Download or read book Priests of the Law written by Thomas J. McSweeney and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Priests of the Law tells the story of the first people in the history of the common law to think of themselves as legal professionals. In the middle decades of the thirteenth century, a group of justices working in the English royal courts spent a great deal of time thinking and writing about what it meant to be a person who worked in the law courts. This book examines the justices who wrote the treatise known as Bracton. Written and re-written between the 1220s and the 1260s, Bracton is considered one of the great treatises of the early common law and is still occasionally cited by judges and lawyers when they want to make the case that a particular rule goes back to the beginning of the common law. This book looks to Bracton less for what it can tell us about the law of the thirteenth century, however, than for what it can tell us about the judges who wrote it. The judges who wrote Bracton - Martin of Pattishall, William of Raleigh, and Henry of Bratton - were some of the first people to work full-time in England's royal courts, at a time when there was no recourse to an obvious model for the legal professional. They found one in an unexpected place: they sought to clothe themselves in the authority and prestige of the scholarly Roman-law tradition that was sweeping across Europe in the thirteenth century, modelling themselves on the jurists of Roman law who were teaching in European universities. In Bracton and other texts they produced, the justices of the royal courts worked hard to ensure that the nascent common-law tradition grew from Roman Law. Through their writing, this small group of people, working in the courts of an island realm, imagined themselves to be part of a broader European legal culture. They made the case that they were not merely servants of the king: they were priests of the law.
Download or read book A Concise History of the Common Law written by Theodore Frank Thomas Plucknett and published by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.. This book was released on 2001 with total page 828 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: 5th ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1956.
Download or read book Judges and Judging in the History of the Common Law and Civil Law written by Paul Brand and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-12 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection of essays, leading legal historians address significant topics in the history of judges and judging, with comparisons not only between British, American and Commonwealth experience, but also with the judiciary in civil law countries. It is not the law itself, but the process of law-making in courts that is the focus of inquiry. Contributors describe and analyse aspects of judicial activity, in the widest possible legal and social contexts, across two millennia. The essays cover English common law, continental customary law and ius commune, and aspects of the common law system in the British Empire. The volume is innovative in its approach to legal history. None of the essays offer straight doctrinal exegesis; none take refuge in old-fashioned judicial biography. The volume is a selection of the best papers from the 18th British Legal History Conference.
Download or read book A Natural History of the Common Law written by S. F. C. Milsom and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2003-12-03 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does law come to be stated as substantive rules, and then how does it change? In this collection of discussions from the James S. Carpentier Lectures in legal history and criticism, one of Britain's most acclaimed legal historians S. F. C. Milsom focuses on the development of English common law—the intellectually coherent system of substantive rules that courts bring to bear on the particular facts of individual cases—from which American law was to grow. Milsom discusses the differences between the development of land law and that of other kinds of law and, in the latter case, how procedural changes allowed substantive rules first to be stated and then to be circumvented. He examines the invisibility of early legal change and how adjustment to conditions was hidden behind such things as the changing meaning of words. Milsom points out that legal history may be more prone than other kinds of history to serious anachronism. Nobody ever states his assumptions, and a legal writer, addressing his contemporaries, never provided a glossary to warn future historians against attributing their own meanings to his words and therefore their own assumptions to his world. Formal continuity has enabled nineteenth-century assumptions to be carried back, in some respects as far back as the twelfth century. This book brings together Milsom's efforts to understand the uncomfortable changes that lie beneath that comforting formal surface. Those changes were too large to have been intended by anyone at the time and too slow to be perceived by historians working within the short periods now imposed by historical convention. The law was made not by great men making great decisions but by man-sized men unconcerned with the future and thinking only about their own immediate everyday difficulties. King Henry II, for example, did not intend the changes attributed to him in either land law or criminal law; the draftsman of De Donis did not mean to create the entail; nobody ever dreamed up a fiction with intent to change the law.
Download or read book The Creation of the Common Law written by Thomas Lund and published by Talbot Publishing. This book was released on 2018-07-25 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Edward I became king, Chief Justice Bereford took charge of the legal system and created law in accord with his own sense of justice. Here the most important medieval cases are paraphrased and analyzed, making this interesting and entertaining litigation accessible to everyone.
Download or read book The Making of the Common Law written by Paul Brand and published by Bloomsbury Continuum. This book was released on 1992 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the Common Law is not just a history of legal doctrine. It is also the history of the courts where that doctrine was shaped and of the lawyers, judges and clerks who ran the courts and made and applied legal rules in particular cases. This book, which brings together both published and unpublished essays, reflects this broader understanding of legal history. It complements the author's The Origins of the English Legal Profession. Paul Brand describes the early history of the legal profession in both England and Ireland and uncovers fresh evidence on the beginnings of professional education. He reevaluates the significance of major changes in the organisation of the English courts in Henry II's reign and the transformation of the English judiciary which took place during the second half of the thirteenth century, periods of key importance in the shaping of the English legal system. Other essays review the contribution made to legal literature by Ralph de Hengham, the best known royal judge of the reign of Edward I, and shed new light on the life and times of Thomas Weyland, 'chief justice and felon'. An essay on the twelfth-century origins of English land law provides a critical introduction to the work of S.F.C. Milsom for the non-specialist. Different mechanisms of legal change at work in the thirteenth century are examined in studies of the drafting of legislation, on the modification of Common Law remedies for unjust distraint of tenants by their lords and on the introduction of controls on alienations in mortmain.
Download or read book English Common Law in the Age of Mansfield written by James Oldham and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2005-12-15 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the eighteenth century, the English common law courts laid the foundation that continues to support present-day Anglo-American law. Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, 1756-1788, was the dominant judicial force behind these developments. In this abridgment of his two-volume book, The Mansfield Manuscripts and the Growth of English Law in the Eighteenth Century, James Oldham presents the fundamentals of the English common law during this period, with a detailed description of the operational features of the common law courts. This work includes revised and updated versions of the historical and analytical essays that introduced the case transcriptions in the original volumes, with each chapter focusing on a different aspect of the law. While considerable scholarship has been devoted to the eighteenth-century English criminal trial, little attention has been given to the civil side. This book helps to fill that gap, providing an understanding of the principal body of substantive law with which America's founding fathers would have been familiar. It is an invaluable reference for practicing lawyers, scholars, and students of Anglo-American legal history.
Download or read book The Nature of the Common Law written by Melvin Aron Eisenberg and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1991-10 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Common law rules predominate in some areas of law, such as torts and contracts, and are extremely important in other areas, such as corporations. Nevertheless, it has been unclear what principles courts use—or should use—in establishing common law rules. In this lucid book, Melvin Eisenberg develops the principles that govern this process.
Download or read book Common Law Judging written by Douglas E. Edlin and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2016-07-29 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving beyond the subjectivity-objectivity debate, Edlin presents a case for intersubjectivity
Download or read book History of the American Constitutional Or Common Law with Commentary Concerning Equity and Merchant Law written by Dale Pond and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Formation of the English Common Law written by John Hudson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-07 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Formation of English Common Law provides a comprehensive overview of the development of early English law, one of the classic subjects of medieval history. This much expanded second edition spans the centuries from King Alfred to Magna Carta, abandoning the traditional but restrictive break at the Norman Conquest. Within a strong interpretative framework, it also integrates legal developments with wider changes in the thought, society, and politics of the time. Rather than simply tracing elements of the common law back to their Anglo-Saxon, Norman or other origins, John Hudson examines and analyses the emergence of the common law from the interaction of various elements that developed over time, such as the powerful royal government inherited from Anglo-Saxon England and land holding customs arising from the Norman Conquest. Containing a new chapter charting the Anglo-Saxon period, as well as a fully revised Further Reading section, this new edition is an authoritative yet highly accessible introduction to the formation of the English common law and is ideal for students of history and law.
Download or read book Common law Liberty written by James Reist Stoner and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an ere as morally confused as ours, Stoner argues, we at least ought to know what we've abandoned or suppressed in the name of judicial activism and the modern rights-oriented Constitution. Having lost our way, perhaps the common law, in its original sense, provides a way back, a viable alternative to the debilitating relativism of our current age.
Download or read book History of the Common Law written by John H. Langbein and published by Aspen Publishing. This book was released on 2009-08-14 with total page 1310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introductory text explores the historical origins of the main legal institutions that came to characterize the Anglo-American legal tradition, and to distinguish it from European legal systems. The book contains both text and extracts from historical sources and literature. The book is published in color, and contains over 250 illustrations, many in color, including medieval illuminated manuscripts, paintings, books and manuscripts, caricatures, and photographs.
Download or read book The History of the Common Law of England written by Matthew Hale and published by . This book was released on 1739 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Common Law Civil Law written by Nicoletta Bersier and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-01 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an in-depth analysis of the differences between common law and civil law systems from various theoretical perspectives. Written by a global network of experts, it explores the topic against the background of a variety of legal traditions.Common law and civil law are typically presented as antagonistic players on a field claimed by diverse legal systems: the former being based on precedent set by judges in deciding cases before them; the latter being founded on a set of rules intended to govern the decisions of those applying them. Perceived in this manner, common law and civil law differ in terms of the (main) source(s) of law; who is to create them; who is (merely) to draw from them; and whether the law itself is pure each step of the way, or whether the law’s purity may be tarnished when confronted with a set of contingent facts. These differences have deep roots in (legal) history – roots that allow us to trace them back to distinct traditions. Nevertheless, it is questionable whether the divide thus depicted is as great as it may seem: international and supranational legal systems unconcerned by national peculiarities appear to level the playing field. A normative understanding of constitutions seems to grant ever-greater authority to High Court decisions based on thinly worded maxims in countries that adhere to the civil law tradition. The challenges contemporary regulation faces call for ever-more detailed statutes governing the decisions of judges in the common law tradition. These and similar observations demand a structural reassessment of the role of judges, the power of precedent, the limits of legislation and other features often thought to be so different in common and civil law systems. The book addresses this reassessment.
Download or read book Un Making Law written by Jay Feinman and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2005-10-12 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is an undercover war going on in America that impacts everyone's life far more than the legal issues that typically grab the headlines. The conservative movement has been systematically turning back a century's worth of the evolving gains and protections found in the common law-the areas of law that affect the everyday activities of ordinary people. Throughout the twentieth century, contract, property, and personal injury law evolved to take more account of social conditions and the needs of consumers, workers, and less powerful members of American society. Contracts were interpreted in light of common sense, property ownership was subjected to reasonable-use provisions to protect the environment, and consumers were protected against dangerous products. But all that is changing. Conservatives have a clear agenda to turn back the clock on the common law to maximize the profits of big business. Some significant inroads have already been made to protect gun manufacturers from lawsuits, enforce form contracts that prevent employees from suing for discrimination, and hamper the government's protection of the environment against aggressive development, for example. More rollbacks are on the horizon. Although this aspect of the conservative agenda is not as visible as assaults on abortion rights and civil liberties, it may ultimately have even greater impact on our society. Jay M. Feinman's book is an accessible, eye-opening primer, full of vivid examples and case histories-from victims of medical malpractice who cannot recover damages to people who relinquish their right to sue by applying for a job. If you subscribe to any of these common myths of twenty-first-century America, you will find surprising facts and illuminating analysis in Un-Making Law: The "All-American Blame Game" has corrupted our moral fiber-everyone is looking for a scapegoat to sue whenever anything goes wrong. Malpractice lawsuits have gone sky-high in recent years, forcing insurance companies reluctantly to raise rates and forcing doctors out of practice. Consumers and employees agree to arbitration because it is a much simpler, less expensive, and fairer way to resolve contract disputes. The government invades the rights of private property owners when it protects endangered species and regulates land development.
Download or read book Evolution and the Common Law written by Allan C. Hutchinson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-04 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a radical challenge to accounts of the common law's development. Contrary to received jurisprudential wisdom, it maintains there is no grand theory which will explain satisfactorily the dynamic interactions of change and stability in the common law's history. Offering original readings of Charles Darwin's and Hans-Georg Gadamer's works, the book shows that law is a rhetorical activity that can only be properly appreciated in its historical and political context; tradition and transformation are locked in a mutually reinforcing but thoroughly contingent embrace. In contrast to the dewy-eyed offerings of much contemporary work, it demonstrates that, like life, law is an organic process (i.e., events are the products of functional and localized causes) rather than a miraculous one (i.e., events are the result of some grand plan or intervention). In short, common law is a perpetual work-in-progress - evanescent, dynamic, messy, productive, tantalising, and bottom-up.
