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Overview
The history of the Common Law is not just a history of legal doctrine. It is also the history of the courts where that doctrine was shaped and of the lawyers, judges and clerks who ran the courts and made and applied legal rules in particular cases. This book, which brings together both published and unpublished essays, reflects this broader understanding of legal history. It complements the author's The Origins of the English Legal Profession.
Paul Brand describes the early history of the legal profession in both England and Ireland and uncovers fresh evidence on the beginnings of professional education. He reevaluates the significance of major changes in the organisation of the English courts in Henry II's reign and the transformation of the English judiciary which took place during the second half of the thirteenth century, periods of key importance in the shaping of the English legal system. Other essays review the contribution made to legal literature by Ralph de Hengham, the best known royal judge of the reign of Edward I, and shed new light on the life and times of Thomas Weyland, 'chief justice and felon'. An essay on the twelfth-century origins of English land law provides a critical introduction to the work of S.F.C. Milsom for the non-specialist.
Different mechanisms of legal change at work in the thirteenth century are examined in studies of the drafting of legislation, on the modification of Common Law remedies for unjust distraint of tenants by their lords and on the introduction of controls on alienations in mortmain.
Synopsis
England was unique among the medieval kingdoms of Western Europe. In addition to developing a system of national courts with an extensive original jurisdiction and run on quasi-bureaucratic lines by royal justices, it also gave birth to a single national customary law which was applicable throughout the country. This was partly the product of judicial decisions made by the royal courts and partly the product of legislation.
The great formative period of the Commom Law began during the reign of King Henry II but continued through to the early fourteenth century. Paul Brand possesses an unrivalled knowledge of the published and unpublished sources for this critical period. The Making of the Common Law brings together his essays, some previously unpublished, on this period. The essays on the making of the English legal system (which complement his book on The Origins of the English Legal Profession) include an important essay on 'Henry II and the Creation of the English Common Law', and 'Courtroom and Schoolroom: The Education of Lawyers in England prior to 1400', the essay which won the 1988 Donald W. Sutherland Prize of the American Society for Legal History. The devlopment of English law is discussed in a number of essays including a critical introduction to the 'Milsom thesis' on the origins of England land law and 'Lordship and Distraint in Thirteenth-Century England', a major reappraisal of the balance of power between lords and tenants in this period.
The Common Law was taken by settler from England to North America and to Australasia. Its earliest venture overseas, however, was to Ireland. The Making of the Common Law includes a number of important essays on the transferof English law and the creation of a legal system modelled on that of England in the medieval English lordship of Ireland.