Legal Practice in Eighteenth-Century Scotland


Book Description

This book is the first monograph to analyse the workings of Scotland’s legal profession in its early modern European context. It is a comprehensive survey of lawyers working in the local and central courts; investigating how they interacted with their clients and with each other, the legal principles governing ethical practice, and how they fulfilled a social role through providing free services to the poor and also services to town councils and other corporations. Based heavily on a wide range of archival sources, and reflecting the contemporary importance of local societies of lawyers, John Finlay offers a groundbreaking yet accessible study of the eighteenth-century legal profession which adds a new dimension to our knowledge of Enlightenment Scotland.




The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Law and Literature


Book Description

Cheryl Nixon's book is the first to connect the eighteenth-century fictional orphan and factual orphan, emphasizing the legal concepts of estate, blood, and body. Examining novels by authors such as Eliza Haywood, Tobias Smollett, and Elizabeth Inchbald, and referencing never-before analyzed case records, Nixon reconstructs the narratives of real orphans in the British parliamentary, equity, and common law courts and compares them to the narratives of fictional orphans. The orphan's uncertain economic, familial, and bodily status creates opportunities to "plot" his or her future according to new ideologies of the social individual. Nixon demonstrates that the orphan encourages both fact and fiction to re-imagine structures of estate (property and inheritance), blood (familial origins and marriage), and body (gender and class mobility). Whereas studies of the orphan typically emphasize the poor urban foundling, Nixon focuses on the orphaned heir or heiress and his or her need to be situated in a domestic space. Arguing that the eighteenth century constructs the "valued" orphan, Nixon shows how the wealthy orphan became associated with new understandings of the individual. New archival research encompassing print and manuscript records from Parliament, Chancery, Exchequer, and King's Bench demonstrate the law's interest in the propertied orphan. The novel uses this figure to question the formulaic structures of narrative sub-genres such as the picaresque and romance and ultimately encourage the hybridization of such plots. As Nixon traces the orphan's contribution to the developing novel and developing ideology of the individual, she shows how the orphan creates factual and fictional understandings of class, family, and gender.










A Handbook of English Law Reports From the Last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century to the Year 1865, With Biographical Notes of Judges and Reporters [microform]


Book Description

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.




English Common Law in the Age of Mansfield


Book Description

In the eighteenth century, the English common law courts laid the foundation that continues to support present-day Anglo-American law. Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, 1756-1788, was the dominant judicial force behind these developments. In this abridgment of his two-volume book, The Mansfield Manuscripts and the Growth of English Law in the Eighteenth Century, James Oldham presents the fundamentals of the English common law during this period, with a detailed description of the operational features of the common law courts. This work includes revised and updated versions of the historical and analytical essays that introduced the case transcriptions in the original volumes, with each chapter focusing on a different aspect of the law. While considerable scholarship has been devoted to the eighteenth-century English criminal trial, little attention has been given to the civil side. This book helps to fill that gap, providing an understanding of the principal body of substantive law with which America's founding fathers would have been familiar. It is an invaluable reference for practicing lawyers, scholars, and students of Anglo-American legal history.




A History of English Law, Vol. 11 (Classic Reprint)


Book Description

Excerpt from A History of English Law, Vol. 11 In the first and introductory volume, which contains Book I of this History, I have related the history of the Judicial System down to the passing of the Judicature Act in 1875. In the eight succeeding volumes, which contain Books II-IV, I have described the sources and influences which shaped the development of English law down to 1700, and I have related both the history of English public law during the same period, and also the history of the principal doctrines of English private law, in some cases to 1700 and in others down to the nineteenth century. These three succeeding volumes begin Book V, the last Book of this History, in which I propose to relate the history of English law from 1700 to 1875. They begin Part I of this Book, and they relate the history of public law, and of the sources and influences which shaped the development of English law, during the eighteenth century. If I continue to have sufficient health and leisure, I hope in a succeeding volume to complete Part I of this Book, and in Part II to complete the History in two more volumes by giving some account of the history of those doctrines of English law with which I have not fully dealt in the preceding volumes. It may be thought that I have dealt with the legal history of the eighteenth century at too great a length. But there are several reasons why I have found it necessary to fill three bulky volumes. In the first place, this is the first complete legal history of the eighteenth century which has ever been written. In the second place, to make that history intelligible it has been necessary to deal somewhat more fully than in the preceding periods with the political background. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.