Description
Book SynopsisNew analysis and interpretation of law and legal institutions in the "long eighteenth century". Law and legal institutions were of huge importance in the governance of Georgian society: legislation expanded the province of administrative authority out of all proportion, while the reach of the common law and its communal traditions of governance diminished, at least outside British North America. But what did the rule of law mean to eighteenth-century people, and how did it connect with changing experiences of law in all their bewildering complexity?This question has received much recent critical attention, but despite widespread agreement about Law's significance as a key to unlock so much which was central to contemporary life, as a whole previous scholarship has only offered a fragmented picture of the Laws in their social meanings and actions. Through a broader-brush approach, The British and their Laws in the Eighteenth Century contributes fresh analyses of law in England andBritish settler colonies, c. 1680-1830; its expert contributors consider among other matters the issues of participation, central-local relations, and the maintenance of common law traditions in the context of increasing legislative interventions and grants of statutory administrative powers. Contributors: SIMON DEVEREAUX, MICHAEL LOBBAN, DOUGLAS HAY, JOANNA INNES, WILFRED PREST, C.W. BROOKS, RANDALL MCGOWEN, DAVID THOMAS KONIG, BRUCE KERCHER
Table of ContentsIntroduction - David Lemmings Custom, nature and authority: the roots of English legal positivism - Michael Lobban Legislation, magistrates and judges: high law and low law in England and the empire - Douglas Hay The promulgation of the statutes in late Hanoverian Britain - Simon Devereaux Legislation and public participation 1760-1830 - Joanna Innes The experience of litigation in eighteenth-century England - Wilfrid Prest Litigation, participation, and agency in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England - Christopher W Brooks 'Making examples' and the crisis of punishment in mid- eighteenth-century England - Randall McGowen Virginia and the imperial state: law, enlightenment and 'the crooked cord of discretion' - David Thomas Konig Judges and the application of imperial law in eastern Australia, 1788-1836: resistance and reception - Bruce Kercher
