Judges administered the Salic law of the Franks in these courts, and there was a kind of "manual of law and legal procedure for the use or guidance of free judges" of the Hundred Court. (13) Here there was a "deliberate attempt to furnish an alternative to violence and bloodshed...." (14) These courts were autonomous of the king; the king "is merely represented in it by a class of officers who collect his share of the fines imposed...." (15) Only much later does "the popular president of the Hundred Court, the Thingman, disappears, and his place is taken by the Graf or Count, the deputy of the King." (16) From the earliest of times, England had autonomous local courts, and this was still true at the time of Magna Carta.
Many of the hundred courts had fallen into private hands....
The next four chapters deal with the "American constitutional experiment in light of these first principles" by reviewing the state constitutions and the nearly two
hundred court cases on religious liberty, including seven major decisions rendered since the book's first edition, up to Elk Grove Unified School District v.