Case Law in the Making: Essays

Case Law in the Making: Essays
Author: Alain A. Wijffels
Publisher:
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1997
Genre: Law
ISBN:

English summary: Legal scholars from every nation are usually guided by the formations of their own legal system and, if they do dare to cross boundaries, by the two big legal families the continental European and the Anglo-American legal system. These two legal systems are usually treated as systems that isolated themselves and have separate historical developments. The goal of the CSC is to correct this skewed view. On the one hand, each of the two legal systems never formed a monolithic unit: one only has to bear in mind the differences between the German and the French legal system or the fact that US Law is drifting away from English Common Law. On the other hand, the model of two isolated legal systems has proven to be fragile and antiquated: the mutual influence and common features are forces that have shaped the legal development substantially on both sides. It is also due to the research results published so far in the CSC, that these notions have been corrected. It is the intent of the CSC, which is kindly sponsored by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, to further bridge the gap between the two legal systems. German description: By the end of the middle ages and in early-modern Europe, judges in superior or central courts had risen to a prominent position in society and played a crucial role in legal developments. Whether in the Common Law system or in continental Europe, the courts' decisions became a focus for legal reasoning, forensic arguments and doctrine. Yet, it remains controversial to what extent these developments reflected the emergence of case-law in a modern sense. From a comparative perspective, it is also questionable whether, in spite of obvious institutional and procedural differences, the Common Law and the European Civil Law traditions produced a corpus of judge-made law which, if not by the way it was elaborated, at least by its results in the respective legal systems, played a similar role in the constant interaction between the various sources of law. The present volumes, which are a sequel to the volume "Judicial Records, Law Reports, and the Growth of Case Law" (J. H. Baker ed.), published in 1989, specifically consider the relationship between judicial records and law reports. The emphasis of the contributions is on the techniques applied by the authors of both records and reports. Records, whether in the Common Law tradition or in continental Europe, developed mainly in order to satisfy procedural requirements, whereas the authenticity of early reports did not meet the same standards as in modern times. Both these observations raise the question of the purpose of records and reports in the law-making process. Volume 1 contains essays discussing these questions in the Anglo-American tradition (Common Law, Equity, English Canon Law) and in various continental-European traditions (Italy, France, Germany, the Low Countries and the Roman Catholic Church). Volume 2 illustrates these essays by producing extensive samples of both records and reports in the systems reviewed in the first volume. Thus, the present publication offers the unique combination of scholarly texts which review the latest results of current legal-historical debates on the role of judges' decisions in medieval and early modern law, and, for the first time, a source-book of the courts' practices and the reporters' methods in a wide range of legal systems.

A Concise History of the Common Law

A Concise History of the Common Law
Author: Theodore Frank Thomas Plucknett
Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
Total Pages: 828
Release: 2001
Genre: Common law
ISBN: 1584771372

Originally published: 5th ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1956.

Collected Papers on English Legal History

Collected Papers on English Legal History
Author: John Baker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1908
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 131610219X

Over the last forty years, Sir John Baker has written on most aspects of English legal history, and this collection of his writings includes many papers that have been widely cited. Providing points of reference and foundations for further research, the papers cover the legal profession, the inns of court and chancery, legal education, legal institutions, legal literature, legal antiquities, public law and individual liberty, criminal justice, private law (including contract, tort and restitution) and legal history in general. An introduction traces the development of some of the research represented by the papers, and cross-references and new endnotes have been added. A full bibliography of the author's works is also included.

Priests of the Law

Priests of the Law
Author: Thomas J. McSweeney
Publisher:
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198845456

This book examines the development of legal professionalism in the early English common law, with specific reference to the 13th-century treatise known as Bracton and to its likely authors.

The Consumption of Justice

The Consumption of Justice
Author: Daniel Lord Smail
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2013-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0801468787

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the ideas and practices of justice in Europe underwent significant change as procedures were transformed and criminal and civil caseloads grew apace. Drawing on the rich judicial records of Marseille from the years 1264 to 1423, especially records of civil litigation, this book approaches the courts of law from the perspective of the users of the courts (the consumers of justice) and explains why men and women chose to invest resources in the law. Daniel Lord Smail shows that the courts were quickly adopted as a public stage on which litigants could take revenge on their enemies. Even as the new legal system served the interest of royal or communal authority, it also provided the consumers of justice with a way to broadcast their hatreds and social sanctions to a wider audience and negotiate their own community standing in the process. The emotions that had driven bloodfeuds and other forms of customary vengeance thus never went away, and instead were fully incorporated into the new procedures.

Case Law in Roman, Anglosaxon and Continental Law

Case Law in Roman, Anglosaxon and Continental Law
Author: Mar a Jos Falc N y Tella
Publisher: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2011-08-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004204164

There is no one definition of case law, but rather a plurality of meanings. In this respect, after an analysis of Roman iurisprudentia and Anglo-Saxon case law, this work considers the Spanish legal system, as an example of a Continental jurisdiction.