scholarly journals Meeting the Challenges of Canadian Legal History: The Albertan Contribution

1994 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 423
Author(s):  
John P. S. McLaren

Canadian legal history has undergone a transformation during the past twenty-five years from a scholarly void to a lively branch of social and intellectual history. It is now recognized as an important area of research and speculation by legal academics, historians and people in a range of other humanities and social science disciplines. Courses in Canadian legal history are offered in most law schools and several history departments. This change has been brought about by the hard work and dedication of a small but energetic band of scholars. Albertan legal historians have played an important seminal role in this movement, in particular by researching and encouraging others to work on the legal history of the Northwest Territories and Prairie Provinces. This essay describes the growth of research into and the teaching of Canadian legal history in Alberta, and the special contributions of Wilbur Bowker, Louis Knafla and Rod Macleod to that endeavour. It concludes with several reflections on how interest in legal history in the Province might be further expanded.

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 27-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Gunter

Det skiftet som har funnet sted i England når det gjelder innholdet i og organiseringen av skolelederopplæringen, danner utgangspunktet for en presentasjon av et teoretisk rammeverk som kan hjelpe oss til å forstå utviklingen av skoleledelse som intellektuelt felt over tid. Rammeverket er basert på forskning om skoleledelse i en engelsk kontekst i løpet av de siste ti årene og består av fem kategorier som er gjensidig knyttet sammen: Kunnskapstradisjoner, kunnskapsformål, kunnskapsdomener, kontekster og nettverk. Ved hjelp av disse kategoriene identifiseres sentrale trender i utviklingen av skoleledelse som intellektuelt felt i England. Avslutningsvis vises det til implikasjoner om, med og for profesjonen og for videre forskning både i England i andre kontekster.Nøkkelord: skoleledelse, forskningsfeltets intellektuelle historie, ledelsestrening, ledelsesutdanningAbstractThe shift from professional preparation for headship to leadership training in England is the site for the presentation and deployment of a framework for constructing intellectual histories of school leadership. The framework has been developed based on research undertaken in the past decade through conducting independently funded social science projects. The reading of field outputs combined with fieldwork data has produced a five-part framework that examines knowledge traditions, purposes, domains, contexts and networks. In using this framework to examine the intellectual history of the field in England I identify certain key trends in England, where I consider the implications of this about, with and for the profession and for further research both in England and in other contexts.Keywords: school leadership, intellectual histories, leadership training, leadership preparation


2020 ◽  
Vol 135 ◽  
pp. 19-73
Author(s):  
Philipp Höhn ◽  
Alexander Krey

City books (Stadtbücher) reflect the practice of urban law and are among the most important records for medieval German urban (legal) history. Since the 19th century, scholars have analysed them extensively and edited several such registers. Studying the intellectual history of three different editorial approaches to these records allows us to analyse the editors’ underlying assumptions and the way they reconstructed the working of the law in the past. Fritz Rörig (1882 – 1952), an economic historian, viewed the Lübeck urban registers as sources for economic and constitutional history. Consequently, Rörig judged much of the material they contain as ‘useless’, contaminations which could not be ignored, but had to be presented as briefly as possible in tabular form. Editing the Cologne property registers (“Schreinsbücher”) Hans Planitz (1882 – 1954), a legal historian interested in ‘German Law’ (Deutsches Recht), viewed these registers as records of legal practice which embodied (unwritten) Cologne law. Consequently, he omitted all material not suited to reconstructing that body of law. Wilhelm Ebel (1908 – 1980), a legal historian, was also selective in editing the verdicts of the Lübeck town council. In contrast to Planitz and Rörig, Ebel was convinced that legal practice was derived directly from normative law. Thus, it should be possible to analyse individual verdicts in order to reconstruct the substance of Lübeck law. An analysis of his edition, however, shows that Ebel failed to distinguish between edition and interpretation. If, as he believed, Lübeck law had been a coherent and stable body of law for 700 years, then it was necessary to mold the inchoate verdicts in the sources to fit the model and to nudge readers to reach the ‘right’ conclusions. All three editorial approaches were governed by the perception that their sources were not quite fit for purpose. These deficits could only be eliminated by selecting, calendering, abridging or visualizing the source material. In consequence, they overlooked the fact that these registers were based on day to day legal practice.


1957 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-162
Author(s):  
H. A. Hollond

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.


2013 ◽  
Vol 39 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 471-486
Author(s):  
Seyla Benhabib

Until recently the term ‘cosmopolitanism’ was a forgotten concept in the intellectual history of the 18th and 19th centuries. The last two decades have seen a remarkable revival of interest in cosmopolitanism across a wide variety of fields. This article contends that legal developments since the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights and the rise of an ‘international human rights regime’ are at the forefront of a new cosmopolitanism. Yet there is a great deal of skepticism toward such claims on the part of those who maintain that democracy and human rights are best furthered by the nation-state framework. Still others confuse legal cosmopolitanism with the spread of a uniform system of rights across different national jurisdictions. In several writings in the past, I developed the concept of ‘democratic iterations’ to argue against such skepticism as well as misunderstandings of legal cosmopolitanism. In this article, I show how democratic iterations unfold across transnational legal sites, which encompass various national jurisdictions and through which contentious dialogues on the application and interpretation of such fundamental rights as ‘freedom of religion’ in different jurisdictions can emerge. To document such processes I focus on the Leyla Sahin v. Turkey case which was adjudicated by the European Court of Human Rights in 2005.


2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 42-58
Author(s):  
Thomas Thompson

AbstractThe history of Israel has always been a virtual history. Until recently, historical debate in the field has confined itself almost entirely to a discussion about alternative fictional scenarios for the past: the patriarchs and the conquest stories as an alternative to the exodus and settlement narratives; Moses or Ezra; Josiah or John Hyrcanus. Evidence, when it has been of interest to the field at all, has ever been in regard to any given scenario's persuasiveness. The story of David on the Mount of Olives is used as an example of the theological world at stake in the Bible's virtual history; particularly in regard to the motif of Yahweh as 'the lord of history'. Recognition of such virtuality in the biblical tradition aids the contemporary historian of intellectual history. The story of Jesus on the Mount of Olives is used to illustrate this.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 503-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warwick Anderson

AbstractThis article offers an overview of science and technology studies (STS) in Southeast Asia, focusing particularly on historical formations of science, technology, and medicine in the region, loosely defined, though research using social science approaches comes within its scope. I ask whether we are fashioning an “autonomous” history of science in Southeast Asia—and whether this would be enough. Perhaps we need to explore further “Southeast Asia as method,” a thought style heralded here though remaining, I hope, productively ambiguous. This review contributes primarily to the development of postcolonial intellectual history in Southeast Asia and secondarily to our understanding of the globalization and embedding of science, technology, and medicine.


2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 388-388
Author(s):  
Nathan J. Brown

Scholars of the Middle East based in social science disciplines—especially my own, political science—are likely to feel a bit more welcome by their colleagues as a result of recent events in the Middle East. Not only will we be informative conversationalists in the hallways for a while because of our regional expertise, but also, far more profoundly, the sorts of things that political scientists study, from voting patterns to regime change, are suddenly interesting subjects in the region. This is not to say that Middle East elections were not studied in the past or that research on political change was not undertaken—far from it. But the questions posed, the terms used, and tools employed were often different from those more prevalent in the discipline. Political scientists focusing on the Middle East are therefore likely to find this a gratifying time, ripe with opportunities for comparative and cross-regional analysis. And those nonregional specialists whose interests lie in a wide variety of topics from voting behavior to revolutions may work harder to incorporate Middle Eastern cases into their own work.


2014 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caleb J Stevens

AbstractThis article demonstrates that there has never been a clear definition of public land in Liberian legal history, although in the past the government operated as if all land that was not under private deed was public. By examining primary source materials found in archives in Liberia and the USA, the article traces the origins of public land in Liberia and its ambiguous development as a legal concept. It also discusses the ancillary issues of public land sale procedures and statutory prices. The conclusions reached have significant implications for the reform of Liberia's land sector.


1985 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 452-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen L. Dyson

The fiftieth anniversary of a journal, especially one as important and influential asAmerican Antiquity, is a time for celebration. It is also a moment for reflection both on the achievements of the past and the potential for the future. Major journals are mirrors of the intellectual history of the disciplines that they represent. They are also both intentionally or unintentionally shapers and trendsetters of that discipline. Time past, time present, and time future become inextricably woven in a consideration of their printed pages.


2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryant G. Garth

Celebrations of the career of Willard Hurst tend to concentrate, quite understandably, on his scholarship in legal history. Most of those who now read and comment on his works are professional legal historians, and they tend to read and define Hurst according to that professional identification. This article takes a different approach, concentrating on Hurst's own role in the more general politics of legal scholarship. Hurst was not content with making a mark in legal history. He sought to challenge the legal establishment. We see the legacy of his efforts in the development of the field of law and social science, institutionalized in the mid 1960s in the Law and Society Association (LSA). Therefore, my focus is on the sociology and politics of scholarship rather than on intellectual history. I will not examine the relationship of Hurst's particular works to those who came before or after him, nor will I go through the exercise of suggesting what was good or lasting or useful about his work for present purposes.


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