Matthew Hale (jurist)

Sir Matthew Hale SL (1 November 1609 – 25 December 1676) was an influential English lawyer, most noted for his treatise Historia Placitorum Coronæ, or The History of the Pleas of the Crown. He occupied various public offices both under the Cromwellian Commonwealth and the Stuart Restoration. From 1671 until his retirement in 1676, he served as Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Hale is widely regarded as one of the key figures in the development of the common law.

Born to a barrister and his wife, who had both died by the time he was 5, Hale was raised by his father's relative, a strict Puritan, and inherited his faith. In 1626 he matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford (now Hertford College), intending to become a priest. He was later persuaded to become a barrister, like his father, by an encounter with a Serjeant-at-Law in a dispute over his estate. On 8 November 1628, he joined Lincoln's Inn, where he was called to the Bar on 17 May 1636. As a barrister, Hale represented several Royalist figures in the prelude to the English Civil War and during the war itself. These included the Earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud. It has been hypothesised that Hale was intended to represent Charles I at his trial and that he conceived the defence used by the king.

Despite the defeat of the Royalists, Hale's reputation for integrity and his political neutrality protected him under the Commonwealth. He became Chairman of the Hale Commission that investigated law reform. Following the Commission's dissolution, Oliver Cromwell appointed him Justice of the Common Pleas. Hale sat in Parliament, either in the Commons or in the Upper House, in every Parliament from the First Protectorate Parliament (1654–1655) to the Convention Parliament (1660). After the Declaration of Breda, Hale was the Member of Parliament who moved to consider restoring the crown to Charles II. Under Charles, Hale was made first Chief Baron of the Exchequer and then Chief Justice of the King's Bench. In both positions, he was again noted for his integrity, although not as a particularly innovative judge. Following a bout of illness he retired on 20 February 1676, dying ten months later on 25 December 1676.

Hale's published works were particularly influential in the development of English common law. His Historia Placitorum Coronæ, dealing with capital offences against the Crown, is considered "of the highest authority", while his Analysis of the Common Law is noted as the first published history of English law and a major influence on William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. Hale's jurisprudence struck a middle-ground between Edward Coke's "appeal to reason" and John Selden's "appeal to contract", while refuting elements of Thomas Hobbes's theory of natural law. Hale wrote that a man could not be charged with marital rape, and that view was widely held until the 1990s. However, he eliminated the previous rape defence that existed in English law for an unmarried man cohabiting with a woman. Modern commentators have criticized Hale for presiding over the 1662 Bury St Edmunds witch trial, which led to the execution of two women, and for his argument that capital punishment could extend to those as young as fourteen. In addition to his legal writings, Hale also published several works on Aristotelian physics.