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Definition :

Bracton, the author of the Latin treatise entitled De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angli'. He lived at the latter end of the reign of Henry the Third. Bracton's book, compared with that of Glanville, is a voluminous work. It is divided into five books, and these into tracts and chapters. See 2 Reeves' Hist. c. viii. 86, note (a), for an analysis of the several divisions of the chapters and a complete digest of the contents of this venerable code. The rules of property are explained; the proceedings in actions, through the minutest steps, are investigated and developed; while every proposition is supported by fair deduction, or corroborated by the authority of some adjudged case, so that the reader never fails in deriving instruction or amusement from the study of this scientific treatise on our ancient laws and customs. Bracton was deservedly looked up to as the first source of legal knowledge, even down to the time of Sir Edward Coke, who seems to have made this author his guide in all inquiries into the foundation of our law.

It is said that Bracton was a judge, and, speaking of some judges of his time, he calls them insipientes, et minus doctos, qui cathedram judicandi ascendunt antequam leges didicerint (Brac. I.), Hale's Hist. 189. In Lincoln's Inn Library is an ancient MS. copy of Bracton, which is said to be more correct than the printed copies. The work was edited, with an English translation, by Sir Travers Twiss in the Rolls Series.