History, Legal Theory & Systems, Legal History, England, Medieval law, United Kingdom Common Law 

"Law as we know it us unthinkable without books. The life of the law is worked out in the law library. The law library in its turn is renewed from age to age by change in the world outside. Litigation is the principal but not the only vehicle by which change in the world is transmitted to the books. In the common law it was in the past almost the only such vehicle, though the courts have increasingly had to share their monopoly not only with the legislature but also, from small beginnings..." - Preface 

Contents:
'Nothing which is new or unique'? A reappraisal of 'Judicium Essoniorum' / Paul Brand -- Country lawyers? the composers of English Chancery Bills / Timothy S. Haskett -- Wager of law and judgment by default in pleas of dower in the Royal Courts of Late Thirteenth-and Fourteenth-Century England / Sue Sheridan Walker -- 'Under her own lock and key': Women's position in early medieval law and society / Rebecca V. Colman -- Law books at Cambridge, 1500-1640 / Alain Wijffels -- Puzzles from Irish Law Reporting History / W.N. Osborough -- Law Reform in Eighteenth-Century england / Wilfrid Prest -- The independence of the judiciary in Eighteenth-Century England / David Lemmings -- The origins of the Glasgow Law School: The professors of the civil law, 1741-61 / John W. Cairns -- The Vinerian Chair: An Atlantic Perspective / M.D. Gordon -- Strikers and the law, 1825-51 / Michael Lobban -- An episode in criminal law reform through private initiative / K.J.M. Smith and Stephen White -- History in eclipse? The role of the past in books on the English legal system / Raymond Cocks. 

Includes bibliographical references.
Catalogued by editor