History of the Common Law: The Development of Anglo-American Legal Institutions / Edition 1

by John H. Langbein, Renee Lettow Lerner, Bruce P. Smith

Overview

This introductory text explores the historical origins of the main legal institutions that came to characterize the Anglo-American legal tradition, and to distinguish it from European legal systems. The book contains both text and extracts from historical sources and literature. The book is published in color, and contains over 250 illustrations, many in color, including medieval illuminated manuscripts, paintings, books and manuscripts, caricatures, and photographs.

Two great themes dominate the book: (1) the origins, development, and pervasive influence of the jury system and judge/jury relations across eight centuries of Anglo-American civil and criminal justice; and (2) the law/equity division, from the emergence of the Court of Chancery in the fourteenth century down through equity's conquest of common law in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The chapters on criminal justice explore the history of pretrial investigation, policing, trial, and sentencing, as well as the movement in modern times to nonjury resolution through plea bargaining. Considerable attention is devoted to distinctively American developments, such as the elective bench, and the influence of race relations on the law of criminal procedure.

Other major subjects of this book include the development of the legal profession, from the serjeants, barristers, and attorneys of medieval times down to the transnational megafirms of twenty-first century practice; the literature of the law, especially law reports and treatises, from the Year Books and Bracton down to the American state reports and today's electronic services; and legal education, from the founding of the Inns of Court to the emergence and growth of university law schools in the United States.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780735562905
Publisher:	Wolters Kluwer Law & Business
Publication date:	08/14/2009
Series:	Aspen Casebook Series
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	1184
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 10.20(h) x 2.40(d)

Table of Contents

Part I: The English Common Law: Medieval Origins

Chapter 1. Criminal Procedure and the Origins of the Jury System
Chapter 2. Civil Justice
Chapter 3. Shaping the Legal Professions: Bar, Bench, and Books

Part II: The Second English Legal System

Chapter 4. The Transformation of the Juries and the Reconstruction of Criminal and Civil Justice
Chapter 5. The Rise of Equity
Chapter 6. The Maturation and Reform of Chancery, and the Fusion of Law and Equity

Part III: Reshaping the Jury

Chapter 7. Controlling, Reviewing, and Suppressing Juries in England
Chapter 8. Judge/Jury Relations in America

Part IV: Criminal Justice

Chapter 9. Rebuilding Criminal Procedure: The Marian Pretrial and the Altercation Trial
Chapter 10. The Growth of Defensive Safeguard
Chapter 11. American Criminal Justice

Part V: American Initiatives in the Common Law

Chapter 12. Legal Literature
Chapter 13. The Reception and Recasting of English Law
Chapter 14. Legal Education
Chapter 15. The Legal Profession

Illustrated Timeline
Table of English Regnal Years
Image Acknowledgments
Text Acknowledgments
Index