Law and Legal Process

de Matthew Dyson, David Ibbetson

"This collection of papers from the Twentieth British Legal History Conference explores the relationship between substantive law and the way in which it actually worked. Instead of looking at what the courts said they were doing, it is concerned more with the reality of what was happening. To that end, the authors use a wide range of sources, from court records to merchants' diaries and lawyers' letters. The way in which the sources are used reflects the possibilities of legal historical research which are opening up in the twenty-first century, as large databases and digitised images - and even online auction sites - make it a practical possibility to do work at a level which was almost unthinkable only a short time ago"-- "The core theme of the conference was Law and Legal Process, broadly interpreted to include all aspects of the interactions between legal practice and legal doctrine. The present volume is a selection of the papers delivered on that theme, reflecting the many ways in which these interactions have occurred in the history of the common law. They range between the study of a single case (Holmes) to the wide-ranging consideration of the nature of law at the interface of substance and process (Donahue)"--