Status: Problems of Definition and Use

1984 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey MacCormack
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Development ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Ancient Law ◽  
Tribal Societies ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Law, first published in 1861, postulated legal development in terms of an evolution from status to contract. Since that time both lawyers and anthropologists have made frequent use of the notion of status in their characterisation of law or society. Although status is a concept well known in social theory whose exponents, independently of Maine, have worked out its content and application, much that has been written about status in a legal or anthropological context owes its inspiration to him. Maine's status to contract thesis has proved of interest both to lawyers studying the history of the common law or modern developments in the law of contract and to anthropologists studying social and legal phenomena in simple or tribal societies.

Blackstone

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John V. Orth
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
First Century ◽  
Legal Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
The University ◽  
Law Professors

This chapter focuses on Sir William Blackstone (1723–1780), the author of the most important book in the history of the common law. The four-volume Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769) and the series of lectures Blackstone delivered at Oxford from 1753, changed the way lawyers thought about the law. Blackstone’s Commentaries were read by more people, non-lawyers as well as lawyers, than any other English law book. Their influence is difficult to overstate, and extends into the twenty-first century. Almost as momentous was Blackstone’s influence on legal education. While gradual, the transfer of legal education from the law office and the courts to the university, which Blackstone pioneered, had an enormous impact on legal development, as law professors contributed to the formation of generations of lawyers and themselves came to play a significant role in legal development.

scholarly journals Law, Language and the Printing Press in the Reign of Charles I: Explaining the Printing of the Common Law in English

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-371
Author(s):  
Ian Williams
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Printing Press ◽  
Legal Knowledge ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Professional Control ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
Long Term Trend

The printing press had the potential to break the common lawyers' monopoly of legal knowledge. Early-modern England witnessed debates about the desirability of wider dissemination of legal learning. Previous scholarship has identified the long-term trend to increased printing of the law in English, focusing on ideological debates between lawyers and other key actors. Only selected texts and types of material were made available to the wider public before the 1620s. From the later 1620s a wider range of material which had hitherto existed only in manuscript was printed in English. Knowledge of the common law became more commonly available. This article identifies this crucial moment and explains the change. Rather than the ideological questions which are discussed in the existing literature, more mundane causes are identified for the legal profession's reduced control over the transmission of legal knowledge: a shift to the use of English by lawyers themselves, and a loss of professional control over manuscripts. The paper therefore demonstrates an important methodological point: understanding and assessing the history of legal printing requires engagement with older methods of transmitting the law.

Priests of the Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. McSweeney
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
The Status ◽  
Royal Courts ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
New Interpretation

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: the group of justices who wrote the celebrated treatise known as Bracton. It offers a new interpretation of Bracton and its authors. Bracton was not so much an attempt to explain or reform the early common law as it was an attempt to establish the status and authority of the king’s justices. The justices who wrote it were some of the first people to work full-time in England’s royal courts, at a time when they had no obvious model for the legal professional. They found one in an unexpected place: the Roman-law tradition that was sweeping across Europe in the thirteenth century. They modeled themselves on the jurists of Roman law who were teaching in Italy and France. In Bracton and other texts they produced, the justices of the royal courts worked hard to establish that the nascent common-law tradition was just one constituent part of the Roman-law tradition. 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.

Quasi-Contract

2019 ◽  
pp. 386-402
Author(s):  
John Baker
Keyword(s):  
General Principle ◽  
Common Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

This chapter traces the history of what used to be called quasi-contract but is now part of the law of restitution. It was principally concerned with the receipt of money which belonged in justice to someone else. The earliest relevant action was account, at first limited to agents and then extended to all receivers of money; this was an impracticable action and went into disuse. Actions on the case came to the rescue, particularly the action for money had and received (a species of indebitatus assumpsit). The latter action was used not only in traditional cases of accountability but also where money was received by mistake or compulsion, where income from property was taken by an interloper, or where a party to a failed contract sought rescission. Much of the history is hidden from view by fictions, but Lord Mansfield declared a general principle based on the equity of the common law.

The Law Merchant and the Common Law Before 1700

1979 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Canon Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Commercial Law ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Merchant ◽  
Ius Gentium

In 1845 a master of English commercial law wrote that there was “no part of the history of English law more obscure than that connected with the maxim that the law merchant is part of the law of the land.” Since then there have been detailed studies of the medieval law merchant and of the later development of English mercantile law, but the precise status of the law merchant in England and the nature of the process by which it supposedly became fused with the common law remain as obscure as they were in 1845. The obscurity begins with the very concept of the “law merchant,” which has been differently understood by different writers and continues to be used in widely divergent senses. Some have regarded it as a distinct and independent system of legal doctrine, akin in status to Civil or Canon law, and perhaps derived from Roman law. Others have supposed it to be a particular aspect of natural law, or the universal ius gentium, and as such akin to international law.

LAW BOOKSELLERS AND PRINTERS AS AGENTS OF UNCHANGE

2007 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tariq A Baloch
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Book Publishing ◽  
Book Trade ◽  
Legal Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Printed Word ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Although the transformative influence of the printed word is acknowledged in the history of the common law (I will focus primarily on law books), there is as yet no comprehensive study which looks at how the production and dissemination of that printed word was shaped by “communities of printers, booksellers, readers and (for want of a better word) censors”. Not only does this deprive us of a fascinating narrative on the history of the law book, but also, as a consequence, prevents us from tracking more accurately than before the impact of the printed word on legal development across the centuries. As only a book length study could provide a complete narrative on this history, the present article will focus on one part of this story, namely the impact of the practices of printers and booksellers (who were the most important members of the book trade and will therefore be collectively referred to as “the book trade”) on law book publishing in the eighteenth century.

scholarly journals JURISPRUDENCE POSITION IN THE COMMON AND CIVIL LAWS

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-49
Author(s):  
Edi Rohaedi
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
General Nature ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Law System ◽  
Legal Development ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
Civil Laws ◽  
Civil Law System

The development of jurisprudence continues to grow in accordance with the existing laws in the society which it is not the same as the law in legal development. It is not related to the rigid nature of the law which only regulates the general nature and the process of its formation takes a long time. In practice, the development of jurisprudence, as one of the sources of formal law, can be distinguished into two legal systems affecting the legal world. They are namely the Continental European legal system with its Civil Law System which prioritizes "codification" in the field of law and the Anglo Saxon law with its Common Law System, which is famous for the "Precedent" system binding the judges to follow the previous judgment in deciding the same case.

Crime, Compurgation and the Courts of the Medieval Church

1983 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. H. Helmholz
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Legal Development ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Relationship

The history of criminal law has claimed an increasing share of the attention of legal and social historians in recent years. Undeterred by Professor Milsom's verdict that in the area of English criminal law, ‘nothing worthwhile was created,’ historians have plunged into the study of doctrine and practice in the common law courts. The attractions of the source material are undoubtedly great. The law is relatively straightforward, at least compared to land litigation. The cases are interesting and sometimes sensational. The subject matter promises rewards in understanding the relationship between social change and legal development. And the study may even be immediately relevant, shedding light on current law enforcement problems.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 240-246
Author(s):  
Thomas J. McSweeney
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Textual Production ◽  
Legal Literature ◽  
Royal Courts ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

The culture of textual production that these justices tried to create did not survive the thirteenth century. In the second half of the century, English legal literature became more insular in its outlook. But Bracton and the plea roll collections represent an important moment in the history of the common law, when people were reflecting on what law is and how it should be practiced. Through Bracton we can catch a glimpse of people who were thinking about what it meant to administer the law of the king’s courts, in a time before the common law was the common law. In these texts, we see the justices of the royal courts turning to Roman and canon law for inspiration.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Thomas J. McSweeney
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Early History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Central Question ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

A central question in the early history of the common law is how much influence Roman and canon law exerted over the common law in its first century. The debates over Roman- and canon-law influence have largely stalled, however. This chapter introduces a new way forward in those debates. Most scholars who have looked for Roman- and canon-law influence on the common law have looked for similarities in particular rules and have argued that common lawyers adopted those rules from Roman or canon law. Priests of the Law argues that we are more likely to find borrowings in the context of more fundamental questions. The early thirteenth century was a time before the common law was the common law. There was debate over its nature and who should control it. In their attempts to answer these questions, the authors of Bracton turned to Roman and canon law.

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