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COMMISE 1204: STUDIES IN THE HISTORY AND LAW OF CONTINENTAL AND INSULAR NORMANDY. Ed by Gordon Dawes St Peter Port, Guernsey: The Guernsey Bar (www.guernseybar.com), 2005. ISBN 0955039509. £30.

Document Cited authorities 1 Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date01 January 2008
Pages160-161
Date01 January 2008
DOI10.3366/E1364980908250225

In 1204 England lost most of Normandy. The exception was the Channel Islands, which thereafter were, as the French put it, les îles Anglo-Normandes. That year thus marks the beginning of the curious constitutional positions of the two bailiwicks. “Positions” rather than “position”, because though Guernsey and Jersey have much in common, they are independent of each other. In Jersey a volume of essays marking the 800th anniversary was published (A Celebration of Autonomy, edited by Sir Philip Bailhache), and was reviewed in the pages of this journal ((2006) 10 EdinLR 321). The book under review is an equivalent volume for Guernsey.

For this focus on two small jurisdictions no apology is needed. Legal systems are like languages. While the applied linguist will be mainly interested in the big languages spoken by tens or hundreds of millions rather than in the small ones spoken by tens or hundreds of thousands, the pure linguist will be as interested in languages spoken by few, or none, such as Latin or Sanskrit or Gothic. Likewise, the jurist's interest is not determined only by the practical current importance of a legal system: consider the abiding interest in Roman law. Smaller systems will often repay study. The two bailiwicks are good examples, for their private law but not only for their private law.

The editor, who is also the author of The Laws of Guernsey, has put together a handsome volume. Some...

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