criminal-law england-and-wales common-law legal-history judiciary
At what point could courts in England no longer legally create new Common Law offenses?
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law_offence" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Common Law offenses</a>, of course, were crimes created solely through case law rather than statute.</p>

<p>At what point was the <em>legal</em> authority of courts in England to create <em>new</em> Common Law offenses abolished?</p>

<p>In a practical sense, the actual creation of new Common Law offenses via court rulings seems to have ended by the end of the Middle Ages, but was this accompanied by a <em>formal</em> abolition of the authority to do so, or did this simply fall into disuse?</p>

<p>This question has nothing to do with:</p>

<ul>
<li>The abolition of <em>existing</em> Common Law offenses (e.g. Murder, Larceny, etc.) in favor of purely statutory ones. Some countries, notably Canada, have passed statutes completely abolishing any remaining common-law offenses in favor of a purely statutory criminal codes. By contrast, some US states (Virginia is one) still retain some common-law offenses for which the punishment is defined in statute, but the definition is found in case law.</li>
<li>The specific elements of existing, known Common Law offenses.</li>
</ul>

<p>If English courts still technically possess <em>legal</em> authority to create new Common Law offenses, but do not do so as a result of social or political pressure, that's an answer.</p>

<h2>They still have the power</h2>

<p>They generally don’t because:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Most activities of a criminal nature no matter how novel can be shoehorned as a new instance of an existing crime.</p></li>
<li><p>Parliament is much more pro-active in its legislative agenda. The judicial system moves much more slowly.</p></li>
</ol>
