Common Law, Civil Law, and Colonial Law

Essays in Comparative Legal History from the Twelfth to the Twentieth Centuries

William Eves, John Hudson, Ingrid Ivarsen, Sarah B. White

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781108845274
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108960670
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Common Law, Civil Law, and Colonial Law builds upon the legal historian F.W. Maitland's famous observation that history involves comparison, and that those who ignore every system but their own 'hardly came in sight of the idea of legal history'. The extensive introduction addresses the intellectual challenges posed by comparative approaches to legal history. This is followed by twelve essays derived from papers delivered at the 24th British Legal History Conference. These essays explore patterns in legal norms, processes, and practice across an exceptionally broad chronological and geographical range. Carefully selected to provide a network of inter-connections, they contribute to our better understanding of legal history by combining depth of analysis with historical contextualization. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Situating, Researching, and Writing Comparative Legal History
• 1 'In aliquibus locis est consuetudo': French Lawyers and the Lombard Customs of Fiefs in the Mid-Thirteenth Century
• 2 What Does Regiam maiestatem Actually Say (and What Does it Mean)?
• 3 James VI and I, rex et iudex: One King as Judge in Two Kingdoms
• 4 George Harris and the Comparative Legal Background of the First English Translation of Justinian's Institutes
• 5 The Nature of Custom: Legal Science and Comparative Legal History in Blackstone's Commentaries
• 6 Through a Glass Darkly: English Common Law Seen through the Lens of the Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen (Eighteenth Century)
• 7 Looking Afresh at the French Roots of Continuous Easements in English Law
• 8 Case Law in Germany: The Significance of Seuffert's Archiv
• 9 Leone Levi (1821-1888) and the History of Comparative Commercial Law
• 10 Radical Title of the Crown and Aboriginal Title: North America 1763, New South Wales 1788, and New Zealand 1840
• 11 The High Court of Australia at Mid-Century: Concealed Frustrations, Private Advocacy, and the Break with English Law
• 12 English Societal Laws as the Origins of the Comprehensive Slave Laws of the British West Indies
• Index