Coke, Sir Edward

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Coke, Sir Edward (1552–1634) English jurist. As chief justice of the King's Bench (1613), he championed the common law and, after 1620, developed it in Parliament to oppose the king's assumption of ‘divine right’. He helped to draft a declaration of civil liberties, Petition of Right (1628), and wrote the influential Institutes of the Laws of England (1628).

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