Palmer's fascinating study analyzes the ingrained tendency to prevent third party beneficiary actions through a historical account of privity of contract. Chapter I discusses the origins and historical questions surrounding the issue of privity. Chapter II covers the triumph of consideration in the formative period, 1500-1680. Chapter III outlines the expansion in the chancery phase, 1680-1800, and Chapter IV deals with the rise of the parties-only principle at law and equity during the 1800s.
In recent years there has been a flourishing body of work on the Law of Treaties, crucial for all fields within international law. However, scholarship on modern treaty law falls into two distinct strands which have not previously been effectively synthesized. One concerns the investigation of concepts which are fundamental to or inherent in the law of treaties generally - such as consent, object and purpose, breach of obligation and provisional application - while the other focuses upon the application of treaties and of treaty law in particular substantive (e.g. human rights, international humanitarian law, investment protection, environmental regulation) or institutional contexts (including the Security Council, the World Health Organization, the International Labour Organization and the World Trade Organization). This volume represents the culmination of a series of collaborative explorations by leading experts into the operation, development and effectiveness of the modern law of treaties, as viewed through these contrasting perspectives.
With its unique contextual emphasis and authoritative commentary, Trusts Law: Text and Materials is a book that no serious undergraduate on trust law courses can afford to be without. The book is divided into four main parts: trusts and the preservation of family wealth; trusts and family breakdown; trusts and commerce; and trusts and non-profit activity. Within each of these parts, leading cases, statutes, and historical and research materials are placed alongside the narrative of the author's text to give emphasis both to general theories of trust concepts and to the practical operation of trusts. Attention is also given to important themes such as the developing relationship between trusts law and other areas of private law such as the Law of Restitution. This new edition takes account of all relevant judicial and legislative developments since the third edition, and expands discussion of key themes in current developments of the law.
A path-breaking and masterly study of Louisiana slave law, this fascinating study offers an examination of the complex French, Spanish, Roman and American heritage of Louisiana's law of slavery and its codification, a profile of the first effort in modern history to integrate slavery into a European-style civil code, the 1808 Digest of Orleans, a trailblazing study of the unwritten laws of slavery and the legal impact of customs and practices developing outside of the Codes, an analysis that overturns the previous scholarly view that Roman law was the model for the Code Noir of 1685, a new unabridged translation (by Palmer) of the Code Noir of 1724 with the original French text on facing pages. "A very useful addition to the growing literature on the law of slavery, this book is particularly important in helping understand the complexity of the Louisiana Code Noir and its impact on American slave law. Palmer's discussion of how the Code came to be written will surprise and educate those who read this book. " --Paul Finkelman, John Hope Franklin Visiting Professor of American Legal History Duke University School of Law and President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law, Albany Law School "When it comes to demystifying slave law in Louisiana, Vernon Palmer is practically peerless. It's probably because he is equally comfortable in the weeds of lived experience as he is poring over the pages of classical learning. These masterful essays on the Code Noir's origins, plus Louisiana's 150-year interplay between custom and legal practice, belong on the shelf of anyone with the faintest curiosity about human bondage and the laws fashioned to make it work." --Lawrence N. Powell, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Tulane University "Slavery remains a current social and political problem, and Vernon Palmer s brilliant work illuminates its history, showing its legal and social complexity through a study primarily of Louisiana, where slavery was included in the first civil codes. Beautifully written, humane and insightful, this monograph will promote reflection on the fascinating legal history of Louisiana as well as on the famous Tannenbaum thesis." --John W. Cairns, FRSE, Chair of Legal History, University of Edinburgh "Palmer has written a path-breaking and splendid account of how Louisianians, newly under American rule, wrote the first modern codes that incorporated slavery in a systematic way into their civil law. Until now, ignored by scholars, these codifications moved slavery from the edges of the legal system to the very center stage in Louisiana courtrooms. The redactors of these codes implanted provisions about slavery into the law of persons, property, successions, sales and prescription, producing a unique Atlantic World slave law of incomparable richness and complexity unseen in other legal systems." --Judith Kelleher Schafer author of Slavery, the Civil Law and the Supreme Court of Louisiana and Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846-1862
Through recent changes in Dutch (1992) and English (1999) private law, contracts for a third-party beneficiary are, in Western Europe, nowadays considered to be effective and enforceable. This concept is, however, incompatible with both the civilian tradition on the continent and the traditional parties-only rule of English common law. The purpose of this study is to show how the problem of the third-party beneficiary was dealt with during the various periods of Western legal thought and to discuss the subject from the perspective of present-day comparative law. The book is of interest not only to legal historians, but also to all who are engaged with present-day private law – scholars, practitioners and advanced students. Contributors include David Ibbetson, Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Cambridge, and Hendrik Verhagen, Professor of Private International Law, Comparative Law and Civil Law at the Radboud University Nijmegen, attorney at the firm Clifford Chance Amsterdam, and deputy justice at the Court of Appeal, ’s-Hertogenbosch. Studies in the History of Private Law, vol. 1
Fully revised and updated, this classic text provides the authoritative introduction to the history of the English common law. The book traces the development of the principal features of English legal institutions and doctrines from Anglo-Saxon times to the present and, combined with Baker and Milsom's Sources of Legal History, offers invaluable insights into the development of the common law of persons, obligations, and property, and also of criminal and public law. It is an essential reference point for all lawyers, historians and students seeking to understand the evolution of English law over a millennium. The book provides an introduction to the main characteristics, institutions, and doctrines of English law over the longer term - particularly the evolution of the common law before the extensive statutory changes and regulatory regimes of the last two centuries. It explores how legal change was brought about in the common law and how judges and lawyers managed to square evolution with respect for inherited wisdom.
