scholarly journals THE RENAISSANCE OF ENGLISH LEGAL HISTORY

2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (S1) ◽  
pp. S91-S106
Author(s):  
D.J. Ibbetson
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
European Continent ◽  
Major Break ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Law

AbstractJohn Baker's “English Law and the Renaissance” is perhaps the most significant paper in English legal history to appear in the Cambridge Law Journal. In many ways it was a response to, and development from, F. W. Maitland's Rede Lecture with the same title, published some 80 years previously. Baker's paper marks a punctuation in his study of English law under the early Tudors, a subject which he has made his own, culminating in his magisterial sixth volume of The Oxford History of the Laws of England. In addition, it marked a major break with the earlier orthodoxy that English law in this period was fundamentally distinct from the law which was developing on the European continent. The present paper explores both of these themes.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
John B. Nann ◽  
Morris L. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
The U.S

This introductory chapter provides an overview of legal history research. An attorney might conduct legal history research if the law at question in a legal dispute is very old: the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights are well over two hundred years old. Historical research also comes into play when the question at issue is what the law was at a certain time in the past. Ultimately, law plays an important part in the political and social history of the United States. As such, researchers interested in almost every aspect of American life will have occasion to use legal materials. The chapter then describes the U.S. legal system and legal authority, and offers six points to consider in approaching a historical legal research project.

scholarly journals THE ROLE OF PRIVATE LAW IN PROMOTING SOCIAL JUSTICE

Obiter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eltjo Schrage
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
International Study ◽  
Study Group ◽  
Private Law ◽  
International Study Group ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
Metropolitan University ◽  
The University

The first contribution published in this edition is an abridged version of the inaugural lecture delivered by Professor Eltjo JH Schrage on 24 August 2009 in Port Elizabeth. The Faculty of Law is honoured that such an internationally esteemed jurist accepted the appointment as first Honorary Professor of the Faculty of Law in 2009. Prof Eltjo JH Schrage was born in Groningen. He studied law at the University of Groningen, where he obtained his doctorandus, a degree which is analogous to our master’s degree. In 1975 he defended his doctoral thesis entitled Libertas est facultas naturalis. Menselijke vrijheid in een tekst van de Romeinse jurist Florentinus (Human liberty in a text of the Roman jurist Florentinus). His academic career commenced in 1969 at the Free University, Amsterdam. In 1980 he was appointed as professor at the Free University in Roman Law and Legal History. In 1998 he became the director of the Paul Scholten Institute at the University of Amsterdam. Some of his other academic appointments include the following:• Chairperson: International Study Group on the Comparative Legal History of the Law of Restitution;• Chairperson: International Study Group on the Comparative Legal History of the Law of Torts;• Visiting Professor: University of Cape Town;• Visiting Fellow: Magdalen College, Oxford University as well as visiting professor at Oxford;• Visiting Professor: University of the North (now Limpopo) in Polokwane; and• Visiting Fellow: Trinity College, Cambridge University as well as visiting professor, Cambridge. Prof Schrage has published extensively in International journals in Dutch, English, German French, and Italian. He has edited, written and contributed to more than 30 books, and written more than 100 articles. He has been the supervisor of numerous doctoral students, including Prof Marita Carnelley of the University of KwaZulu-Natal and erstwhile member of the Faculty of Law, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Prof André Mukheibir, Head of Department, Private Law of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. He was also the promoter of the honorary doctorate awarded by the University of Amsterdam to the former chief justice of South Africa, Arthur Chaskalson in 2002. Prof Schrage has also acted as judge in the Amsterdam court since 1981. Prof Schrage is married to Anneke Buitenbos-Schrage and the couple have four children and one grandchild.

Who Made Notable Contributions to the Development of English Law or its Literature

1957 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-162
Author(s):  
H. A. Hollond
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
Law School ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
Inns Of Court ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Law ◽  
National Biography

These notes on thirty-six judges and chancellors, prompted by memory of my own requirements fifty years ago, were prepared for distribution on stencilled sheets to the students attending my lectures on legal history at the Inns of Court. My aim was to provide both indications of the principal achievements of each of the lawyers named, and also references to readily accessible sources of further knowledge.The editor of this journal has kindly suggested that it would be useful to its readers to have my notes available in print.It is not nearly as difficult as it used to be for beginners to find out about the great legal figures of the past. Sir William Holdsworth, Vinerian professor at Oxford from 1922 to 1944, placed all lawyers in his debt by his book, Some Makers of English Law, published in 1938. It was based on the Tagore lectures which he had given in Calcutta.Sir Percy Winfield, Rouse Ball professor at Cambridge from 1926 to 1943, gave detailed information as to the principal law books of the past and their editions in his manual The Chief Sources of English Legal History (1925) based on lectures given at the Harvard Law School. Twenty-four of my judges and chancellors have entries in his book as authors.By far the most numerous of my references are to Holdsworth's monumental History of English Law, in thirteen volumes, cited as H.E.L. The other works most referred to are The Dictionary of National Biography cited as D.N.B.; Fourteen English Judges (1926) by the first Earl of Birkenhead, L.C. 1919–1922; and The Victorian Chancellors (1908) by J. B. Atlay.

Part I Introduction, 2 The Genesis of Termination

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stannard John E ◽  
Capper David
Keyword(s):  
Future Performance ◽  
Contractual Term ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Law

This chapter explains how English law got to the point it is at now where it treats breach of condition and fundamental breach as the grounds on which a contract may be terminated. It differentiates between conditions and warranties. Breach of condition is where a contractual term of sufficient importance to justify the non-breaching party terminating the contract is breached. Breach of warranty is where the non-breaching party is only permitted an action for damages. The chapter then assesses the concepts of frustration and frustrating breach, and traces the history of the development of the law on frustration. A contract is frustrated when some unforeseeable supervening event occurs that without the fault of either party essentially destroys the bargain they have made. Where a contract is frustrated, both parties are released from their obligations of future performance.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt X. Metzmeier
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
American Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Background History ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
State Subsidies ◽  
Law Reports

The introduction provides the background history of American law reporting. After the American Revolution, the early law reporters helped create a new common law inspired by the law of England but fully grounded in the printed decisions of American judges. English law reports, whose reporters eventually achieved the same authority as their reports, were the model. It took time for the first state opinions to appear in print because publication was not commercially feasible. The first law reporters collected the opinions of the court, selected the best, and financed their printing; later they received state subsidies. The early Kentucky law reports were extensions of the personalities of their creators, an individualistic group of rising young lawyers, future and former judges, aspiring politicians, and enterprising journalists. The history of Kentucky courts and the state’s political environment are also surveyed.

English Criminal Justice Administration, 1650–1850: A Historiographic Essay

2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce P. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Legal History ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
Inaugural Lecture ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Law ◽  
The University

In his inaugural lecture as Downing Professor of the Laws of England at the University of Cambridge, delivered in October 1888, Frederic Maitland offered a set of provocative and now familiar reflections on “Why the history of English law is not written.” According to Maitland, although English archives possessed “a series of records which for continuity, catholicity, minute detail[,] and authoritative value” had “no equal…in the world,” the “unmanageable bulk” of these sources had “overburdened” aspiring historians of English law. As a result, “large provinces” of English legal history remained to be “reclaimed from the waste.” With few willing to undertake such reclamation efforts, the historiography of English law remained as bleak and barren as the bogs from which Maitland's Cambridgeshire had itself only reluctantly emerged.

At the margins of the history of English law: the institutional, the socio-political and the ‘blotted-out’

Legal Studies ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 420-447
Author(s):  
Igor Stramignoni
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Law ◽  
Historical Accounts

So much of what, so far, has constituted the grammar of mainstream historical discourse on English law can be broadly characterised as being primarily concerned with either formal legal institutions or their socio-political context. While such histories are generally useful, they fail to see what other-histories – what radically different stories – could be told instead. Such a web of other-histories, it is here suggested, require both time and imagination. By temporarily leaving mainstream historical accounts and entering into the time of legal history the centrality of so many institutional and socio-political histories of English law may have to be reconsidered. In particular, what would become clear is that one type of legal history needs urgently to be told – a history of the ‘blotted-out’. Neither included in mainstream legal history, nor excluded from it – neither visible nor memorable – the history of the blotted-out is the history of what can be found, so commonly and ordinarily, in everyday life. Mainstream legal history is either unaware of, or uninterested in, the blotted-out. Yet, it is precisely a history of the blotted-out which, importantly, would guard, in history, the possibility of law's most original imagination.

scholarly journals The Reception of English Law

1969 ◽  
pp. 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. Cote
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
Short Discussion ◽  
General Rules ◽  
The Subject ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
Canadian Provinces

new country is faced with choice in deciding upon system of law for itself. It can either copy someone else's codified law or it can adopt system of law which is largely judge-made. If it opts for the latter it cannot afford to spend centuries building up system of judge-made law. Therefore it must copy the rules of society which has already developed sophisticated body of such law. Most of the Commonwealth nations have chosen the latter route and as result have received English law as their own. The rules and consequences inherent in such a reception are discussed in this article. After short discussion of the distinction between the Imperial law in force proprio vigore and the English law received in the colony as such, the modes of reception of English law are described. In this respect the differences in reception between settled and conquered colonies are outlined. The parts of English law which have been received and the general rules of applicability as well as the applicability of particular areas of the law are also analyzed. The article concludes with discussion of repeal, amendment and reform of imported English law by the country receiving such law. An appendix contains an account of the reception of English law in each of the Canadian provinces. The subject of this article is often considered as part of legal history. It should be stressed however that this is not the case, as all the rules described are rules of present-day law and many of them are being applied and expounded continually, particularly in Australia and Canada. This is the author's second article in this area; the first being The Introduction of English Law Into Alberta, (1964) Alta. L. Rev. 262.

Tracing the History of the Legal System in India

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Mahendra Pal Singh ◽  
Niraj Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
British Raj ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law

Examination of Indian legal history illustrates the presence of multiple legal orders that coexisted in India through the ages. Moreover, certain ‘modern’ conceptions of law were present in similar forms in India before the medieval period, contrary to Western assumptions. Largely ignoring these legal traditions, the British attempted to re-give law and legal systems to the Indians. This was part of the larger project of ideologically justifying the presence of the British Raj in India. The British used India’s extant legal diversity to argue for the lack of a dominant legal tradition, leading to the introduction of British common law as the law of the land.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document