Following the lockdown imposed in the UK and elsewhere in the world in response to the current coronavirus pandemic, the CLCLCL team introduced “CLCLCL Questions” on Twitter – a series of light-hearted research enquiries to engage with our Twitter followers and learn more about the learned opinions and (dubious?) tastes of legal historians throughout the world.
Here is a selection of the questions we have asked, and some highlights from the responses we have received for each:
Be sure to follow our Twitter account (@CLCLCL_Europe) for more!
When it became clear that lock-down was on its way, John Hudson rushed to his office to grab Pollock & Maitland’s History of English Law. What work of legal history would you save from your shelves at the prospect of indefinite exclusion from your library? (27 March)
- Gwen Seabourne: “SS 7 Mirror of Justices, for its sheer anger at EVERYTHING plus creative re-writing of history”.
- Andrew Cecchinato: “F. Calasso’s “I glossatori e la teoria della sovranità”, for the evocative power of its prose and its capacity to abridge a whole world of human relations in one historical problem. (And because I was not wise enough to take it along with me!)”
- Ingrid Ivarsen: “Wormald’s The Making of English Law. Of course!”
- Louise Heren: “I’m glad I didn’t tidy up my library loans and return ‘MacDonald on the Criminal Law of Scotland’, Macgregor Mitchell 4th ed – invaluable.”
- Mark O’Callaghan: “Easy: The Rumpole Omnibus.”
What is your favourite legal history quote? (3 April)
- Yuan Yi Zhu: “Law, no more than any other human creation, is the automatic result of natural forces or intellectual movements. It is made by men. Whatever the pitfalls, it is less misleading to adopt or adapt Carlyle’s creed and approach legal history through biography.” C.H.S. Fifoot.
- Will Eves: “Were an examiner to ask who introduced the feudal system into England? One very good answer…would be Henry Spellman….When did the feudal system attain its most perfect development? I should answer, about the middle of the last century.” (Maitland).
- Conor McMarthy: ‘In the fourteenth century there was no law of England, no body of rules complete in itself with known limits and visible defects; or if there was it was not the property of the common law courts or any others’ (S. F. C. Milsom)
- Jonathan Ainslie: “Maine: “So great is the ascendancy of the Law of Actions in the infancy of Courts of Justice, that substantive law has at first the look of being gradually secreted in the interstices of procedure”.”
- Sarah White: “Legal documents, documents of the most technical kind, are the best, often the only evidence that we have for social and economic history, for the history of morality, for the history of practical religion…but no one will extract its meaning who has not the patience to master an extremely formal system of pleading and procedure, who is not familiar with a whole scheme of actions with repulsive names.” (Maitland)
What work of fiction would you recommend to a fellow legal historian to read? (Friday 10 April)
- Coleman A Dennehy: “His first work on the character was a radio play so I’ll go with Leo McKern’s Rumpole of the Bailey. Rumpole didn’t know a huge amount about law really, but he knew the rules of cross-examination, how to work a jury, and bloodstains. Always defends.”
- Andy King: “Not very medieval (!), but Judge Dredd… Particularly good on the philosophical difference between ‘law’ and ‘justice’; & a potent warning on the perils of the non-separation of judge, jury and executive, and on mission creep for police powers – the latter now especially topical…”
- Jonathan Triffit: “A good dose of Dr Faustus would encourage any reader to examine the small print before signing contracts…”
- Martin Roberts: “This is tricky. When I was a lawyer I loved historical fiction and hated courtroom drama. Now as a historian I’ve fallen out of love with the former & still don’t like the latter. I’m too pernickety & tend to stay away from both genres. So, 1000 Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.”
- Sara McDougall: “Tolstoy’s Resurrection, every time.”