scholarly journals LAW'S EMPIRE: ENGLISH LEGAL CULTURES AT HOME AND ABROAD

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 295-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARGOT C. FINN
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

The common law tradition: lawyers, books and the law. By J. H. Baker. London: Hambledon, 2000. Pp. xxxiv+404. ISBN 1-85285-181-3. £40.00.Lawyers, litigation and English society since 1450. By Christopher W. Brooks. London: Hambledon, 1998. Pp. x+274. ISBN 1-85285-156-2. £40.00.Professors of the law: barristers and English legal culture in the eighteenth century. By David Lemmings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xiv+399. ISBN 0-19-820721-2. £50.00.Industrializing English law: entrepreneurship and business organization, 1720–1844. By Ron Harris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xvi+331. ISBN 0-521-66275-3. £37.50.Between law and custom: ‘high’ and ‘low’ legal cultures in the lands of the British Diaspora – the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, 1600–1900. By Peter Karsten. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi+560. ISBN 0-521-79283-5. £70.00.The past few decades have witnessed a welcome expansion in historians' understanding of English legal cultures, a development that has extended the reach of legal history far beyond the boundaries circumscribed by the Inns of Court, the central tribunals of Westminster, and the periodic provincial circuits of their judges, barristers, and attorneys. The publication of J. G. A. Pocock's classic study, The ancient constitution and the feudal law, in 1957 laid essential foundations for this expansion by underlining the centrality of legal culture to wider political and intellectual developments in the early modern period. Recent years have seen social historians elaborate further upon the purchase exercised by legal norms outside the courtroom. Criminal law was initially at the vanguard of this historiographical trend, and developments in this field continue to revise and enrich our understanding of the law's pervasive reach in British culture. But civil litigation – most notably disputes over contracts and debts – now occupies an increasingly prominent position within the social history of the law. Law's empire, denoting the area of dominion marked out by the myriad legal cultures that emanated both from parliamentary statutes and English courts, is now a far more capacious field of study than an earlier generation of legal scholars could imagine. Without superseding the need for continued attention to established lines of legal history, the mapping of this imperial terrain has underscored the imperative for new approaches to legal culture that emphasize plurality and dislocation rather than the presumed coherence of the common law.

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.

The Law of Personal Status: Wives, Paupers, and Slaves

2019 ◽  
pp. 173-212
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Common Law ◽  
White Men ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
Marriage And Divorce ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

This chapter discusses the law on marriage and divorce, family property, adoption, poor laws and social welfare, and slavery and African Americans in the United States. In the colonial period, the United States had no courts to handle matters of marriage and divorce. Marriage was a contract—an agreement between a man and a woman. Under the rules of the common law, the country belonged to the whites; and more specifically, it belonged to white men. Women had civil rights but no political rights. There were no formal provisions for adoption. A Massachusetts law, passed in 1851, was one of the earliest, and most significant, general adoption law. The so-called poor laws were the basic welfare laws.

The Common Law Legal Tradition: First Things First

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
Steven Gow Calabresi
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

This chapter explains briefly the origins and development of the common law tradition in order to better understand the rise of judicial review in the seven common law countries discussed in this volume. The common law legal tradition is characterized historically, in public law, by limited, constitutional government and by forms of judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation. In private law, the common law tradition is characterized by judge-made case law, which is the primary source of the law, instead of a massive code being the primary source of the law. The common law tradition is also characterized by reliance on the institution of trial by jury. Judges, rather than scholars, are the key figures who are revered in the common law legal tradition, and this is one of the key things that distinguishes the common law legal tradition from the civil law legal tradition. The common law legal tradition emphasizes judicial power, which explains why it has led to judicial review in the countries studied in this volume. It is the prevailing legal tradition in the four countries with the oldest systems of judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation: the United States, Canada, Australia, and India. Thus, judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation in these four countries is very much shaped by common law attitudes about the roles of judges.

Mandatory Family Protection in the Common Law Tradition

2020 ◽  
pp. 707-739
Author(s):  
Kenneth G C Reid
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The United States ◽  
Judicial Discretion ◽  
Real Property ◽  
Personal Property ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Close Family

In medieval English law, widows were entitled to dower and widowers to curtesy, both being life interests in the deceased’s real property. In addition, the personal property of the deceased was divided according to a tripartite system, with surviving spouse and children being entitled to one-third each and only the final third being available for disposal by will. The tripartite system was abandoned in the early modern period though it survives still in Scotland. But dower and curtesy remained and were exported to the British Empire. In the United States they had a rich future, developing into the fixed ‘elective share’ of the deceased’s estate which is available, in many states, for the surviving spouse. Elsewhere, dower and curtesy faded away during the nineteenth century giving rise to almost complete freedom of testation. This freedom was, however, short-lived. In 1900, New Zealand, having considered but rejected the tripartite system of fixed shares still used in Scotland, introduced a discretionary ‘family provision’ by which courts could make awards to close family members. The New Zealand model was soon copied throughout Australia, in the common law provinces of Canada, and, in 1938, in England and Wales itself. The chapter considers the reasons for the abandonment of freedom of testation, and examines the debate in New Zealand, England, and the Republic of Ireland as to whether family protection was best achieved by a system of fixed shares, as in Scotland, or by a system involving judicial discretion.

scholarly journals A Question of Seduction: The Case of MacMillan v. Brownlee

1969 ◽  
pp. 447
Author(s):  
Thomas Thorner ◽  
G. N. Reddekopp
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Legal Issue ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

In a detailed account of the action for seduction involving a former premier of Alberta and his stenographer, the authors review the decisions of the courts from trial level to Privy Council The common law and the effect of statute are discussed in an explanation and analysis of the law of seduction. By reviewing newspaper accounts of public reac tion to the lawsuit, the authors are able to provide both an interesting perspective on Alberta's social history and also a glimpse at an important yet often neglected legal issue: the public's perception of the administration of justice.

Choice of Law Methods in the Private International Law of Contract

1981 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 161-200
Author(s):  
Joost Blom
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Private International Law ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Choice Of Law ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
Contractual Obligations

This article examines the choice of law methods developed in four legal systems for problems relating to the substantial or essential validity of contracts. The complicated questions of formation and capacity have had to be left aside. The first two parts of this article discussed the choice of law methods used by courts in France, Germany, and the United States. This concluding part deals with the law in England and the common law jurisdictions in Canada, and also, by way of epilogue, with the recently completed European Communities Convention on the law applicable to contractual obligations. Finally, some general conclusions will be offered about the patterns of law that have emerged in the course of this survey.

Torts and Other Wrongs

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
John Gardner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

This chapter focuses on the law of torts, not in the United States, but in other major common law jurisdictions (England and Wales, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) in which tort cases are normally adjudicated by judges sitting without juries. It considers the so-called classical interpretation of the common law of torts by John Goldberg and Ben Zipursky, and how they tend to equivocate on an important point of law in a way that puts them at odds with some writers with whom they would do better to make common cause. It suggests that this equivocation is where the law of the United States parts company with the law in the rest of the common law world. The problem, an English lawyer might then teasingly say, is with American tort law rather than with the Goldberg and Zipursky rendition of it.

JUDGES AND LEGISLATURE: VALUES INTO LAW

2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Sales
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

AbstractThe legislature gives effect to the values of democracy and compromise in a pluralist society, but the legislation it produces is mediated in its application by the values inherent in the legal culture into which it is received. The judges complete the law promulgated by Parliament by applying it. In articulating the common law also, the judges act within the bounds of objective standards supplied by legal and political traditions, with a limited legislative role. The legislative role of the judges in applying statutes has been enhanced by the interpretive obligations applicable in areas where EU and ECHR law operates.

scholarly journals THE COMPARATIVE LEGAL HISTORY OF LIMITATION AND PRESCRIPTION

Obiter ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eltjo Schrage
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Oliver Wendell Holmes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One

Within both the civil law and the common law (as well as in mixed legal systems), there are means of acquiring and losing rights, or of freeing ourselves from obligations with the passage of time. The reason for this is at least twofold: on the one hand, for a claimant, a dispossessed owner or a creditor, limitation and prescription provide stimuli for bringing the action; on the other, this sanction upon the negligence of the claimant implies in many cases a windfall for the defendant. If a creditor is negligent in protecting his assets, the law at a certain stage no longer protects him or her. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said aptly some 100 years ago: “Sometimes it is said that, if a man neglects to enforce his rights, he cannot complain if, after a while, the law follows his example”.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document