The Politics of the Common Law
The Politics of the Common Law

Author: Adam Gearey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 525

ISBN-13: 1135097879

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The Politics of the Common Law offers a critical introduction to the legal system of England and Wales. Unlike other conventional accounts, this revised and updated second edition presents a coherent argument, organised around the central claim that contemporary postcolonial common law must be understood as an articulation of human rights and open justice. The book examines the impact of the European Convention and European Union law on the structures and ideologies of the common law and engages with the politics of the rule of law. These themes are read into normative accounts of civil and criminal procedure that stress the importance of due process. The final sections of the book address the reality of civil and criminal procedure in the light of recent civil unrest in the UK and the growing privatisation of public services. The book questions whether it is possible to find a balance between the requirements of economics and the demands of justice.

The Creation of American Common Law, 1850–1880
The Creation of American Common Law, 1850–1880

Author: Howard Schweber

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-01-12

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 9781139449946

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This book is a comparative study of the American legal development in the mid-nineteenth century. Focusing on Illinois and Virginia, supported by observations from six additional states, the book traces the crucial formative moment in the development of an American system of common law in northern and southern courts. The process of legal development, and the form the basic analytical categories of American law came to have, are explained as the products of different responses to the challenge of new industrial technologies, particularly railroads. The nature of those responses was dictated by the ideologies that accompanied the social, political, and economic orders of the two regions. American common law, ultimately, is found to express an emerging model of citizenship, appropriate to modern conditions. As a result, the process of legal development provides an illuminating perspective on the character of American political thought in a formative period of the nation.

The Creation of American Common Law, 1850-1880
The Creation of American Common Law, 1850-1880

Author: Howard Schweber

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-04-14

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9780521158183

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America developed its own system of the "common law" (the name for legal principles developed by judges) in the mid-nineteenth century, abandoning the legal system inherited from England. This comparative study of the development of American law contrasts the experiences of North and South by a study of Illinois and Virginia, supported by observations from six states. It has an original comparative focus highlighting the connections between legal development, American political thought, and American political and economic development.

Common-law Liberty
Common-law Liberty

Author: James Reist Stoner

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13:

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In an ere as morally confused as ours, Stoner argues, we at least ought to know what we've abandoned or suppressed in the name of judicial activism and the modern rights-oriented Constitution. Having lost our way, perhaps the common law, in its original sense, provides a way back, a viable alternative to the debilitating relativism of our current age.

A Common Law Theory of Judicial Review
A Common Law Theory of Judicial Review

Author: W. J. Waluchow

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-12-25

Total Pages: 7

ISBN-13: 1139462814

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In this study, W. J. Waluchow argues that debates between defenders and critics of constitutional bills of rights presuppose that constitutions are more or less rigid entities. Within such a conception, constitutions aspire to establish stable, fixed points of agreement and pre-commitment, which defenders consider to be possible and desirable, while critics deem impossible and undesirable. Drawing on reflections about the nature of law, constitutions, the common law, and what it is to be a democratic representative, Waluchow urges a different theory of bills of rights that is flexible and adaptable. Adopting such a theory enables one not only to answer to critics' most serious challenges, but also to appreciate the role that a bill of rights, interpreted and enforced by unelected judges, can sensibly play in a constitutional democracy.

Evolution and the Common Law
Evolution and the Common Law

Author: Allan C. Hutchinson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-04-04

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 9781139444934

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This book offers a radical challenge to accounts of the common law's development. Contrary to received jurisprudential wisdom, it maintains there is no grand theory which will explain satisfactorily the dynamic interactions of change and stability in the common law's history. Offering original readings of Charles Darwin's and Hans-Georg Gadamer's works, the book shows that law is a rhetorical activity that can only be properly appreciated in its historical and political context; tradition and transformation are locked in a mutually reinforcing but thoroughly contingent embrace. In contrast to the dewy-eyed offerings of much contemporary work, it demonstrates that, like life, law is an organic process (i.e., events are the products of functional and localized causes) rather than a miraculous one (i.e., events are the result of some grand plan or intervention). In short, common law is a perpetual work-in-progress - evanescent, dynamic, messy, productive, tantalising, and bottom-up.

A Concise History of the Common Law
A Concise History of the Common Law

Author: Theodore Frank Thomas Plucknett

Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 828

ISBN-13: 1584771372

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Originally published: 5th ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1956.

Common Law and Liberal Theory
Common Law and Liberal Theory

Author: James Reist Stoner

Publisher:

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13:

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In this book, James Stoner's purpose is to recover the common law basis of American constitutionalism. American constitutionalism in general, he argues, and judicial review in particular, cannot be fully understood without acknowledging their roots in both common law and liberal political theory. But for the most part, the common law underpinnings of constitutionalism have received short shrift.

The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics
The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics

Author: Keith E. Whittington

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2010-06-10

Total Pages: 832

ISBN-13: 0191615064

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The study of law and politics is one of the foundation stones of the discipline of political science, and it has been one of the most productive areas of cross-fertilization between the various subfields of political science and between political science and other cognate disciplines. This Handbook provides a comprehensive survey of the field of law and politics in all its diversity, ranging from such traditional subjects as theories of jurisprudence, constitutionalism, judicial politics and law-and-society to such re-emerging subjects as comparative judicial politics, international law, and democratization. The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics gathers together leading scholars in the field to assess key literatures shaping the discipline today and to help set the direction of research in the decade ahead.

Common Law, History, and Democracy in America, 1790-1900
Common Law, History, and Democracy in America, 1790-1900

Author: Kunal M. Parker

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-03-14

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 9780521519953

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This book argues for a change in our understanding of the relationships among law, politics, and history. Since the turn of the nineteenth century, a certain anti-foundational conception of history has served to undermine law's foundations, such that we tend to think of law as nothing other than a species of politics. Thus viewed, the activity of unelected, common law judges appears to be an encroachment on the space of democracy. However, Kunal M. Parker shows that the world of the nineteenth century looked rather different. Democracy was itself constrained by a sense that history possessed a logic, meaning, and direction that democracy could not contravene. In such a world, far from law being seen in opposition to democracy, it was possible to argue that law - specifically, the common law - did a better job than democracy of guiding America along history's path.