that it may challenge 
any nation to come near it: a court consisting 
of persons, who from their birth, their 
education, their estates, have the greatest opportunity 
of being well informed, and the least 
imaginable probability, of being under any undue 
influence whatever; who are assisted by 
all the judges, whose opinions upon any questions 
proposed, they have a right to hear; and 
whose number with all these advantages, exhibits 
the noblest form of judicature in the 
world."