Catalogue description Records relating to the Court for the Consideration of Crown Cases Reserved

The traditional reluctance of the judiciary to overturn jury verdicts in criminal trials resulted in judges reserving judgment pending informal discussion of difficult points of law with their colleagues in Serjeants' Inn. Such proceedings, which on the civil side were dealt with more formally by the sittings of the judges in banc or in banco, ceased to be necessary with the passage of the Crown Cases Act 1848 which provided that, subject to the consent of the judge who tried the prisoner to state a case, questions of law (except in the case of demurrers and writs of error) could be referred to no less than five judges drawn from the superior courts of common law. Of this number at least one was to be either the Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench, the Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, or the Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer.

When considering such questions of law the justices and barons came to be described as sitting in the Court for the Consideration of Crown Cases Reserved. The limited nature of criminal appeal procedure was left unchanged by the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873 but jurisdiction under the act of 1848 was transferred to the judges of the High Court. This, in turn, passed to the newly-established Court of Criminal Appeal in 1907 when a fundamental reform in criminal appeal procedure took place under the Criminal Appeal Act 1907.