These stories from the Star Chamber papers, first published in 1958, reveal the real, and sometimes comic, side of the functioning of the Star Chamber - an English court of Law from the Middle Ages, which was set up to ensure the fair enforcement of law against prominent people who were too powerful to be convicted by ordinary courts. These stories are valuable both for the 'real life' detail they bring to a historical concept, and for the light they throw on accepted historical generalizations.

This book is an examination of American army legal proceedings that resulted from a series of moments when soldiers in a war zone crossed a line between performing their legitimate functions and committing crimes against civilians, or atrocities.

Using individual judicial proceedings held within war-time Southeast Asia, Louise Barnett analyses how the American military legal system handled crimes against civilians and determines what these cases reveal about the way that war produces atrocity against civilians. Presenting these atrocities and subsequent trials in a way that considers both the personal and the institutional the author considers how and why atrocity happens, the terrain of justification, and the degree to which the army and American society have been willing to take military crimes against civilians seriously.

Atrocity and American Military Justice in Southeast Asia will be of interest to students, scholars and professionals interested in Military Justice, Military history and Southeast Asian History more generally.

Judicial equity developed in England during the medieval period, providing an alternative access to justice for cases that the rigid structures of the common law could not accommodate. Where the common law was constrained by precedent and strict procedural and substantive rules, equity relied on principles of natural justice - or 'conscience' - to decide cases and right wrongs. Overseen by the Lord Chancellor, equity became one of the twin pillars of the English legal system with the Court of Chancery playing an ever greater role in the legal life of the nation. Yet, whilst the Chancery was commonly - and still sometimes is - referred to as a 'court of conscience', there is remarkably little consensus about what this actually means, or indeed whose conscience is under discussion. This study tackles the difficult subject of the place of conscience in the development of English equity during a crucial period of legal history. Addressing the notion of conscience as a juristic principle in the Court of Chancery during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the book explores how the concept was understood and how it figured in legal judgment. Drawing upon both legal and broader cultural materials, it explains how that understanding differed from modern notions and how it might have been more consistent with criteria we commonly associate with objective legal judgement than the modern, more 'subjective', concept of conscience. The study culminates with an examination of the chancellorship of Lord Nottingham (1673-82), who, because of his efforts to transform equity from a jurisdiction associated with discretion into one based on rules, is conventionally regarded as the father of modern, 'systematic' equity. From a broader perspective, this study can be seen as a contribution to the enduring discussion of the relationship between 'formal' accounts of law, which see it as systems of rules, and less formal accounts, which try to make room for intuitive moral or prudential reasoning.

For many years, the far right has sown public distrust in the media as a political strategy, weaponizing libel law in an effort to stifle free speech and silence African American dissent. In Sullivan's Shadow demonstrates that this strategy was pursued throughout the civil rights era and beyond, as southern officials continued to bring lawsuits in their attempts to intimidate journalists who published accounts of police brutality against protestors. Taking the Supreme Court's famous 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan as her starting point, Aimee Edmondson illuminates a series of fascinating and often astounding cases that preceded and followed this historic ruling. Drawing on archival research and scholarship in journalism, legal history, and African American studies, Edmondson offers a new narrative of brave activists, bold journalists and publishers, and hard headed southern officials. These little-known courtroom dramas at the intersection of race, libel, and journalism go beyond the activism of the 1960s and span much of the country's history, beginning with lawsuits filed against abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and concluding with a suit spawned by the 1988 film Mississippi Burning.

Felice Giardini and Professional Music Culture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century London explores Giardini's influence on British musical life through his multifaceted career as performer, teacher, composer, concert promoter and opera impresario. The crux of the study is a detailed account of Giardini's partnership with the music seller/publisher John Cox during the 1750s, presented using new biographical information which contextualizes their business dealings and subsequent disaccord. The resulting litigation, the details of which have only recently come to light, is explored here via a complex set of archival materials. The findings offer new information about the economics of professional music culture at the time, including detailed figures for performers' fees, the printing and binding of music scores, the charges arising from the administration of concerts and operas, the sale, hire and repair of various instruments and the cost of what today we would call intellectual property rights. This is a fascinating study for musicologists and followers of Giardini, as well as for readers with an interest in classical music, social history and legal history.

Originally published in 1965, English Justice between the Norman Conquest and the Great Charter discusses the history of English justice in the period of the Norman Conquest, of the Angevin achievements, and of the contrasting reigns of Richard I and John. This book looks at this period in light of the great work done by Felix Liebermann and others on Anglo-Saxon law, which made possible a new estimate of the inheritance entered upon by the Norman conquerors. The book discusses how the writ and sworn inquest can now be safely recognised as arising in the years when the communal courts of the hundred and the shire - under royal surveillance - administered justice to the English people. The book also looks at the vigour of the conquerors and how, through the exertion of the king's writ, the sworn inquest was developed into the jury. The book discusses how Henry II, not the West Saxon kings devised the returnable writ from which later developments in English judicial administration grew, and how he built up a permanent bench of judges based at Westminster, from there making periodic journeys to administer justice throughout the land. With all their many faults, the early Angevin rulers, King John as well as his father, were concerned to play their part as kings who provided justice and judgment for their subjects.

These essays, in a second collection by Professor Kelly, investigate legal and religious subjects touching on the age and places in which Geoffrey Chaucer lived and wrote, especially as reflected in the more contemporary sections of the Canterbury Tales. Topics include the canon law of incest (consanguinity, affinity, spiritual kinship), the prosecution of sexual offences and regulation of prostitution (especially in the Stews of Southwark), legal opinions about wife-beating, and the laws of nature concerning gender distinction (focusing on Chaucer's Pardoner) and the technicalities of castration. Sacramental and devotional practices are discussed, especially dealing with confession and penitence and the Mass. Chaucer's Prioress serves as the starting point for a treatment of regulations of nuns in medieval England and also for the presence, real and virtual, of Jews and Saracens (Muslims and pagans) in England and conversion efforts of the time, as well as sympathetic or antipathetic attitudes towards non-Christians. Included is a case study on the legend of St Cecilia in Chaucer and elsewhere, and as patron of music; and a discussion of canonistic opinion on the licit limits of medicinal magic (in connection with the ministrations of John the Carpenter in the Miller's Tale).

Globalising British Policing demonstrates how the policing system in place in Britain today has emerged from an historical overlap of two broad policing models: a civil (English) and a semi-military (colonial) tradition. Until relatively recently colonial policing received considerably less scholarly attention than the policing of mainland Britain. This volume comprises four sections: section I considers works on British colonial policing up until the Second World War; section II moves to post-war colonial policing through the era of decolonisation; section III looks more closely at the policing of Northern Ireland, and, section IV shows how the meshing of these policing systems are currently contributing to the globalisation of British policing today.

Exploring the boundaries of the law as they existed in medieval and early modern times and as they have been perceived by historians, this volume offers a wide ranging insight into a key aspect of European society. Alongside, and inexorably linked with, the ecclesiastical establishment, the law was one of the main social bonds that shaped and directed the interactions of day-to-day life. Posing fascinating conceptual and methodological questions that challenge existing perceptions of the parameters of the law, the essays in this book look especially at the gender divide and conflicts of jurisdiction within an historical context. In addition to seeking to understand the discrete categories into which types of law and legal rules are sometimes placed, consideration is given to the traversing of boundaries, to the overlaps between jurisdictions, and between custom(s) and law(s). In so doing it shows how law has been artificially compartmentalised by historians and lawyers alike, and how existing perceptions have been conditioned by particular approaches to the sources. It also reveals in certain case studies how the sources themselves (and attitudes towards them) have determined the limitations of historical enterprise. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, the contributors demonstrate the fruitfulness of examining the interfaces of apparently diverse disciplines. Making fresh connections across subject areas, they examine, for example, the role of geography in determining litigation strategies, how the law interacted with social and theological issues and how fact and fiction could intertwine to promote notions of justice and public order. The main focus of the volume is upon England, but includes useful comparative papers concerning France, Flanders and Sweden. The contributors are a mixture of young and established scholars from Europe and North America offering a new and revisionist perspective on the operation of law in the medieval and early modern periods.

The most unique and important of all early American law reports are those of Josiah Quincy Jr. (1744-1775). These are the first reports of continental America's oldest court, the Superior Court of Judicature of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, direct ancestor to today's Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Quincy's candid accounts of events great and small shed light on life in the American colonies just before the Revolution. Reports such as Paxton's Case of the Writs of Assistance (1761) have become great landmarks of American constitutional law, cited by the Supreme Court of the United States. Others, such as Hanlon v. Thayer (1764), involved important women's rights, or, such as Oliver v. Sale (1762) and Allison v. Cockran (1764), vividly demonstrated the legal establishment of slavery. Even the so-called routine cases--those involving sale of goods and early consumer protection, keeping a "bawdy house," women fighting for their children's legitimacy, pirates, apprentices, militia men, double-crossers and frauds, "fences" for stolen goods, and many more--provide an invaluable picture of our early legal system and colonial society.

Daniel R. Coquillette not only provides new annotations for these cases first annotated by Samuel Quincy Jr. in 1865, but also includes an extensive introduction that sets out a lucid and compelling road map to these historic reports and their continuing significance.

Volumes 4 and 5 complete this five-volume series.

Distributed for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BLOODY SCOTLAND DEBUT PRIZE 2022 'Beautifully written and a real page turner -a wonderful insight into the early quest to understand and give a voice to people who cannot hear. ' Elisabeth Gifford 'A fascinating exploration of deafness and human value amid the sights, sounds of smells of 1817 urban Scotland.' Sally Magnusson 'told with great empathy and heart' Guinevere Glasfurd 'A striking and stylish literary page-turner that breathes life into the past' Zoe Strachan 'skilfully combines crime fiction with a woman's struggle to speak the truth' The Times In the burgeoning industrial city of Glasgow in 1817 Jean Campbell - a young, Deaf woman - is witnessed throwing a child into the River Clyde from the Old Bridge. No evidence is yielded from the river. Unable to communicate with their silent prisoner, the authorities move Jean to the decaying Edinburgh Tolbooth in order to prise the story from her. The High Court calls in Robert Kinniburgh, a talented teacher from the Deaf & Dumb Institution, in the hope that he will interpret for them and determine if Jean is fit for trial. If found guilty she faces one of two fates; death by hanging or incarceration in an insane asylum. Through a process of trial and error, Robert and Jean manage to find a rudimentary way of communicating with each other. As Robert gains her trust, Jean confides in him, and Robert begins to uncover the truth, moving uneasily from interpreter to investigator, determined to clear her name before it is too late. Based on a landmark case in Scottish legal history Hear No Evil is a richly atmospheric exploration of nineteenth-century Edinburgh and Glasgow at a time when progress was only on the horizon. A time that for some who were silenced could mean paying the greatest price.

First published in 1998, this text is the prefatory first part of Austin's Lectures on Jurisprudence or the Philosophy of Positive Laws and first appeared separately from the Lectures in 1832. This volume reproduces the standard text of The Province from Robert Campbell's fifth edition, published in 1885, and clarifies the structure and readability of the text, retaining Austin's 'Analysis' as a whole at the start of the book. John Austin (1790-1859) was the first professor of jurisprudence at the University of London, which is now University College. His classic, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, was derived from his course lectures. Austin took great pride in his ability to clearly delineate the study of law. Austin took a surgical approach and created a stripped down view of material central to the study of law. While this approach overlooks the ambiguity inherent in interpretations of law, it nevertheless stands as a landmark work and provides an excellent starting point for any deeper inquiry into the subject of jurisprudence.

Explores the variety of legal and regulatory regimes that existed in Western Europe to control labour and how workers experienced those controls. Many economic historians have assumed that labour in Western Europe was 'free' after the end of serfdom in the fifteenth century. These assumptions are increasingly being questioned and labour laws have been identified as creating significant restrictions on workers' freedom. This collection is the first book to look at labour laws across Western Europe from a longer-term perspective. It is interdisciplinary in nature bringing together studies in social, political, economic and legal history. Elements of labour legislation appeared before the Black Death, but were strengthened afterwards particularly in places and periods where labour became scarce. The collection focuses on the rural economy in the late medieval and early modern period. It provides a series of studies which introduce a range of approaches to labour regulation and the very idea of labour across Europe. Uniquely, the collection offers observations on the impact of labour laws on everyday social relations. Attempts to regulate work and labour varied widely: in places they amounted to wishful thinking on the part of the regional authorities, whereas elsewhere they could impose severe limitations on individual freedoms. Contributors: Davide Cristoferi, Theresa Johnsson, Thijs Lambrecht, Charmian Mansell, Francine Michaud, Hanne Østhus, Raffaella Sarti, Carolina Uppenberg and Jane Whittle.

The raging frenzy of the sex drive, to use Plato's phrase, has always defied control. However, that's not to say that the Sumerians, Victorians, and every civilization in between and beyond have not tried, wielding their most formidable weapon: the law. At any given point in time, some forms of sex were condoned while others were punished mercilessly. Jump forward or backward a century or two (and often far less than that), and the harmless fun of one time period becomes the gravest crime in another. Sex and Punishment tells the story of the struggle throughout the millennia to regulate the most powerful engine of human behavior.
Writer and lawyer Eric Berkowitz uses flesh-and-blood cases--much flesh and even more blood--to evoke the entire sweep of Western sex law, from the savage impalement of an ancient Mesopotamian adulteress to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in 1895 for gross indecency. The cast of Sex and Punishment is as varied as the forms taken by human desire itself: royal mistresses, gay charioteers, medieval transvestites, lonely goat-lovers, prostitutes of all stripes, London rent boys. Each of them had forbidden sex, and each was judged--and justice, as Berkowitz shows, rarely had much to do with it.
With the light touch of a natural storyteller, Berkowitz spins these tales and more, going behind closed doors to reveal the essential history of human desire.

How did the penitentiary get its name? Why did the English impose long prison sentences? Did class and economic conflict really lie at the heart of their correctional system? In a groundbreaking study that challenges the assumptions of modern criminal justice scholarship, Laurie Throness answers many questions like these by exposing the deep theological roots of the judicial institutions of eighteenth-century Britain. The book offers a scholarly account of the passage of the Penitentiary Act of 1779, combining meticulous attention to detail with a sweeping theological overview of the century prior to the Act. But it is not just an intellectual history. It tells a fascinating story of a broader religious movement, and the people and beliefs that motivated them to create a new institution. The work is original because it relies so completely on original sources. It is mystical because it mingles heavenly with earthly justice. It is authoritative because of its explanatory power. Its anecdotes and insights, poetry and song, provide intriguing glimpses into another era strangely familiar to our own. Of special interest to social and legal historians, criminologists, and theologians, this work will also appeal to a wider audience of those who are interested in Christianity's impact on Western culture and institutions.

This innovative book celebrates the tri-centenary of modern copyright, which began with the enactment of the Statute of Anne by the British Parliament in 1709, and was soon followed by other copyright legislation abroad. The Statute of Anne is traditionally claimed to be the world's first copyright statute, and is thus viewed as the origin of a system of national laws that today exists in virtually all countries of the world. However, this book illustrates that while there is some truth in this claim, it is also important to treat it with caution. Written by leading experts from across the globe, this comprehensive (historical) analysis breaks new ground on modern copyright issues such as digital libraries, illegal downloading and distribution, international exhaustion and 'new formalities'. The expert contributors consider what lessons can be learnt from the achievements made during the last 300 years, and whether they can be used to overcome the new challenges facing copyright. This in-depth scientific analysis of the legacy of the Statute of Anne 300 years on from its origins will provide copyright practitioners, academics, policy makers and postgraduate students with a unique and fascinating read.

"No one has written with more penetrating skepticism about the history of human rights." -Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal "Moyn breaks new ground in examining the relationship between human rights and economic fairness." -George Soros The age of human rights has been kindest to the rich. While state violations of political rights have garnered unprecedented attention in recent decades, a commitment to material equality has quietly disappeared. In its place, economic liberalization has emerged as the dominant force. In this provocative book, Samuel Moyn considers how and why we chose to make human rights our highest ideals while simultaneously neglecting the demands of broader social and economic justice. Moyn places the human rights movement in relation to this disturbing shift and explores why the rise of human rights has occurred alongside exploding inequality. "Moyn asks whether human-rights theorists and advocates, in the quest to make the world better for all, have actually helped to make things worse... Sure to provoke a wider discussion." -Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal "A sharpening interrogation of the liberal order and the institutions of global governance created by, and arguably for, Pax Americana... Consistently bracing." -Pankaj Mishra, London Review of Books "Moyn suggests that our current vocabularies of global justice-above all our belief in the emancipatory potential of human rights-need to be discarded if we are work to make our vastly unequal world more equal... [A] tour de force." -Los Angeles Review of Books

Reissuing seven works originally published between 1940 and 1997, this collection spans the time in which Criminology has been a recognised academic discipline. It offers a set of excellent works on diverse aspects of the field from nineteenth century criminality to burglary in the 1980s. The set includes a Dictionary and several works looking at the social and psychological side of crime.

Originally published in 1981. This book unifies the diverse literature on the role of environmental factors in the uneven distribution of crime in society and provides an assessment of the validity of environmental explanations and their utility. It analyses and assesses the major work done by researchers in Britain, America and elsewhere. The extent of the differences between communities is reviewed from a number of perspectives. Offences are examined by location, nature and seriousness. Offenders are located in their environment and variations according to sex, age, race, social class, and recidivism are considered. The risks of victimisation also reflect environmental differences and need to be set in the context of wider community perceptions, fears, and attitudes to crime. The role of the community in the distribution of justice is also discussed.

Originally published in 1940. This ground-breaking work formed the foundation for modern criminology becoming an academic discipline within UK sociological studies. It concerns the history of crime, its causes and treatment in England during the preceding twenty-five years or so. Mannheim, through this and later studies, went on to found the criminology department at LSE. The book offers an evaluation of the criminological implications of the War and early post-War period as well as an examination of the practical working of the new penal machinery built up by the Reform Acts passed just prior to the War. The author produced a scientific account of the post-War state of crime, beginning with a critical examination of the structure and interpretation of English Criminal Statistics followed by a survey of the principal criminological features of the period between the two Wars. Significant aspects are dealt with in a separate chapters - four devoted to problems of work and leisure (Unemployment and Strikes, Business Administration, Alcoholism, and Gambling), four others to those of certain specific sections of the population (Juvenile Delinquency, Female Delinquency and Prostitution, Recidivism). This is a fascinating read for both the historian and the criminologist.

Originally published in 1945. This book presents the developing opinions contemporary to the post-war period, of the social and psychological roots of criminal actions as seen through the viewpoint of a practising magistrate. Looking at the psychological treatment of delinquents in particular, using actual case experiences, various causes are illustrated, and future preventative interventions are suggested and categorised. Early childhood developmental effects leading to characteristic criminality are distinguished from those societal factors with later and lesser influence, in the opinion of the author. The book discusses the court systems for judging family disputes and divorce in comparison to criminal cases amongst its investigation into the cause of criminality. The author's ground-breaking work led to much reform in the UK judicial system and this book is a fascinating insight to the history of psychology, law and criminology.

Originally published in 1976. This study deals with crime as social history in Germany and France during the nineteenth century. It establishes the broad statistical patterns of crime over the century so that the crime phenomenon can be analysed in the light of the other main trends of economic and social life. One basic concern is the relationship between crime and economic condition. The second main issue is to establish whether specifically rural and urban patterns of crime can be isolated. The third main concern is to establish whether any relationship existed between patterns of delinquency and the social upheaval which accompanied industrialisation and urbanisation. These three main issues continue as important questions in considering modern day crime. Nineteenth century Germany and France provide an excellent context in which to examine them because of the substantial urbanisation and industrialisation which occurred between 1830 and 1914. As well as providing an important contribution to the history of nineteenth century society this book also indicates important lessons for the contemporary world.

Alfred the Great's domboc ('book of laws') is the longest and most ambitious legal text of the Anglo-Saxon period. Alfred places his own laws, dealing with everything from sanctuary to feuding to the theft of bees, between a lengthy translation of legal passages from the Bible and the legislation of the West-Saxon King Ine (r. 688-726), which rival his own in length and scope. This book is the first critical edition of the domboc published in over a century, as well as a new translation. Five introductory chapters offer fresh insights into the laws of Alfred and Ine, considering their backgrounds, their relationship to early medieval legal culture, their manuscript evidence and their reception in later centuries. Rather than a haphazard accumulation of ordinances, the domboc is shown to issue from deep reflection on the nature of law itself, whose effects would permanently alter the development of early English legislation.

Drawing on macro-historical sociological theories, this book traces the development of intellectual property as a new type of legal property in the modern nation-state system. In its current form, intellectual property is considered part of an infrastructure of state power that incentivizes innovation, creativity, and scientific development, all engines of economic growth. To show how this infrastructure of power emerged, Laura Ford follows macro-historical social theorists, including Michael Mann and Max Weber, back to antiquity, revealing that legal instruments very similar to modern intellectual property have existed for a long time and have also been deployed for similar purposes. Using comparative and historical evidence, this groundbreaking work reflects on the role of intellectual property in our contemporary political communities and societies; on the close relationship between law and religion; and on the extent to which law's obliging force depends on ancient, written traditions.

International Criminology is an easy-access critical introduction to how conventional criminologists in the international arena think about and research crime. By using examples from the US, UK and Australia, the authors outline key ideas, vocabulary, assumptions and findings of the discipline while opening up a set of critical underlying issues and problems.

From theoretical traditions to historical perspectives; contemporary criminology to reflexive criminology; this all encompassing text covers it all. This is the most valuable introduction to international criminology available for undergraduates and works as a superb refresher for more experienced students.