Lawyers, Litigation and English Society, 1450-1900

Book Description

Legal history has usually been written in terms of writs and legislation, and the development of legal doctrine. Christopher Brooks, in this series of essays roughly half of which are previously unpublished, approaches the law from two different angles: the uses made of courts and the fluctuations in the fortunes of the legal profession. Based on extensive original research, his work has helped to redefine the parameters of British legal history, away from procedural development and the refinement of legal doctrine and towards the real impact that the law had in society. He also places the law into a wider social and political context, showing how changes in the law often reflected, but at the same time influenced, changes in intellectual assumptions and political thought.Lawyers as a profession flourished in the second half of the sixteenth century and throughout the seventeenth century. This great age of lawyers was followed by a decline in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, reflecting both a decline in litigation and the perception of the law as slow, artificially complicated and ruinously expensive.In Lawyers, Litigation and Society, 1450-1900, Christopher Brooks also looks at the sorts of cases brought before different courts, showing why particular courts were used and for what reasons, as well as showing why the popularity of individual courts changed over the years.

The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century

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Violence and capital accumulation in 18th Century London
Eeeeeeeech
Contemporary academic historiography at its worst
Death by hanging was a weapon of the privileged ruling class

The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century
Peter Linebaugh
Manufacturer: Verso
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1859845762

Book Description

Peter Linebaugh's groundbreaking history has become an inescapable part of any understanding of the rise of capitalism. In 18th-century London the use of hanging forced the poor to accept the criminalization of customary rights and to respect new forms of private property. Often the gallows also became the place where the waste and nuisance products of mercantilism—the hungry, poor and far-from-home—were efficiently dispatched. Necessity drove the city's poor into an inevitable conflict with the changing property laws such that all the working-class men and women had reason to fear the example of Tyburn's triple tree.

In this new edition, Peter Linebaugh reinforces his original arguments with detailed responses to his critics based on an impressive array of historical sources.

Customer Reviews:

Violence and capital accumulation in 18th Century London.......2007-02-03

Peter Linebaugh's "The London Hanged" is an exceedingly well-done overview of the relation between proletarian crime and capital accumulation in the London boroughs of the 18th Century. Together with Marcus Rediker, Linebaugh is the primary Marxist historian of crime, political economy and civil society in this period, and his extensive research pays off - "The London Hanged" is, as the (Daily Mail!) review on the cover says, history as it should be written.

Linebaugh makes much use of the records of the hanged at Tyburn, as well as popular folk-tales about gangs, escaped convicts and trade records to build a clear picture of a London where extreme poverty and extreme violence, the latter from both the wealthy leaders of state and the urban poor, went together to enable the accumulation of capital. This sinister process of hangings for stealing a few shilling on one hand and corruption, slave trade and press gangs on the other hand is well described by Linebaugh in such terms as "Tyburnography" (after Tyburn where hangings were carried out) and "Thanatocracy".

The style of discussion of the subject is best described as narrative. Peter Linebaugh examines various aspects of the London life of those times in the successive chapters, blending anecdotes, statistics and jargon from those days into a powerful whole that leaves one with the impression of having been in London in those days as an investigative journalist. What additionally makes the research of this work so outstanding is the masterful way in which Linebaugh is able to use many different sorts of sources, from anonymous political pamphlets to the works of John Locke, showing the place of each in the ideology of the time and its relation to the underlying socio-economic developments. In this way he shows that historical materialism need not be a regurgitation of vague Marxist jargon, but is the most powerful tool for historical analysis of a whole society we have.

From corn manipulations to Levellers, from plantation lords to famous highwaymen, from black gang leaders to the Black Act, hogsheads and tobacco theft - this book reads as an adventure story and critique of political economy in one. The only possible downsides are the rather high degree of repetition inherent in the anecdotal nature of the work, and Linebaugh's tendency to pretentious terminology. Still, much recommended for anyone with historical interest.

Eeeeeeeech.......2006-08-14

It will leave you utterly appalled. Giving a thorough account of the British justice system during the mid-eighteenth century, the Tyburn era, Linebaugh sees the law through many lenses: the sailor's, the butcher's, the tailor's, the prostitute, etc.

I used to live with a historian, where I had to read him his homework while he drove, so I can tell you right here and how that this is a GREAT history book.

Contemporary academic historiography at its worst.......2006-06-06

If you enjoy reading the sort of books about which someone would write "Death by hanging was also a weapon the privileged ruling class utilized in order to strip the indigent populace into accepting the outlawing of customary rights and newly emerging forms of private property,"; if you believe that events are caused by impersonal social/class/race/gender/whatever forces then this book is for you.

If, on the other hand, you believe events are result from the decisions of individual flawed men and women, you'll despise this silly post-modern/ structuralist/derridafouacault drivel, as I did.

Death by hanging was a weapon of the privileged ruling class.......2003-05-17

The London Hanged: Crime And Civil Society In The Eighteenth Century by Peter Linebaugh (Assistant Professor of History, University of Toledo) is a fascinating and informative study of eighteenth century London, in which hanging was much more than capital punishment for criminal transgressors. Death by hanging was also a weapon the privileged ruling class utilized in order to strip the indigent populace into accepting the outlawing of customary rights and newly emerging forms of private property. The new property laws were so stringent that nearly all working-class men and women had reason to fear the hangman. The lessons drawn from this history bear special relevance in today's world where capital punishment is a very hotly debated issue. The London Hanged is highly recommended reader for both academia and the non-specialist general reader with an interest in European history.

To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right

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An interesting analysis of the right to bear arms
Funk's Commentary in the Howard Law Journal
Authoritative writing, but minor flaws are irritating
this book is good
very impressive piece of scholarship

To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right
Joyce Lee Malcolm
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0674893069

Book Description

Joyce Malcolm illuminates the historical facts underlying the current passionate debate about gun-related violence, the Brady Bill, and the NRA, revealing the original meaning and intentions behind the individual right to "bear arms." few on either side of the Atlantic realize that this extraordinary, controversial, and least understood liberty was a direct legacy of English law. This book explains how the Englishmen's hazardous duty evolved into a right, and how it was transferred to America and transformed into the Second Amendment.

Malcolm's story begins in turbulent seventeenth-century England. She shows why English subjects, led by the governing classes, decided that such a dangerous public freedom as bearing arms was necessary Entangled in the narrative are shifting notions of the connections between individual ownership of weapons and limited government, private weapons and social status, the citizen army and the professional army, and obedience and resistance, as well as ideas about civilian control of the sword and self-defense. The results add to our knowledge of English life, politics, and constitutional development, and present a historical analysis of a controversial Anglo-American legacy, a legacy that resonates loudly in America today.

Customer Reviews:

An interesting analysis of the right to bear arms.......2004-05-24

It is important to realize that this book is not really about the 2nd Amendment. Instead, Malcolm seeks to chart the development of the English conception of a right to keep and bear arms, which clearly has influence upon the 2nd Amendment. The history of the English right is fascinating. It began as an onerous duty that many Englishmen resented and Malcolm traces the development of the right during the violent 17th century during which many Englishmen were disarmed as a means to stem any armed opposition. The right was created in 1689 as a means of ensuring that an armed citizenry would always be available to oppose a standing army.

I lack the background to critique Malcolm's English history, but there are a few areas where I think Malcolm runs into problems. One is interpretation. Malcolm stresses the change in the 1689 right from a right to bear arms "for their common defence" to "their defence," arguing that this shows a determined choice to abandon a collectivist right in favor of an individual right. I personally think this was more about simplifing language than a fundamental change in the right's conception. But, more importantly, I think this underscores the limitation of speaking about a right in individual versus collective terms. Here, Malcolm concludes that the English right was "individual" and then goes on to lay out all of the collective defence reasons that the right was necessary, i.e. a fear of Catholic plots and of standing armies.

2nd Amendment absolutists shouldn't see this book as their savior because, even if we accept Malcolm's conclusion that the 2nd Amendment was based upon the English conception, it still would not stop gun limitations, or bans, in the U.S. While Malcolm supplies a quote from William Rawle claiming that the 2nd Amendment limits the power of the states, constitutional practice holds otherwise. The 2nd Amendment only limits the federal government because the Supreme Court has not yet, and probably won't in the near future, incorporated it into the 14th Amendment. Moreover, Malcolm's final chapter underscores this fact because she lays out the reasons the 2nd Amendment was felt to be necessary, a fear of federal military dominance. The entire chapter is replet with references to the fear of a federal standing army and the need for states to maintain an armed citizenry. Therefore, the 2nd Amendment was necessary to remove the possibility that the Federal government would disarm the people.

My only other criticism is minor. Malcolm cites the position of the 2nd Amendment as 2nd as evidence of its importance. This a shockingly amateur mistake for a historian to make. The fact is that the 2nd amendment was originally the 4th one proposed on a list of 12, the first two failed to be ratified (though one was ratified 2 centuries later). Both of these where only technical changes rather than "rights" and the fact that the right to keep and bear arms is 2nd is more accidential than by design.

For the most part I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would strongly recomend it, though the limitations on Malcolm's dealing with American constitutionalism should not be forgotten. Readers will gain a much needed lesson in the the English tradition from which the American union developed.

Funk's Commentary in the Howard Law Journal.......2000-01-11

From T. Markus Funk, "Is the Second Amendment Really Such a Riddle? Tracing the Historical "Origins of an Anglo-American Right" 39 Howard Law Journal 411 (1995):

Few topics of contemporary social, moral, and political debate can provoke as much raw emotion and open hostility as the Second Amendment, particularly in relation to the topic of gun prohibition. This subject routinely causes many well-intentioned people of whatever view to give up all pretense of courtesy and reason in favor of ad hominem attacks on those with whom they disagree. Readers of history professor Joyce Lee Malcolm's To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right will find these ugly by-products of the contemporary conflict refreshingly absent. Malcolm clearly keeps her distance from any broad normative judgments about the social utilities or costs of civilian firearms possession, offering instead a sober, scholarly, historical discussion of the Amendment's origins. Meticulously tracing the British history of regulations on firearms ownership from the Middle Ages on, she provides a detailed and illuminating history that includes the English Bill of Rights and, a century later, the American one. Because it is only in this historical context that the Second Amendment's meaning can be fully understood and appreciated, Malcolm's book is essential reading for anyone interested in this complex and controversial subject.

Authoritative writing, but minor flaws are irritating.......1999-11-17

Ms. Malcolm nicely lays out the history of the tension between English rulers and subjects over the control of weapons. She made me realize that the current dispute in this country over access to firearms has a long pedigree. Her depiction of the circumstances under which England, in 1689, declared the right to bear arms "true, ancient, and indubitable," when in fact it was none of those is particularly interesting. (See p. 115.) She provides evidence for her view that "it is particularly ironic that some modern American lawyers have misread the English right to have arms as merely a 'collective' right inextricably tied to the need for a militia" (p. 119) when by 1689 the opposite was true. I'm not a historian or a gun enthusiast, but I find all of this quite fascinating.

When the book turns to the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, however, its energy seems to flag. I am sympathetic to the argument that the Second Amendment confers a right on "the people" respectively, i.e. as individuals, "to keep and bear Arms." But Malcolm's argument is undermined, however slightly, when she urges that "[s]ome" i.e., more than one, nascent American state constitutions "included a specific right for an individual to have firearms for his own defence" (p. 150), but quotes and cites, as best I can discern, only the Pennsylvania bill of rights in support (pp. 148, 149). Is there more than one, or not? Another apparent example of waning energy toward the end is the treatment of an argument that "like the Convention Parliament in 1689, the senators [debating drafts of the Second Amendment] rejected a motion to add 'for the common defense' after 'to keep and bear arms.' " (P. 161.) To me, that point seems crucial, but Malcolm does not explore it further, beyond providing a footnoted reference to another source.

Finally, some minor quibbles. Noting the author's regular use of English spelling, I thought she was English until I realized, on reading the penultimate page, that she is an American (p. 176). Perhaps Malcolm was reared and educated in England, but nevertheless her anglicizations are distracting and seem affected. It also seems affected to spell "dissension" archaically as "dissention" (p. 153), and to print "u" as "v" in quoted material, as in "Vs" (Us) (p. 41) or "vpon" (upon) (p. 59). If one is going to do that, why not also ask the typesetter to print quotations with the long "s" that looks similar to the lower-case "f"? (Actually, I wouldn't so much object to that, though it would also come across as affected: at least the long "s" is still an "s," though of archaic form, whereas a "v" is not a "u" at all.) These are, of course, trivial items, but when I encounter them, I think, "Come on, Harvard University Press copy-editors, get with it!"

After all the foregoing griping, it may appear that (1) I am a detail-obsessed curmudgeon of uncommon degree, and (2) I disliked the book. The first point may be true, but the second is not. I look forward to seeing how others eventually build on Malcolm's scholarship.

this book is good.......1999-11-10

I like how the author explained exactly what he wanted to

very impressive piece of scholarship.......1999-07-08

Professor Malcolm does a very thorough job of showing how the notion of a right to arms contained in the English Bill of Rights of 1689 (and which appeared in a broader form in the U.S. Bill of Rights) was developed during the English Civil War between King and Parliament, contrary to the claims of Parliament who described the right to arms as being one of their "ancient rights and liberties." Others who have examined this provision of the English Bill of Rights have sometimes let themselves be taken in by this high sounding language, but Professor Malcolm has been careful to look beneath the surface.

Book Description

Through an examination of 255 places in England, Professor McIntosh argues against the suggestion that social regulation was a distinctive feature of the decades around 1600, resulting from Puritanism, and demonstrates that concern with wrongdoing mounted gradually between 1370 and 1600. This trail-breaking study of how English people defined and attempted to control misbehavior opens up little-known sources and new research methods, challenges many historical assumptions and sheds light on the transition from early medieval to early modern patterns.

Defining British Citizenship: Empire, Commonwealth and Modern Britain (Cass Series--British Politics and Society)

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Defining British Citizenship: Empire, Commonwealth and Modern Britain (Cass Series--British Politics and Society)
Rieko Karatani
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Civil Rights & Liberties | Current Events | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

This book explains the immigration and citizenship policies in Britain that repeatedly postponed the creation of British citizenship until 1981. It examines the alternative citizenships of British subjecthood and Commonwealth citizenship, and demonstrates how the complex rules of citizenship and immigration were devised in response to the need to build and transform those 'global institutions', the British empire and later the Commonwealth.

In covering these areas, this work extends the research beyond this century. It argues that Britain's formal membership has always been attached to the global institution and that the creation of British citizenship was rejected as long as policy-makers in Britain considered it beneficial to maintain the global institution in some form. In addition to the division between the holders and non-holders of British subjecthood, there was a future division among British subjects: those in Britain and the Dominions were regarded as kith and kin, whereas those in the colonies only had the same nominal status. The affinity between those in Britain and the Dominions was institutionalised in 1914 by the common code system, whereby Dominion governments were to adopt identical citizenship legislation. Post-Second World War immigration policy was, in practice, a continuation of pre-war policy, with an all-embracing citizenship law alongside exclusive immigration controls. The enactment of the British Nationality Act 1981 was a belated acknowledgement by the British government that its long-standing efforts to maintain the citizenship structure that enabled the alternative and national types of citizenship to co-exist had been abandoned by the Immigration Act 1971.

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