I have been invited, and consider it a privilege, to comment briefly on James Hackney's article, Law and Neoclassical Economics. Perhaps it is unnecessary to remark that the article is both engaging and original. Not only does its quality speak for itself, but Hackney is not unforthcoming in speaking for himself. His in-depth and nuanced historical examination of law and neoclassical economics, he tells us, is the first to discuss the intellectual and political backdrop that facilitated law and neoclassical economics' rise to prominence and the first detailed exploration of how law and neoclassical economics as a field of study displaced pragmatic instrumentalist strands in legal theory. Hackney, clearly, could hardly be said to be unaware of the notion of product-differentiation.

The interplay between the Roman economic and legal orders is one of the most important areas calling for research and analysis. There is no lack of excellent descriptions of the economic life of antiquity. In contrast, legal-historical enquiries into the legal-economic issues of Roman times are still in the initial stages. This dearth of research is mainly the result of the unsatisfactory state of Roman legal sources, which rarely deal with economic issues. It is a stroke of luck to find sufficient documentation on any specific topic. One such fortunate case, that of restraint of trade, exists. There are no fewer than seven Digest texts on the topic. These will be analyzed below, in conjunction with a comparative survey of the development of this aspect in modern law.

Before a gathering of the White House Press corps on March 21, 1930, President Herbert Hoover announced his nomination for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to fill a vacancy unexpectedly created by the death of Edward T. Sanford. His nominee was forty-four year old native North Carolinian John J. Parker, a member since 1925 of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Within days of the nomination organized labor and its allies in Congress and the press unleashed withering attacks on a single judicial opinion authored by Parker. In the process, the priority of issues raised in that case was dramatically inverted. The foremost issue, federal jurisdiction, became subordinated to the scope of an injunctive decree, an issue of secondary importance. Thus, the nominee's three year old opinion in International Union, United Mine Workers of America v. Red Jacket Consolidated Coal and Coke Company became the catalyst for transforming him from relative obscurity into a symbol of anti-labor conservatism.

Based on Carol Smart's observation that rape law reform as lobbied for by the feminist movement during the 1970s and 1980s failed to achieve any meaningful change, this article seeks to examine the nature and implications of rape law reform in the Republic of Ireland from the 1980s to the present day. During the 1980s the conceptualization of rape changed from a proprietorial crime to a violation of individual bodily integrity due to feminist lobbying efforts and the emergence of a victim-centered approach in the criminal justice system. Though this changing conceptualisation has led to significant attitudinal change, particularly surrounding the issues of acquaintance and marital rape, procedural change has failed to secure higher conviction rates. In particular, this article demonstrates that the legal reforms achieved in the 1980s potentially resulted in a 2% decrease in rape conviction rates by 2007. When compared to England/Wales, conviction rates as distinctive from prosecution rates in Ireland remain chronically low. This indicates that any legal reforms must take account of the institutional bias ingrained the Irish criminal justice system against female rape complainants, which has continuing relevance for Irish legislation pertaining to sexual violence such as the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, 2017. Overall this article suggests that rape is an exceptional crime and needs to be reassessed as such.

The printing press was recognized by early modern commentators, just as it has been by historians, as an important invention that had profound effects on the arts and sciences. Legal historians have not missed the potentially transformative effects of printing—not only might lawyers found heterodox arguments upon the precise words of printed texts, rather than relying upon the “common learning,” but the absence of texts from the “common learning” in the printed canon meant legal historians themselves labored for many years under a misapprehension as to the nature of medieval English law. However, little work has been undertaken on the precise impact of printing upon the English legal profession, particularly in the shorter term. Common lawyers, particularly in the sixteenth century, were a group who increasingly relied upon, and cited, textual material as the foundation of their arguments on all points of law. Over the course of the sixteenth century, lawyers came increasingly to rely upon prior cases, and particularly prior judged cases, as the basis of legal arguments and of the correctness of those arguments. Advocates and judges were all faced with a large, and still growing, body of manuscript material, and a sizeable collection of printed works. Attitudes towards printed material is an important topic for historians of early modern law for suggesting which sources of legal ideas were given more prominence in the period.

The precise length of territorial waters, the swath of sea along the coast over which a state extended sovereign control, remained an object of debate during the seventeenth century. Some authors still adhered to the 100-mile boundary established by medieval glossators, whereas others embraced the so-called cannon-shot rule that set the limit to the reach of a shot fired from the land. But no one disputed the existence of territorial waters. Even Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), then Europe's greatest champion of the freedom of the sea, followed Roman law in conceding that a state could exert its sovereignty over littoral waters or inlets in a shoreline (diverticula maris). This rare point of agreement between theorists of mare liberum (the free sea) and defenders of mare clausum (the closed sea) did not eliminate all controversies concerning the governance of coastal waters. Particularly contentious were domestic and international disputes over the property rights on the cargo of sunken ships. What sources of law governed the assignment of ownership of salvaged wreckages? Who was entitled to compensation for assisting in the recovery efforts? And how did legal claims square with political maneuvering in domestic and interstate disputes over wreckages?

James I's declaration to the Parliament of 1621 was quickly followed on March 31, 1621, by a proclamation abolishing “bills of conformity”—a remedy for insolvent debtors in the English courts of equity. MPs had raised conformity as a grievance early in the session, and debate was one-sided. James's admission, and the proclamation suppressing conformity that followed, explained that debtors exhibited the bills for “no other end or purpose, but to defeat or delay their just and honest Creditors.” Conformity was “so great an evill” that it had encouraged “wilfull Bankerupts,” caused a scarcity of money, and triggered a trade depression. A statute passed in the Parliament of 1624 closed the remaining loopholes and abolished conformity.

On January 24, 1817, Don Juan Stoughton, the Spanish consul in Boston, wrote to his colleague in Baltimore, Don Pablo Chacon, to thank him for his recent efforts in supplying Stoughton with information about the Mangore, a private armed vessel recently arrived in the Chesapeake. Stoughton believed that the privateer was responsible for the capture of a Spanish-owned merchant ship that had recently turned up in Massachusetts. Stoughton had recently filed suit in federal district court to recover the vessel and its cargo on behalf of the rightful owners, but to do so he had to establish that, in the course of its recent expedition, the Mangore had violated federal law prescribing American neutrality. In addition to providing intelligence in this matter, Chacon had secured local counsel to represent Stoughton at depositions of privateer crew members being taken in Baltimore.

Scholars agree that medieval Jewish legal writers responded to “the needs of the times” in making their legal rulings, carefully choosing the legal sources and precedents upon which they relied, rereading or even rejecting those sources in light of their quotidian reality. Particularly in the Geonic Period, as Talmudic norms encountered a geographically expansive community experiencing radical social transformations in the engagement with Islam, as well as rapid economic development concomitant with the rise of the ʿAbbāsids, which urbanized and transformed the economic life of the Jewish community, classical sources of Jewish law faced new pressures. Geonic leaders responded to these pressures by making recourse to the traditional institutions of taqqana (Hebrew, “legislative enactment”) and minhag (Hebrew, “custom”). Therefore, it is widely accepted that the vicissitudes of daily life influenced both the responsa of the Geonim and their contributions to the expanding codificatory literature. On the other hand, the potential influence of Jewish legal norms upon daily life remains an unsettled area in the study of the history of the premodern Jewish community. A paucity of documentary or archaeological evidence complicates this problem, and edited literary texts of various genres remain themselves among the most important witnesses to Jewish life in the period.

This is a critical historiographical essay animated by the research question of how the decisions of police and sheriffs illuminated and drove the transformation of white supremacy through different forms from emancipation to the end of Jim Crow segregation. It situates this focus amidst current methodological trends that stress structural oppression and argues that law-enforcers’ agency could illuminate discussions among historians and other scholars about the relationship between formal and informal law alongside the rise of the modern criminological state. The historical importance of enforcers is accentuated in the story told in each section—the shifting demographics of enforcement during Reconstruction; the inequalities of policing alongside lynching in the last decades of the nineteenth century; the complex interplay between policing and segregation statutes, colorblind criminal law, and mob violence in the Jim Crow South; the concurrent modernization of racialized policing nationwide; and the displacement of informal mob law and formal racial caste by a national regime of extralegal police violence, unequal patterns of incarceration and execution, and federal protections of civil liberties and civil rights.

In the handbook for Cypriot police officers published in 1896 by the island's British colonial administration, there is a passage that appears at first innocuous but that had important resonances for the development of legal and political statuses in Cyprus of the period. Under the section “Police Duties” and the subheading “Constables,” the handbook notes that “[c]onstables are expected to possess such knowledge of the inhabitants of their District as to enable them readily to recognize them. They are to be instructed to watch unceasingly all persons having no visible means of support, and obtain knowledge of all suspected thieves, idle and disorderly persons, and disorderly houses.”

The criminals of medieval England are coming under increasing scrutiny. Predictably, the earliest attempts to illustrate criminality in this period have been anecdotal in approach. Predictably, too, the case studies are concentrated at higher levels in society, where criminals or their victims were sufficiently prominent to merit the attention of chroniclers or to leave heavy traces in the more accessible records of central government. Such studies have been useful in reinforcing the impression that organized crime enjoyed distinguished support and participation. For some time Sir John Molyns was able to shelter his persistent offences behind his political connection. Merchants robbed in Cannock Chase in 1341 found prosecution difficult; their assailants were knights from powerful midland families, conducting the robbery from Lapley priory. The Folville gang, led by members of minor landowning families, included various beneficed clergy and the constable of Rockingham castle. The Coterels recruited the sheriff of Nottingham and enjoyed the support of Lichfield chapter. The crimes were also at an exalted level: murdering a baron of the Exchequer, kidnapping a king's bench justice, extortion by threats from a mayor of Nottingham, or from one of the Luttrells. Even William Wawe, an Anglo-Irish thug of indifferent social standing, owes his immortality to the breadth of his operations and his preference for churchmen as victims.

James Oldham and Su Jin Kim write about the acceptance of arbitration in the early United States in their article, “Arbitration in America: The Early History.” They correct a misperception that stretches back at least to Justice Joseph Story's 1844 opinion in Tobey v. Bristol that said equity did not enforce arbitration awards. Oldham and Kim recover a robust culture of arbitration in the early United States and thus correct the received wisdom, which led Justice Kennedy to remark in 2001 that American courts were historically hostile to arbitration. Perhaps this newly recovered history will add support for the acceptance of arbitration in the federal courts. Oldham's and Kim's article is, therefore, part of an emerging and sometimes controversial trend in legal history to speak to contemporary issues. It is also the first of an occasional series for Law and History Review on “applied legal history.”

If a German couple wanted to get married today, they would have to consult the German Civil Code, the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch or BGB, for information on how to do so. From the BGB, they would learn that—provided that they are competent, more than 18 years of age, not related in a direct line or (half-) siblings, and not currently married—they can get married before the Standesbeamter or civil registrar. They would also learn that should they want a divorce in the future, any proceedings would have to be brought in the family court, which is a special division within the German civil courts of first instance, and that the judge hearing their case would be required to consider whether their marriage has “failed”: a state of affairs that that judge would be legally compelled to presume if one or both of them wanted the divorce (and they had lived apart for a prescribed number of years).

At 10:00 AM on September 24, 1943, James F. Lincoln, the sixty-year-old president and owner of the Lincoln Electric Company of Cleveland, Ohio, entered a meeting with U.S. Navy officials who wanted to discuss his company's recent earnings. A former Ohio State University football team captain and active supporter of the Republican Party, the outspoken Lincoln had already made it clear that he objected to the whole proceeding. One of the nation's leading suppliers of welding equipment, Lincoln's company had seen its sales boom since the beginning of World War II, as shipbuilders, aircraft producers, and other prime contractors demanded more welding machines and electrodes. Now, after a year of correspondence and preparations, the U.S. Navy had asked Lincoln to come to Washington to discuss how much of the company's 1942 profits were fair, and how much should be returned to the United States.

Common law was an all-male system, with one glaring exception: juries of matrons. If a convicted felon requested a reprieve from execution on the grounds of pregnancy, it was the responsibility of a group of twelve matrons to perform an inspection in order to determine if she was in fact pregnant. Matrons were in a position of great authority. Their verdicts were definitive: if they decided a woman was pregnant, then she was sent back to prison. Despite the significance of their role, little is known about medieval matrons and what qualified them to sit on a jury. Were they mothers? Honorable wives? Midwives? The goal of this paper is to argue that matrons had training in obstetrics. This was particularly important for medieval matrons because the quickening (that is ensoulment, signaled by the first fetal movements) did not become the focal point of the matrons' assessment until at least 1348. Before this, the diagnosis was much more medically challenging as matrons had to determine whether a felon had conceived. Overall, the medieval records demonstrate great confidence in medieval matrons and their obstetrical expertise.

In 1999, Chile became the last country in Latin America to grant full equality to all children regardless of the marital status of their parents. The Law of Filiation (Ley de Filiación) declared all children's right to know their origins, receive support from their progenitors, and participate equally in inheritance. Both supporters and critics hailed the law as transcendental, one of the most significant reforms to civil law since the promulgation of the Chilean Civil Code in 1855. On the day the law took effect, President Eduardo Frei was on hand at a civil registry office to greet the first parents arriving to solicit birth certificates, which no longer specified their children's natal status. He gave them a native quillay sapling, symbol of life and growth, adorned with a ribbon declaring, “Bienvenida, igualdad (Welcome, equality).” In succeeding months approximately 2,000,000 citizens, in a country of 15,000,000, would petition the offices of the civil registry for the new, nondiscriminatory birth certificates. One congresswoman hailed the bureaucratic flood as a “vindication of human dignity.”

‘United to protect, not combined to injure.’ With these words in 1840 the United Society of Brushmakers, bore witness to a shift in the language of labor organizations. While community of experience and interests was always what held such groups together, there was uncertainty in the first part of the nineteenth century about what to call them. Their name in the statute book, dating back to the early eighteenth century, was ‘combination’. Some workmen proudly adopted the term: ‘by combination we shall succeed’ proclaimed the Amalgamated Society of Journeymen Cloggers. But ‘combination’ suffered by association with the ancient and pejorative word: ‘conspiracy’.