Les traductions françaises des Commentaires de William Blackstone à la fin du XVIIIe siècle

2020 ◽  
Vol 88 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Filippo Ranieri
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First Time

Summary The numerous translations through which the Commentaries on the Laws of England by William Blackstone – a milestone in the history of the common law – became known in France, and thus contributed for the first time to acquaint French jurists with English law, have been largely neglected by legal historians. The first section of the present contribution introduces the French anglophile visitors to England who, during the second half of the eighteenth century, disseminated the work of William Blackstone and its first translations in France. The biography and work of these first translators require a detailed examination. A second section assesses the influence of these translations, particularly in the legal and political debates on the English trial by jury in the context of revolutionary legislation. A third section considers the later translations of Blackstone’s work during the Napoleonic period and the following years. Finally, a call for further research outlines the impact of that translation literature.

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.

The Revolution in Freedoms of Press and Speech

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendell Bird
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Narrow Definition ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
First Time

This book discusses the revolutionary broadening of concepts of freedoms of press and speech in Great Britain and in America during the quarter century before the First Amendment and Fox’s Libel Act. The conventional view of the history of freedoms of press and speech is that the common law since antiquity defined those freedoms narrowly. In that view, Sir William Blackstone in 1769, and Lord Chief Justice Mansfield in 1770, faithfully summarized that common law in giving very narrow definitions of those freedoms as mere liberty from prior restraint and not as liberty from punishment after printing or speaking (the political crimes of seditious libel and seditious speech). Today, that view continues to be held by neo-Blackstonians, and remains dominant or at least very influential among historians. Neo-Blackstonians claim that the Framers used freedom of press “in a Blackstonian sense to mean a guarantee against previous restraints” with no protection against “subsequent restraints” (punishment) of seditious expression. Neo-Blackstonians further claim that “[n]o other definition of freedom of the press by anyone anywhere in America before 1798” existed. This book, by contrast, concludes that a broad definition and understanding of freedoms of press and speech was the dominant context of the First Amendment and of Fox’s Libel Act. Its basis is hundreds of examples of a broad understanding of freedoms of press and speech, in both Britain and America, in the late eighteenth century. For example, a book published in London in 1760 by a Scottish lawyer, George Wallace, stated that it is tyranny “to restrain the freedom of speculative disquisitions,” and because “men have a right to think for themselves, and to publish their thoughts,” it is “monstrous … under the pretext of the authority of laws, which ought never to have been enacted … attempting to restrain the liberty of the press” (seditious libel law). This book also challenges the conventional view of Blackstone and the neo-Blackstonians. Blackstone and Mansfield did not find any definition in the common law, but instead selected the narrowest definition in popular essays from the prior seventy years. Blackstone misdescribed it as an accepted common law definition, which in fact did not exist, and a year later Mansfield inserted a similar definition into the common law for the first time. Both misdescribed that narrow definition and the unique rules for prosecuting sedition as ancient. They were leading a counter-revolution, cloaked as a summary of a narrow and ancient common law doctrine that was neither.

scholarly journals Honos alit artes. Studi per il settantesimo compleanno di Mario Ascheri. IV. L’età moderna e contemporanea

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
History Of Europe ◽  
The Relationship

The studies included in this volume analyze the legal and social history of Europe and North America by the end of the eighteenth century to the contemporary age. The study investigates the relationship between culture and legal status (science, law and government), the administration of justice and the transformation of the legal professions. That lights up the separation, in the whole complex of Western legal tradition, that identifies the countries of the common law.

scholarly journals Shifting characterizations of the ‘Common People’ in modern English retranslations of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War: a corpus-based analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Jones
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Peloponnesian War ◽  
Common People ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Little research has yet explored the impact of (re)translation on narrative characterization, that is, on the process through which the various actors depicted in a narrative are attributed particular traits and qualities. Moreover, the few studies that have been published on this topic are either rather more anecdotal than systematic, or their focus is primarily on the losses in character information that inevitably occur when a narrative is retold for a new audience in a new linguistic context. They do not explore how the translator’s own background knowledge and ideological beliefs might affect the characterization process for readers of their target-language text. Consequently, this paper seeks to make two contributions to the field: first, it presents a corpus-based methodology developed as part of the Genealogies of Knowledge project for the comparative analysis of characterization patterns in multiple retranslations of a single source text. Such an approach is valuable, it is argued, because it can enhance our ability to engage in a more systematic manner with the accumulation of characterization cues spread throughout a narrative. Second, the paper seeks to move discussions of the effects of translation on narrative characterization away from a paradigm of loss, deficiency and failure, promoting instead a perspective which embraces the productive role translators often play in reconfiguring the countless narratives through which we come to know, imagine and make sense of the past, our present and imagined futures. The potential of this methodology and theoretical standpoint is illustrated through a case study exploring changes in the characterization of ‘the common people’ in two English-language versions of classical Greek historian Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, the first produced by Samuel Bloomfield in 1829 and the second by Steven Lattimore in 1998. Particular attention is paid to the referring expressions used by each translator—such as the multitude vs. the common people—as well as the specific attributes assigned to this narrative actor. In this way, the study attempts to gain deeper insight into the ways in which these translations reflect important shifts in attitudes within key political debates concerning the benefits and dangers of democracy.

Eighteenth-Century Professorial Classification of English Common Law

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Early History ◽  
The Third ◽  
Analytical Structure ◽  
History Of University ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Law

This chapter assesses the work of Sir Robert Chambers by comparing it with that of other professors of English law. It focuses on the analytical structure Chambers gave to English law. The first part briefly discusses the early history of university lectures and, in particular, the adoption of the structure of Justinian’s Institutes. This is followed by an account of the problems encountered by professors of English law in setting forth their subject, and of the solutions they adopted. The third section provides a detailed analysis of the structure Chambers used for his lectures in comparison with that used by Blackstone. This is followed by some general conclusions and observations.

Is Custom a Source of Law in Israel?

1974 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-233
Author(s):  
Ya'akov Meron
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Code ◽  
The State ◽  
First Year ◽  
British Mandate ◽  
Statutory Authority ◽  
The Common ◽  
English Law ◽  
First Time

This question, evoked for the first time over thirty years ago and apparently resolved some twenty years ago, is being presently hotly debated as a result of the Bill Repealing Ottoman Laws, which is intended to abrogate, inter alia, the remains of the Mejelle, the Ottoman Civil “Code”, still in force in Israel. Throughout the Courts' examination of the question there was never any doubt that the answer is to be found in the Mejelle. For this reason it is now feared that, with the latter's disappearance, no statutory authority will be left in Israel law recognizing custom as a source of law. Admittedly, in the absence of any provision in the Ottoman law still prevailing in this country, article 46 of the Palestine Order-in-Council, 1922 might once again allow recourse to English Common law. Moreover, under the British Mandate in Palestine, reference was made to the Common law on this subject. Since the establishment of the State, however, less significance is attached to this reference. Recently it has even been stressed that there is no point in trying to adopt the English notion of custom, whose requirements are so rigid (notably as to antiquity) that the existence of a custom is not recognized unless it dates from 1189, the first year of the reign of Richard I. Indeed, this lack of flexibility renders recourse to English law, on this point, totally unworkable and merely underlines the necessity of finding a solution within the local—in this case—Ottoman law.

Execrabilis in the Common Pleas: Further Studies

1921 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-75
Author(s):  
T. F. T. Plucknett
Keyword(s):  
Canon Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
English Law ◽  
Law Courts

Under the above title Professor Maitland gave a characteristic study of the relations of the Common Law Courts to the Canon Law in the reign of Edward the Third. His object was to trace the history of an attempt by the temporal authority to “enforce” (for its own ends) the provisions of the papal Extravagant “Execrabilis” by securing its recognition in the Court of Common Pleas and excluding the spiritual Courts from their claim to the sole cognizance of the matters covered by the Bull. To his treatment of the subject it may be objected, with all due deference, that the Bull Execrabilis, interesting as it is, cannot be regarded as an altogether new factor in English law calling into operation an entirely new set of phenomena that can be isolated and studied alone; on the contrary, when the Bull made its first appearance in the English Courts of Common Law it became immediately involved in a fairly old dispute between the spiritual and temporal jurisdictions. This aspect of the subject received no consideration in Maitland's essay, with the result that his treatment of the matter is incomplete and in one important particular incorrect.

‘I, Me, Mine’: Bodies, Parts and Property

1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 299-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Grubb
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Recent Case ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
English Court ◽  
Commercial Exploitation ◽  
The Common ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Court Of Appeal

The idea that human bodies and their parts are ‘property’ has traditionally found little support in English law. By contrast, philosophers have mused at the prospect of persons owning themselves and the justice of self-ownership and its implications for the product of a person's labours. There are signs that the common law may be prepared to recognise that parts of a body are ‘property’ and subject to control by their source or another. In the recent case of R v Kelly, the English Court of Appeal decided that parts of corpses held as anatomical specimens were ‘property’ and could be stolen. The impact of the court's view may be considerable in respect of tissue and parts held by medical or other institutions for research, storage, archival or transplantation purposes; conferring legal protection where otherwise there would be none. What, however, of body parts or tissue taken from living persons? Is this ‘property’ and, if so, who has “rights” over it? The implications are considerable for patients and others, particularly researchers where commercial exploitation is envisaged.

1. Introduction to equity and trusts

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Gary Watt
Keyword(s):  
Future Development ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Legal Knowledge ◽  
Key Points ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
English Law

Without assuming prior legal knowledge, books in the Directions series introduce and guide readers through key points of law and legal debate. Questions, diagrams and exercises help readers to engage fully with each subject and check their understanding as they progress. The trust is an important invention of equity, a branch of English law compatible with common law. The history of equity oscillates between compatibility and competition with common law. This chapter serves as an introduction to equity and trusts. It outlines the major stages in the historical development of equity and trusts, examines the theoretical distinction between equity and the common law, explains how to correctly use the maxims and doctrines of equity, and discusses the distinction between equity as an inventive, flexible, remedial branch of law, and equitable institutions that are now settled and established, including the trust and the mortgage. The chapter also considers equity in relation to morality, co-operative remedies in equity and common law, equity and crime, and equity and restitution, before concluding with an assessment of the place of equity in the modern world and its possible future development.

Murder & the Modern British Historian

2004 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin J. Wiener
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Murder Trials ◽  
First Time

Over a century ago, the pioneer English historian of law F. W. Maitland observed that “If some fairy gave me the power of seeing a scene of one and the same kind in every age of history of every race, the kind of scene that I would choose would be a trial for murder, because I think that it would give me so many hints as to a multitude of matters of the first importance.” For many decades Maitland's remark was ignored, as historical scholarship passed over murder trials as far too “atypical” and “sensationalistic” to merit serious study, leaving them to amateur devotees of courtroom drama and detection mysteries. One notable exception was Brian Simpson, the distinguished legal historian, whose Cannibalism and the Common Law, published in 1984, for the first time placed in its social context the leading case of R. v. Dudley & Stephens, which in 1884 produced the still-authoritative rule governing the “necessity” justification for homicide. In Simpson's hands the case, a “sensational” one indeed, involving the eating of a cabin boy by shipwrecked sailors, opened up the little-known world of late Victorian maritime life. However, Simpson's lead was not followed up, and his book remained a fascinating “one-off,” regarded as an “amusement piece” by an otherwise “serious” scholar of arcane legal reasoning.Only more recently, with developments such as the rise of the genre of “micro-history” and the legitimation of interest in the “sensational,” have historians come to accept homicide and its legal treatment as a worthy subject.

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