No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Who Made Notable Contributions to the Development of English Law or its Literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Extract
These notes on thirty-six judges and chancellors, prompted by memory of my own requirements fifty years ago, were prepared for distribution on stencilled sheets to the students attending my lectures on legal history at the Inns of Court. My aim was to provide both indications of the principal achievements of each of the lawyers named, and also references to readily accessible sources of further knowledge.
The editor of this journal has kindly suggested that it would be useful to its readers to have my notes available in print.
It is not nearly as difficult as it used to be for beginners to find out about the great legal figures of the past. Sir William Holdsworth, Vinerian professor at Oxford from 1922 to 1944, placed all lawyers in his debt by his book, Some Makers of English Law, published in 1938. It was based on the Tagore lectures which he had given in Calcutta.
Sir Percy Winfield, Rouse Ball professor at Cambridge from 1926 to 1943, gave detailed information as to the principal law books of the past and their editions in his manual The Chief Sources of English Legal History (1925) based on lectures given at the Harvard Law School. Twenty-four of my judges and chancellors have entries in his book as authors.
By far the most numerous of my references are to Holdsworth's monumental History of English Law, in thirteen volumes, cited as H.E.L. The other works most referred to are The Dictionary of National Biography cited as D.N.B.; Fourteen English Judges (1926) by the first Earl of Birkenhead, L.C. 1919–1922; and The Victorian Chancellors (1908) by J. B. Atlay.
- Type
- Some Judges and Chancellors
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge Law Journal and Contributors 1957
References
1 A fourteenth, and final volume, based on manuscripts left by him, is in course of preparation.
2 Glanville is the name by which a Latin treatise (c. 1189) De Legibus Angliae, of about 45,000 words, is called, because the author describes it as composed while Ranulf Glanville was Justiciar. See p. 163 of Vol. I of Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law before Edward I (2nd, 1898, ed.). This great classic was written almost entirely by F. W. Maitland, Downing Professor at Cambridge (d. 1906). It is generally cited as P. & M.
3 To be published shortly by the Cambridge University Press.
4 Beginners are warned against confusing Lord Mansfield with Sir James Mansfield, C.J.C.P. 1804 to 1814. The latter, a son of J. J. Manfield, an attorney, changed his surname to Mansfield when a young man. D.N.B.