Book Description

Thorne, Samuel E., Editor. A Discourse Upon the Exposition and Understanding of Statutes. With Sir Thomas Egerton's Additions. Edited From Manuscripts in the Huntington Library. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1942. vii, 194 pp. Reprinted 2004 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 1-58477-355-3. Hardcover. * Reprint of first edition. Written anonymously at the end of the Year Book period, the Discourse Upon the Exposicion and Understandinge of Statutes is the earliest English treatise on the subject. Thorne's edition has the additional appeal of lengthy manuscript notes compiled from a copy owned by Sir Thomas Egerton [?1540-1617], an attorney who held several important posts in Elizabethan England including Solicitor-General and Lord Chancellor. "Professor Thorne ... has carried out his difficult task with great skill and has prefixed an introduction which can be regarded as the most authoritative and most richly documented discussion as yet upon the problems of statutory interpretation from the later fourteenth century ... to the age of Coke." T.F.T. Plucknett, Law Quarterly Review 60:242 cited in Marke, A Catalogue of the Law Collection at New York University (1953) 810.