Dr. Bonham's Case

A legal case decided in 1610 by Sir Edward Coke, chief justice of England's Court of Common Pleas, in which he asserted the supremacy of the common law in England.

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In the case, the Royal College of Physicians had convicted and imprisoned Thomas Bonham for practicing medicine without a license. When Bonham challenged his imprisonment, Coke ruled that the Royal College lacked the authority under its charter and a parliamentary statute to imprison for practicing without a license. Because the same entity--the Royal College--both suffered the wrong and collected the fine, Coke argued, the College had acted as both a party and a judge in the dispute.

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Generalizing beyond this case, Coke wrote:

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n many cases the common law will controul acts of Parliament and sometimes adjudge them to be utterly void: for when an Act of Parliament is against common right or reason, or repugnant, or impossible to be performed, the common law will controul it and adjudge such Act to be void.

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The legal scholar J.H. Baker has called this statement "the foundation of the practice of 'judicial review' of legislation in America." The U.S. Supreme Court has also recognized the influence of Lord Coke's opinion in Bonham's Case, stating that "although Coke's dictum was to have a somewhat greater influence in America, that influence took the form of providing an early foundation for the idea that courts might invalidate legislation that they found inconsistent with a written constitution." Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 162 (1996) (Souter, J., dissenting).

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