Legal History

This collection of original essays brings together leading legal historians and theorists to explore the oft-neglected but important relationship between these two disciplines. The aim of this collection is to invite participants from both sides to ask what lessons legal history can bring to legal theory, and what legal theory can bring to history. What is the theorist to do with the empirical data generated by archival research? What theories should drive the historical enterprise, and what wider lessons can be learned from it? This collection brings together a number of major theorists and legal historians to debate these ideas.

This book traces, in outline, the development of the principal features of English legal institutions and doctrines from Anglo-Saxon times to the present. The Introduction has become a standard work on the subject. It has now been updated and improved in consequence of the rapid pace of research in legal history over recent years, which has made this new edition a necessity.

Law, in its comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of action; and is applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action, whether animate or inanimate,rational or irrational. This we say, the laws of motion, or gravitation, as well as the laws of nature and of nations. And it is that rule of action which is prescribed by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey.

The Formation of English Common Law provides a comprehensive overview of the development of early English law, one of the classic subjects of medieval history. This much expanded second edition spans the centuries from King Alfred to Magna Carta, abandoning the traditional but restrictive break at the Norman Conquest. Within a strong interpretative framework, it also integrates legal developments with wider changes in the thought, society, and politics of the time.

(Full Text at Making of Modern Law.)
One of the most famous books ever written is this small volume containing an orderly and exact presentation of land law at the time midway between the Norman Conquests and the present day (1903).

This volume is a collection of the principal essays of Professor Emeritus R.C.B. Risk, one of the pioneers of Canadian legal history and for many years regarded as its foremost authority on the history of Canadian legal thought. Frank Scott, Bora Laskin, W.P.M. Kennedy, John Willis and Edward Blake are among the better known figures whose thinking and writing about law are featured in this collection. But this compilation of the most important essays by a pioneer in Canadian legal history brings to light many other lesser known figures as well, whose writings covered a wide range of topics, from estoppel to the British North America Act to the purpose of legal education.

In 1821 British Columbia was the exclusive domain of an independent Native population and the Hudson's Bay Company. By the time it entered Confederation fifty years later, a British colonial government was firmly in place. In this book Tina Loo shows how the new regime was shaped by an ideology of liberalism. By detailing specific incidents and then drawing from a wide historical field to sketch in new background, she is able to locate alternative perspectives and restructure much established history. Her inquiry moves from the disciplinary practices of the Hudson's Bay Company, through the establishment of courts in the gold fields, to conflicts over the role of juries and the nature of property.

Reprint of the 1922 ed. published by Longmans, Green, London.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
The object of the work is to aid those who desire to use the "Institutes" as an introduction to the study of Roman law, or who wish to find in one volume the means of gaining a general acquaintance with the history, principles, and contents of Roman Law.