The Evolution of Western Private Law

The Evolution of Western Private Law
Author: Alan Watson
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801864841

In The Evolution of Western Private Law, renowned legal scholar Alan Watson presents a comprehensive overview of legal change in the Western world. Watson explains why and how such change occurs in mature systems, in underdeveloped systems, and when legal systems of different levels of sophistication and from different societal roots -- such as those of the Romans and of Germanic tribes -- come into contact. Originally intended as a second edition of the author's widely acclaimed The Evolution of Law (1985), this expanded edition has been completely restructured with more than double the number of examples. The result is a work that incorporates all the ideas that Watson has put forward during his twenty-five years studying comparative law and the development of legal systems, combining a remarkable range of sources with superb insight. -- Gerald J. Russello

Evolution and the Common Law

Evolution and the Common Law
Author: Allan C. Hutchinson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2005-04-04
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781139444934

This book offers a radical challenge to accounts of the common law's development. Contrary to received jurisprudential wisdom, it maintains there is no grand theory which will explain satisfactorily the dynamic interactions of change and stability in the common law's history. Offering original readings of Charles Darwin's and Hans-Georg Gadamer's works, the book shows that law is a rhetorical activity that can only be properly appreciated in its historical and political context; tradition and transformation are locked in a mutually reinforcing but thoroughly contingent embrace. In contrast to the dewy-eyed offerings of much contemporary work, it demonstrates that, like life, law is an organic process (i.e., events are the products of functional and localized causes) rather than a miraculous one (i.e., events are the result of some grand plan or intervention). In short, common law is a perpetual work-in-progress - evanescent, dynamic, messy, productive, tantalising, and bottom-up.

Law's Evolution and Human Understanding

Law's Evolution and Human Understanding
Author: Laurence Claus
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2012-09-27
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199735093

Why do people consult the law? Why do we consult lawyers? Law's Evolution and Human Understanding articulates a fresh conception of law that builds on Oliver Wendell Holmes' celebrated insights concerning law's predictive potential. The book considers important implications of this new understanding for how we individually make moral choices, how we read law, and some of the many other ways that law affects our lives.

A History of Law in Canada, Volume One

A History of Law in Canada, Volume One
Author: Philip Girard
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 928
Release: 2018-12-21
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1487530595

A History of Law in Canada is an important three-volume project. Volume One begins at a time just prior to European contact and continues to the 1860s, Volume Two covers the half century after Confederation, and Volume Three covers the period from the beginning of the First World War to 1982, with a postscript taking the account to approximately 2000. The history of law includes substantive law, legal institutions, legal actors, and legal culture. The authors assume that since 1500 there have been three legal systems in Canada – the Indigenous, the French, and the English. At all times, these systems have co-existed and interacted, with the relative power and influence of each being more or less dominant in different periods. The history of law cannot be treated in isolation, and this book examines law as a dynamic process, shaped by and affecting other histories over the long term. The law guided and was guided by economic developments, was influenced and moulded by the nature and trajectory of political ideas and institutions, and variously exacerbated or mediated intercultural exchange and conflict. These themes are apparent in this examination, and through most areas of law including land settlement and tenure, and family, commercial, constitutional, and criminal law.

Law and Economic Policy in America

Law and Economic Policy in America
Author: William Letwin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 1981-06
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780226473536

William Letwin's thorough, carefully argued, and elegantly written work is the only book length study of the Sherman Antitrust Act, a law designed to shape the economic life of a large complex society through maintaining the "correct" level of competition in the economy. This is a superb history and complete analysis of the Act, from its English and American common law antecedents to the events that led to the first revisions of the Act in the form of the Clayton Antitrust and Federal Trade Commission Acts.

The Evolution of English Justice

The Evolution of English Justice
Author: W Mark Ormrod
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1998-10-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1349270040

The importance of the fourteenth century for the development of English law has long been recognised. The shocks and challenges of that period - the murder of the incompetent Edward II, Edward III's ever escalating military demands for the war in France and the unparalleled disaster of the Black Death - gave English society a trauma that found its ultimate expression in Lollardy and the Peasants' Revolt. Out of this ferment came the evolution of a system of justice still substantially recognisable today. This key theme for students of late medieval England has often been made needlessly difficult by the rarefied nature of most books available on the subject. The aim of this book is to present in lucid and approachable terms the main outline of the debate and the different schools of thought, and to suggest the best ways by which students can understand a crucial subject and how this helps illuminate many other aspects of English society during the reigns of Edward II, Edward III and Richard II.

The Evolution of EU Law

The Evolution of EU Law
Author: Paul P. Craig
Publisher:
Total Pages: 985
Release: 2011
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199592969

The European Union has undergone major changes in the last decade, including Treaty reform, and a significant expansion of activity in foreign and security policy, and justice and home affairs. In the first edition of this influential textbook, a team of leading lawyers and political scientists reflected upon the important developments in their chosen area over the time since the EC was formed. This new edition continues this analysis ten years on. Taking into account the social and political background, and without losing sight of the changes that came before, in each chapter the contributors analyze the principle themes and assess the legal and political forces that have shaped its development. Each author addresses a specific topic, event, or theme, from the European Court of Justice to Treaty reform; the enlargement of the EU to administrative law; the effect of EU law on culture to climate change. Together the chapters tell the story of the rapid development of EU law - its past, present, and future.

Law and History

Law and History
Author: Anthony Chase
Publisher:
Total Pages: 219
Release: 1999-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781565845169

According to Anthony Chase, American law has undergone a series of radial transformations that correspond to four broad periods of American history: precapitalist, capitalist, state capitalist, and global capitalist. Laws may be written down in black and white, but as economic and social history unfold, Chase argues, the spirit of the law slips quietly from the letter, leaving room for interpretation. This gray space is where legal analysis and debate take place - and legal institutions develop. Drawing on an impressive range of sources - from classic texts by Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels, to Norman Mailer lectures and the critical legal studies theory of Morton Horwitz - Law and History explores what the author calls "the intriguing mystery of how law and history fit together." How precisely have long-term economic cycles influenced American legal doctrine? How have movements in U.S. social history shaped the development of our legal institutions?

The Evolution of a Nation

The Evolution of a Nation
Author: Daniel Berkowitz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2011-11-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1400840546

Although political and legal institutions are essential to any nation's economic development, the forces that have shaped these institutions are poorly understood. Drawing on rich evidence about the development of the American states from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century, this book documents the mechanisms through which geographical and historical conditions--such as climate, access to water transportation, and early legal systems--impacted political and judicial institutions and economic growth. The book shows how a state's geography and climate influenced whether elites based their wealth in agriculture or trade. States with more occupationally diverse elites in 1860 had greater levels of political competition in their legislature from 1866 to 2000. The book also examines the effects of early legal systems. Because of their colonial history, thirteen states had an operational civil-law legal system prior to statehood. All of these states except Louisiana would later adopt common law. By the late eighteenth century, the two legal systems differed in their balances of power. In civil-law systems, judiciaries were subordinate to legislatures, whereas in common-law systems, the two were more equal. Former civil-law states and common-law states exhibit persistent differences in the structure of their courts, the retention of judges, and judicial budgets. Moreover, changes in court structures, retention procedures, and budgets occur under very different conditions in civil-law and common-law states. The Evolution of a Nation illustrates how initial geographical and historical conditions can determine the evolution of political and legal institutions and long-run growth.