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Last Entry: December 18, 2008 at 14:33:14

Historical Novels: Susana Gregory

Posted on December 18, 2008
Having recently read that Helen Maud Cam, one of my legal history heroines (yes, we legal historians have our heroines) ...

Provocative views on provocation

Posted on November 12, 2008
The Times on 7th November reports the unease of Lord Phillips about the attempt to stop men attacking their wives/ partners, by changing the rules on the pleading of provocation. He is not happy that the proposals 'so diminish the significance of sexual infidelity as expressly to exclude it from even the possibility of amounting to provocation'...

Retreat from Ropaigealach?

Posted on November 12, 2008
Could it be that land law lecturers are to be spared the search for Irish-speaking friends when they are about to lecture on mortgages? Jack Straw, apparently has just noticed that it is a bit mad to have all sorts of protection and second chances for borrowers in repossession cases, if the bank goes through courts, but nothing much if they do it out of court...

Conveyed away

Posted on October 31, 2008
Hang on to your hats! The latest Conveyancer and Property Lawyer is out, and there's a lot of weighty stuff ...

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Repossession rules

Posted on October 23, 2008
Gearing up for the recession we are apparently entering, the Master of the Rolls has approved a Civil Justice Council ...

Colonial hangovers: Bancoult case

Posted on October 23, 2008
International and public lawyers will be getting all a-twitter about the hugely important case of R (on the application of ...

Voting age consultation

Posted on October 21, 2008
There's a consultation out, asking whether the UK voting age should be lowered from 18 to 16. The answer is ...

Blackstone Biog.

Posted on October 17, 2008
Times 16th Oct p. 55 has David Pannick?s review of W. Prest?s Blackstone biography. It is generally positive, though does ...

Sleepwalking, madness, rape

Posted on October 17, 2008
Labour MP Harry Cohen has a 10-minute rule bill attempting to bar rape defendants from running a defence of ?I ...

Wigging out

Posted on October 16, 2008
The recent changes in court dress were prompted by the fact that judges and barristers were wildly out of line ...

Mortgages and human rights

Posted on October 16, 2008
There's an interesting case today on mortgage repossessions and sales - likely to be on the rise in the near ...

X-parte factor

Posted on October 13, 2008
While members of the Bench are in the mood for a bit of modernisation of their image (what with getting ...

Consultation Capers

Posted on October 09, 2008
The Department for Communities [whatever that means] and Local Government [not yet pluralised] is going consultation crazy just now, with ...

Ryan St George v Home Office (2008) CA LTL 8/10/2008.

Posted on October 09, 2008
Ryan St George v Home Office (2008) CA LTL 8/10/2008.This is the sort of thing which will have the ...

Yet More Middle Earth Jurisprudence

Posted on October 08, 2008
Continuing the occasional series on the legal world of J.R.R. Tolkein?s stories, here are some thoughts on The Children of ...

Tricks, treats and tribunals

Posted on October 07, 2008
As we approach Hallowe?en, if anyone wants a trip into a real chamber of horrors, they can do no better ...

Mystic Predictions

Posted on October 06, 2008
Horoscopes are, despite their prevalence in British newspapers, of course, a load of old rubbish. Names, however, may provide more ...

Horsehair shares down

Posted on October 03, 2008
Horsehair shares downAs if the headlong fall of the financial sector were not sufficient, another important British industry is ...

Hands off Magna Carta

Posted on October 03, 2008
Ignoring decades if not centuries of excellent research on the background to and nature of Magna Carta and its various reissues, the current Master of the Rolls has produced an article (Times 2/10/08, p.60) on modern civil liberties and counter-terror law, drawing the usual shaky line from the miscellaneous Big Charter of Liberties to universal rights to fair treatment in the modern world, and painting a positive portrait of principled Conservative M...

Bubbles and barminess

Posted on October 02, 2008
As the financial world melts down, explodes or whatever other evocative, concrete verb we are using today, the legal historian?s mind turns to the excesses of the first flush of mad, greedy, speculation, in the time of the famous South Sea Bubble. See R...

Newish online resource

Posted on October 01, 2008
Highly recommended - the recent, and free - Records of the Parliament of Scotlandhttp://www.rps.ac.uk/It has a handy search ...

Fi. fa. fo fum

Posted on September 30, 2008
Hold the front pages! The sinisterly-named (or maybe it sounds like a club) Ministry of Justice has just released the ...

Malory Towers: Law in the Arthurian World

Posted on September 29, 2008
Law in the Arthurian WorldI'm not aware of any legal history writing on the Arthurian world, though there are ...

Megalithic Law

Posted on September 17, 2008
There's a public consultation about revamping Stonehenge, at http://www.stonehengeconsultation.org/Stonehenge, of course is one of those mysterious places with many ...

Late Review/ Appreciation

Posted on September 09, 2008
I have just read and found very useful C. Saunders, Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England (Cambridge, 2001). Generally, I am very wary of literary treatments of legal or partly legal topics - they tend to get into the slough of Foucault very quickly and thence up their own fundamentalities without too much more ado...

Judge Dredd and the Future of the Common Law

Posted on August 06, 2008

Open letter, minds possibly less open?

Posted on July 01, 2008
It seems that 1,300 disgruntled Anglicans have sent an open letter to the Archbishops, opposing the move to allow women ...

Mortmain in Space

Posted on June 23, 2008
Those sci-fi/legal history nuggets keep on coming...I was watching an old Dr Who today ? ep. 1 of The Ribos Operation (1978, featuring Tom Baker, K9 and the first appearance of the somewhat sinister assistant, Romana). The main storyline is about the quest to find the missing segments of the Key To Time, but there is some interesting allusion to medieval conveyancing...

Unfree Tenure Top Ten

Posted on June 16, 2008
Unfree Top Ten(ure)Songs10. I?m your man[or] Wham9. Serfin? U.S.A. Beach Boys8...

Gratuitous 'What If?' History

Posted on June 12, 2008
1533: A King?s Prerogative (POV Thomas Cranmer)The King?s Great Matter had occupied my mind for years. I had spent ages consulting law books, then in careful diplomacy and scholarly dispute. Finally, the case was coming together. I knew that we would have to hold our nerve and make the break with Rome, but I was sure I could win the people away from that old superstitious nonsense...

Sci fi and law

Posted on May 17, 2008
New fun project: legal issues in sci-fi novels and films. American sci-fi in particular is quite heavy on legal issues - Star Trek on international/interplanetary law, for example.We could also highlight Robert A. Heinlein's Between Planets (1951) on laws about nationality /planetary allegiance, and the secession of a new Republic of Venus from the imperial Federation...

Old views of future trials

Posted on May 09, 2008
In spare evenings, I am getting through the DVDs of 1960s fantasy/sci-fi/thriller The Prisoner. There's a general legal theme, obviously, with our hero, Number 6, kidnapped and incarcerated in The Village, an apparently pleasant, if highly regulated, society with underlying police state/totalitarian organisation...

Legal History of Stripes

Posted on May 06, 2008
The stripe, 'ray', or fabric which is 'parti-coloured' has been used to communicate a number of different status messages. The ...

In Which We Servitude

Posted on March 28, 2008
Law Commission easements consultation paper 186

Oath no you don't

Posted on March 12, 2008
Lord Goldsmith is, it seems, proposing that schoolchildren swear allegiance to the Queen as part of the whole ?Britishness? drive. ...

Something nasty in the woodshed?

Posted on March 03, 2008
The legal historian?s heart is warmed by the very antiquarian charm of R v Cockburn (2008) LTL 29/2/2008 [2008] EWCA ...

Gratuitous bog-standard doggerel

Posted on February 29, 2008
OK, so it's gratuitous and non-legal, but the Common (as muck) Lawyer blog is granting political asylum to the following neo-sonnet which would otherwise be unlikely to see the light of day. See what a boon the internet is to those with literary pretensions and unfashionable political ideas...

Marching On

Posted on February 21, 2008
There is some very interesting legal historical content in the case concerning rights over land and river bed in the ...

Gratuitous rap cartoon

Posted on February 19, 2008
Kanye West Country Cartoon

Yee ?ha for the Lancashire police posse

Posted on February 13, 2008
There?s a rather exciting case report today, of the Lancashire police behaving like something out of the Wild West (or ...

The Wit System

Posted on January 28, 2008
Law academics ? or is it just British ones? ? seem to be very fond of the punning title for ...

'Pop on Trial' on trial

Posted on January 26, 2008
Yes, it?s infinite regress time, folks. BBC 4 has been having a bit of a ?Pop? theme lately, with a ...

Political Footballs, the Death of Principle, and the Public Benefit of Private Schools

Posted on January 17, 2008
Political Footballs, the Death of Principle, and the Public Benefit of Private SchoolsThere is much disquiet amongst those involved ...

More Middle Earth Jurisprudence

Posted on January 10, 2008
More Middle Earth Jurisprudence: thoughts on J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit (4 ed repr 1995, first published 1937).I?m listening ...

You've got to have faith (schools)

Posted on January 07, 2008
On 3/1?s Lawtel, there was a list of acts designating as schools having a religious character such otherwise-apparently-not-obviously-religious institutions as ...

Cosmetic alteration of the truth

Posted on January 07, 2008
Consumer magazine Which? has discovered that those involved in the plastic surgery industry are sometimes found to have their pants ...

Pardons for witches

Posted on January 07, 2008
There is an interesting legal historical development in Scotland, where the Parliament is being asked to consider pardons for those ...

Titles and forelock-tugging

Posted on January 07, 2008
IN today's Guardian (p.14) regular law correspondent Marcel Berlins makes fun of the daftness of judicial titles in England and ...

Review: McLynn, Lionheart and Lackland

Posted on January 03, 2008
The Very Late ReviewFrank McLynn, Lionheart and Lackland: King Richard, King John and the Wars of Conquest (2006) ...

(Ma)sonic the Hedgehog

Posted on December 19, 2007
...or indeed Super Mario Brother(hood)I was deeply unimpressed (from my left-liberal anti-secret society and men-only aproned silliness standpoint) to ...

Inquest on an inquest

Posted on December 18, 2007
Diana InquestEvery day, at the moment, it seems that there is a new titbit of information on the news ...

Quem Pastores Law-davere

Posted on December 17, 2007
Festive JurisprudenceI did a quick search for old cases with festive resonances, but there were, I?m afraid, slim pickings. ...

Hello, Sailors

Posted on December 16, 2007
I was looking up something relating to admiralty law today, and got sidetracked by the splendour and daftness of ship ...

Tut tut, it's been a while

Posted on December 16, 2007
OK, not really law-like, but the Dynasty just went to the Tutankhamun exhibition, so here is myEgyptian Top 10...

Jehovah's Witless

Posted on November 05, 2007
It?s not often that the (formerly soaraway) Sun has a front page of CommonLawyer interest, but today, I saw in the newsagent?s that it had something on the story of a young Jehovah?s Witness mother who had refused a life-saving blood transfusion after giving birth to twins...

The Legal history of the Lord of the Rings

Posted on October 25, 2007
The Legal history of the Lord of the Rings(With which I stake my claim to a high place in ...

Mammon and the Pastor

Posted on October 22, 2007
Mammon and the PastorNew Testament Church of God v Sylvester Stewart [2007] EWCA Civ 1004 This recent case concerns employment law, and its application to the role of ministers of religion. As is often the case with matters theological, as many questions are raised by it as are resolved...

Historical Musings on Edward II

Posted on October 21, 2007
I have been revisitng the Welsh legends which were great favourites of my childhood, and, in the strange way brains ...

More on Moncrieff: Anglo-Scottish concord on car parking

Posted on October 19, 2007
More on Moncrieff: Anglo-Scottish concord on car parking The House of Lords judgment in Moncrieff v Jamieson [2007] UKHL ...

Servitudes and car parking

Posted on October 18, 2007
This morning's Lawtel summary bills Moncrief and another v Jamieson and others [2007] UKHL 42 as deciding that Scots law ...

Posted on October 17, 2007
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The Jurisprudence of Abba

Posted on October 17, 2007
The Jurisprudence of Abba(And, if you?re wondering, this qualifies as legal history because of the scary amount of time ...

Common Callings

Posted on October 16, 2007
16th October, 2007.There?s a careers fair on today at the hallowed mock-Gothic neo-phallic pile of academe in which I ...

Warren to Coney

Posted on October 15, 2007

And another thing

Posted on October 15, 2007
GRR no. 2 from a Lawtel summary today, we have the verb to 'head up' a team. NO NO NO ...

Rant of the day

Posted on October 15, 2007
The other M-word which provokes in me a visceral pedant-reaction is 'methodology', a word peppered about it socio-empirico-legal-logical papers. There's ...

The Constitutional Law of Beauty Pageants

Posted on October 12, 2007
Thoughts on Danielle Lloyd v Miss Great Britain Ltd (2007) LTL 12/10/2007 There?s definitely a pretentious article waiting to be ...

Folk da police 3

Posted on October 11, 2007

A Multiplicity of 'Mistress'es

Posted on October 11, 2007
Both local and national media are following the inquest in Glastonbury on the 2001 death of Andrew Chubb, the Somerset-based ...

Folk da police 2

Posted on October 10, 2007

Folk Da Police

Posted on October 08, 2007

Non-travel writing

Posted on October 08, 2007
I am pioneering a new type of very green travel writing - NON travel writing. It's all about saying why one is choosing not to go to a particular place, and today's non-destination is.....Littledean Jail in the Forest of Dean. On a very enjoyable family outing to the Forest of Dean Heritage Centre (interesting snippets about forest law, freeminers and the job of Deputy Gaveler of the Forest), I picked up a variety of leaflets for other tourist spots in the area, of both scenic and historical interest...

The times they aren't really a-changing

Posted on October 04, 2007
How marvellously it does stir my heart and win my vote to see that slimy, er, I mean really sincere, ...