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Towards an Ideology of the Early English Law of Obligations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

Morris S. Arnold
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Extract

So portentous a title as I have contrived for tonight's lecture ought to come furnished with an appropriately bombastic beginning. In fact, it does not. Instead of concentrating on a beginning, I thought that we might more profitably focus our attention on the beginning, that is, on a time long before the sophisticated legal/administrative system of England's high middle ages had evolved. It will be interesting to get what peeks we can at the jurisprudential assumptions of, say, preconquest Englishmen. As Tom Green has recently demonstrated in his book on the criminal jury, these assumptions could exhibit a durability that had functional consequences for many centuries. If through the jury they could prevail against contrary official versions of what the substantive law was, as Green has shown, how much more potent could they be when the government was not inclined to oppose their effectuation?

Type
Essays
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Fall 1987 , pp. 505 - 521
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 1987

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References

1. Green, Thomas Andrew, Verdict According to Conscience (Chicago, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. The best available English translation is to be found in Attenborough, F., ed., The Laws of the Earliest English Kings (Cambridge, 1963) 4Google Scholar.

3. See generally Becker, Gary, ‘Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach’, 76 Journal of Political Economy (1968) 169CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Simpson, A. W. B., ‘The Laws of Ethelbert’, in Arnold, Morris S. et al. , eds., On the Laws and Customs of England (Chapel Hill, 1981)Google Scholar.

5. De Banco Roll no. 506, m. 451(1387) (Case no. 21.11 in Arnold, Morris S., ed., Select Cases of Trespass in the King's Courts 1307–1399, 2 vols. (London, 1985,1987) ii: 264Google Scholar.

6. Liebermann, F., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Halle, 1903) 398, 399Google Scholar.

7. A useful summation of this story, with citations to previous work, can be found in Milsom, S. F. C., ‘An Old Play in Modern Dress’, 84 Yale Law Journal 1585 (1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Cam, H. M., ed., Eyre of London, 2 vols. Selden Society, (London, 1969) ii: 287Google Scholar.

9. The cases that follow are taken from Arnold, Morris S., ‘Fourteenth-Century Promises’, 35 Cambridge Law Journal 321 (1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. For the possibility that there was a trespassory action for effecting the cancellation of documents executed under duress, see Morris S. Arnold, ed., Select Cases of Trespass in the King's Courts, 1307–1399, supra note 5 at i: xxxiv.

11. 27 Edw. III, stat. 2, c. 15 (1353).

12. Stats. 23 Edw. III (1349); 25 Edw. III, stat. 2 (1351).

13. See e.g., Turner, G. and Plunkett, T., eds., Year Book 5 Edward II, Selden Society, (London, 1947) 30, 31Google Scholar.

14. Y. B. 40 Edw. 3, f. 5, pl. 11 (1366).

15. See the analysis in Arnold, Morris S., ed., Year Book 2 Richard II, Ames Foundation (Cambridge, Mass., 1975) xivGoogle Scholar.

16. See Arnold, Morris S., ‘Transcending Covenant and Debt’, 85 Yale Law Journal 990, 993 (1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. See generally, Simpson, A. W. B., A History of the Common Law of Contract: The Rise of the Action of Assumpsit (Oxford, 1975) 153–69, 193–90, 424–26Google Scholar.

18. Y. B. 45 Edw. 3, f. 11, pl. 17 (1372) (per Kirton).

19. See Milsom, S. F. C., ‘Trespass from Henry III to Edward III’, 74 Law Quarterly Review 195, 407, 561 (1958)Google Scholar.

20. See generally, Arnold, Morris S., ‘Accident, Mistake, and Rules of Liability in the Fourteenth-Century Law of Torts’, 128 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 361 (1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. De Banco Roll no. 189, m. 190(1311) (Case no. 30.1 in Morris S. Arnold, Select Cases of the Trespass in the King's Courts, 1307–1399, supra note 5 at ii: 325–26).

22. Coram Rege Roll no. 240, m. 34(1320) (Case no. 39.1 in Morris S. Arnold, Select Cases of Trespass in the King's Courts, 1307–1399, supra note 5 at ii: 416).

23. Coram Rege Roll no. 249, m. 5d (1332) (Case no. 13.14 in Morris S. Arnold, Select Cases of Trespass in King's Courts, 1307–1399, supra note 5 at 1:140).

24. Y. B. 42 Edw. 3, f. 11, pl. 13; 42 Liber Assisarum, f. 260, pl. 17 (1368).

25. H. M. Cam, ed., Eyre of London, supra note 8 at 133.

26. This principle is essential to a proper understanding of Y. B. 48 Edw. 3, f. 25, pl. 8 (1374).

27. De Banco Roll no. 548, m. 221(1398) and De Banco Roll no. 551, m. 119(1398) (Cases no. 38. 1a and 38. 1b in Morris S. Arnold, Select Cases of Trespass in the King's Courts, 1307–1399, supra note 5 at ii: 412–14).

28. Morris S. Arnold, supra note 20 at 367–68.

29. Y. B. 2 Hen. 4, f. 18, pl. 6 (1401).

30. De Banco Roll no. 537, m. 260d(1395) (Case no. 38.2 in Morris S. Arnold, Select Cases of Trespass in the King's Courts, 1307–1399, supra note 5 at ii: 414–15).

31. For a discussion of this point, see Arnold, Morris S., ‘Law and Fact in the Medieval Jury Trial: Out of Sight, Out of Mind’, 18 American Journal of Legal History (1974) 267, 276CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Horwood, A., ed., Year Book 21 & 22 Edward I (London, 1873) 28Google Scholar.

33. Gibbons v. Pepper, 1 Ld. Raym. 38; 2 Salkeld 637; 4 Mod. 405 (1696).

34. See Morris S. Arnold, Select Cases of Trespass in the King's Courts, 1307–1399, supra note 5 at i: liv-lv, lxxix-lxxx, for a discussion of pleading evidence in special traverses.

35. See Morris S. Arnold, supra note 20 at 362–63, for a discussion of such cases.

36. Stat. 6 Richard II, stat. 2, c. 5 (1381).

37. For the argument that pleas of compulsion and private necessity cannot be good defenses under a strict liability regime, see Epstein, Richard, ‘A Theory of Strict Liability’, 2 Journal of Legal Studies 151, 174–76 (1973)Google Scholar; Epstein, Richard, ‘Defenses and Subsequent Pleas in a System of Strict Liability’, 3 Journal of Legal Studies 165, 169–70 (1974)Google Scholar.