Reviews

Date01 November 1972
Published date01 November 1972
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1972.tb01347.x
REVIEWS
AN
INTRODUCTION
TO
ENGLISH
LEGAL
HISTORY.
By
J.
H.
BAKER.
[London
:
Butterworths.
1971.
330
pp.
(inc.
index).
€2.00
net.3
THIS
book admirably fills
a
gap in the range
of
texts available
to
the student
of legal history.
It
is ideally suited to the needs of the first-year student who,
as part of
a
course on the English legal system (or
a
similar introductory
course), has to struggle with the complex and tortuous evolution and abstruse
terminology of
a
system stretching over seven centuries
or
more.
Mr.
Baker’s
achievement will lighten the task of the teacher seeking
to
engage the genuine
interest of first-year students in
a
subject which is meant to illuminate their
concurrent and subsequent studies.
It
will also be of great help to students
at
the
outset of
a
more advanced
or
specialised course in legal history.
There are those who argue that legal history should not be taught in any
serious way to first-year law students.
It
is said that, until they have some
understanding of the modern law, its remote and abstruse qualities cannot
engage their sympathies and can only repel them from any interest in the
subject when they are more
fit
to undertake
Cts
study at
a
later stage.
It
is
suggested that some explanation (in practice often of the most .cursory
kind) of the historical development of
a
subject
at
the outset of each course
is
all that suffices. This reviewer does not share this view, but the need to
make the subject not only intelligible but engaging cannot be denied. Mr.
Baker’s Introduction
goes
far to meet this need. This
is
partly due
to
the
clear and attractive quality of his style which enables him, for example, to
explain even the development of future interests after the Statute of Uses
in an intelligible manner
in
a
few pages.
It
is
also
due to the nice discrimina-
tion between what is explained
in
helpful detail and what is merely summarised
in
a
non-technical way. Rightly, not too much time
is
wasted on the period
before the common law settled in its classical form-though there is proper
emphasis on the professional and procedural factors which produced the
classical common law. Even greater emphasis is placed on the transformation
of the system, which Littleton had known, in the course of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The bearing all this has on the shape of the modern
law is effectively demonstrated, and the book concludes with a chapter on the
reform of the law which, under the heading the “Triumph of Legislation,”
is concerned with the achievement of the nineteenth-century reformers.
This does not pretend to be
a
textbook, and footnote references are kept
to
a
bare minimum. Instead,
a
carefully selected reading list is provided
at
the end of each chapter. This consists of the more important articles and
relevant passages in the standard works. The tables classifying interests in
property, real and personal, are useful;
so
also are the two appendices giving
specimen judicial and original writs and
a
specimen entry in the plea rolls
of the King‘s Bench.
Although this Introduction is primarily intended for the first-year student,
he will be made aware of the latest scholarly developments. Naturally, certain
areas of legal development have
to
be excluded
(6.g.
commercial and constitu-
tional law), but what continually surprises
is
how much Mr. Baker has been
able to explain
so
tellingly in such
a
short compass. Very occasionally the need
to move rapidly over certain developments may give
a
slightly misleading
impression. Thus (on p.
276)
the impression given as to the development
of
the general eyre and the commissions
of
oyer and terminer etc. is chronolo-
gically not quite accurate. The same is true of
the
brief account of absolute
and qualified privilege in the law of defamation (pp.
263-264).
The reference
668

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT