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TroikKhad t1_jdb19w5 wrote

Are there examples of when this is used? Like any modern laws?

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static_void_function t1_jdb359q wrote

The date is King Henry II death and marks Richard I's accession to the English throne. Richard I also known as Lionheart and led the Third Crusade.

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Psychological-Rub-72 t1_jdb3h61 wrote

On July 5th 1189 Richard became king of England. So essentially before Richards reign.

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bigbangbilly t1_jdb9wc6 wrote

Wasn't there this date where it's year 0 for database professionals?

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GrandmaPoses t1_jdbck6u wrote

Must have been awkward there at the start.

“We’ve been doing it this way since time immemorial.”

“It’s the seventh, Dave, you mean yesterday?”

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Hattix t1_jdbwz3m wrote

There are others, and we have modern laws which use them.

For example, an "ancient forest" has existed such that nobody in the year 1600 (1750 in Scotland) could remember it not being a forest, or it was present as a forest in a map or written record dating at least to 1600.

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BobbyP27 t1_jdbzfwq wrote

It's effectively a form of what we might now regard as a statute of limitations. With the Norman Conquest in 1066, there was a huge upheaval, and obviously lots of formerly important people lost land, rights and property. During the initial period after the conquest, the law was basically a combination of the King's word and what you could get away with. Later, when concepts like property law and courts independent of the King's whim at the time became a thing, they didn't want to have to deal with all these ancient grievances, so set a date, the start of the reign of Richard I, and deemed anything that happened before that to be "time immemorial" and therefore not subject to the legal system. If you can prove you owned something or had a legal right on that date, anything that happened before would not count. The date was set something like 80 years prior, so things in the relatively recent past would still be included, but things like "your great grandfather stole this field from my great grandfather" would not.

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BobbyP27 t1_jdbzv2q wrote

Replying to GrandmaPoses (#2,313,431)

The date was chosen to prevent precisely this situation. Prior to 1276, the law was whatever the king said it was at any moment. The idea of the introduction of the "common law" was to provide a proper legal system with courts and the like. They wanted people to be able to use the new courts to deal with relatively recent disputes, but not ancient ones. They therefore chose the date, the beginning of the reign of Richard I, as the cutoff date (which was 87 years prior). Anything that happened in that time period could be brought before the courts, including "yesterday", but anything older was in "time immemorial", so could not.

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confidence_basket t1_jdc6rob wrote

This was the date of Richard I’s ascension to the throne. I don’t know why Richard I specifically was so important…

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LordUpton t1_jdcdavb wrote

Replying to confidence_basket (#2,315,389)

I think it's less the importance of Richard accession and more that Henry II reforms were the basis of English common law. I think it was just easier to point at his death as the beginning point rather than trying to work out specifically which reform began the English legal system.

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snow_michael t1_jddwqs8 wrote

Replying to TroikKhad (#2,312,422)

Rights of way

Land ownership and usage

Grazing rights

Riparan (river) rights including some mooring rights

Coastal and esturial fishing rights

Salvage rights

Firewood collection, shellfish harvesting, seaweed collection

Some performance rights

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