House of PEERS, or House of Lords, forms one of the three estates of parliament. See LORDS and PARLIAMENT.
In a judicative capacity, the house of peers is the supreme court of the kingdom, having at present no original jurisdiction over causes, but only upon appeals and writs of error: to rectify any injustice or mistake of the law committed by the courts below. To this authority they succeeded of course upon the dissolution
of the Mala Regia. For as the barons of parliament were constituent members of that court, and the rest of its jurisdiction was dealt out to other tribunals, over which the great officers who accompanied those barons were respectively delegated to preside, it followed, that the right of receiving appeals, and superintending all other jurisdictions, still remained in that noble assembly, from which every other great court was derived. They are therefore in all cases the last resort, from whose judgment no further appeal is permitted; but every subordinate tribunal must conform to their determinations: The law reposing an entire confidence in the honour and conscience of the noble persons who compose this important assembly, that they will make themselves masters of those questions upon which they undertake to decide; since upon their decision all property must finally depend. See Loans, Nobility, &c.