Historical inquiry into the character of local dispute resolution and the operation of customary law in medieval England begins in manorial courts, since it is from those local courts that the most abundant documentation survives. Were the judgments of these courts “principled” in the sense of being rooted in substantive legal rules that courts ordinarily followed, or were they ad hoc determinations based on factual circumstances invisible to the modern reader? Can historians extrapolate behavioral norms and shared cultural values from the manor court records that survive in increasing profusion from the second quarter of the thirteenth century?

The early-Tudor English government oversaw the rise of various centralised courts offering the king's subjects access to extraordinary justice in their private suits. One such new arena was the ‘Court of Requests’, an early equity or conscience court long overshadowed in histories of the period by the better-known courts of Star Chamber and Chancery. This article analyses the little-studied Requests archives to ask who sued there and when/why the court became associated with specifically poor men's causes. Focusing on the formative decade of ‘popularisation’ between 1515 and 1525, it finds that whilst litigants appear to have been largely from the lower sectors of society compared to their counterparts in the other conciliar courts, most petitioners opted for imprecise, rhetorical and non-static descriptions of their relative poverty – defined not just economically, but also in terms of age, property, and kin – in comparison to their opponents, appealing to the specific interpretation of conscience in Requests. The article thus scrutinises the methodologies we use for uncovering the demography of early-modern central courts, and has implications for understanding litigants' legal strategies, recorded identification as distinct from self-identification, and the theory and practice behind commonly-held ideals about the provision of royal justice for the ‘poor’.

We think of James Madison as a political theorist, legislative drafter, and constitutional interpreter. Recent scholarship has fought fiercely over the nature of his political thought. Unlike other important early national leaders—John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Edmund Randolph, James Wilson—law has been seen as largely irrelevant to Madison's intellectual biography. Madison, however, studied law and, at least in one extant manuscript, took careful notes. These notes have been missing for over a century, and their loss contributed to the sense that Madison must not have been that interested in law. Now located, these notes reveal Madison's significant grasp of law and his striking curiosity about the problem of language. Madison's interest in interpretation is certainly not news to scholars. These notes, however, help to establish that this interest predated the Constitution and that his interest in constitutional interpretation was an application of a larger interest in language. Moreover, Madison thought about the problem of legal interpretation as a student of law, never from the secure status of lawyer. Over his lifetime, he advocated a variety of institutional approaches to constitutional interpretation, and this comfort with nonjudicial interpreters, along with a peculiar ambivalence about the proper location of constitutional interpretation, may owe a great deal to his self-perception as a law student but never a lawyer.

On August 28, 1919, Brazil's most famous pediatrician, Dr. Carlos Arthur Moncorvo Filho, addressed his colleagues at the illustrious National Academy of Medicine in Rio de Janeiro, reminding them that consanguineous marriage was the topic of the moment. Dr. Moncorvo Filho's insistence that “everyone knew why” was a reference to a proposal made before the Senate just three months prior by Senators Eloy de Souza of the state of Pernambuco and Álvaro de Carvalho of São Paulo. The senators proposed that language prohibiting marriage between blood relatives in the recently ratified Brazilian Civil Code be amended to allow for special juridical or medical dispensation. Souza and Carvalho, with the backing of the Catholic Church and a minority of members of the Brazilian Institute of Attorneys, supported permitting marriage between third-degree relatives under special circumstances. At issue for the attorneys was how the law would deal with situations in which couples had a compelling need to marry within the third degree of kinship. A recent case of an uncle who had “deflowered” his niece and then offered to “remedy the damage” through marriage brought this issue to public debate. Marriages between uncles and their nieces and aunts and their nephews (third-degree relations) were traditional in Brazil, and Brazilian law had a long history of yielding to custom and context. However, under the new laws of the 30-year-old republic, this type of marriage was no longer legal, having been specifically prohibited by the 1916 Civil Code. Senators Souza and Carvalho, both lawyers by training, proposed reforming the Code, while their ultimately unsuccessful amendment sparked vigorous debate in both legal and medical circles on the validity of marriage restrictions within the third degree of consanguinity. As a result, physicians at Brazil's leading medical schools and their jurist counterparts at the law schools took sides on this critical issue, dividing themselves into rival camps of consanguinistas and anticonsanguinistas.

Historians of Latin American slavery will find de la Fuente's article to be a particularly trenchant and learned essay on familiar historiographic controversies. The archival research awakens anticipation for the author's in-depth study of the earlier period of Cuban slavery, much neglected in favor of the heyday of the sugar complex of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Concentrating on the law and “slaves' claims-making” (341) allows for an important entry into the subject, complementing recent studies of slavery in Spanish America that have focused on how slaves used the institutions of Spanish colonialism to gain freedom or greater autonomy. However, reviving the Tannenbaum thesis, even in the limited form of the law, inspires less enthusiasm. De la Fuente's interpretation of Cuban slavery, through his rereading of Tannenbuam, does not produce misrepresentations in his treatment of historiography or sources; rather, I sense in this work the static conception of New World slavery created by Tannenbaum's dichotomous vision, both among and within particular colonial and national slave societies.

Ever since the official promulgation of the judicial reform statutes of 1864 in late imperial Russia, a scholarly commonplace has been the reform's contribution to the remarkable emergence of several generations of brilliant Russian trial lawyers and an internationally famous tradition of outstanding judicial oratory during the half-century preceding the Bolshevik revolution. This impressive display of judicial learning and courtroom artistry occurred in the context of Western-style trial by jury, the reform's most daring innovation. Introduced in 1866 after two years of energetic preparation, Russia's system of trial by jury bequeathed to scholars the most powerful emblem of the post-1864 Russian legal order: the courtroom confrontation between the defense attorney (zashchitnik) and the state's prosecutorial agent, the procurator (prokuror). In this judicial clash, the defense counsel has represented the eloquent, keen-witted, Western-educated champion of the individual and even the “defender of public interests.” The procuratorial representative has come to embody the interests of a regime whose relentless and often undisguised statism belied the reform statutes' open proclamation of the principles of legality and the “rule of law.”

On a hopeful September day in 1912, Gim Pon, a twenty-five year old Chinese man from Canton, boarded the steamship Siberia in Hong Kong harbor to sail west across the Pacific. The Siberia docked briefly in San Francisco, but Gim Pon's destination, and that of seven fellow Chinese travelers, was not California but the northern Mexican state of Sonora. In the early twentieth century, thousands of men like Gim Pon immigrated to Mexico, boosting the Chinese population there from slightly over 1,000 in 1895 to more than 24,000 in the mid-1920s. Sonora, which hugs Arizona at the United States/Mexico border, was a popular destination, and hosted the largest Chinese population of any Mexican state through the 1920s. Once in Sonora, Gim Pon adapted to life in Mexico: he changed his name to Francisco Gim, learned Spanish, and became naturalized as a Mexican citizen on February 27, 1920. Most importantly, he formed a family with Julia Delgado.

Section 54 (11) of the Metropolitan Police Act 1839 criminalized the act of a common prostitute causing annoyance by soliciting in public.2 For the police to implement this legislation was no simple matter, as no definition of “prostitute,” or indeed “annoyance,” was scribed in statute law. Although common law aided the interpretation of this offense—the case of Rex v. de Munck (1918): “We are of the opinion that prostitution is proved if it is shown that a woman offers her body commonly for lewdness of payment in return”3—in practice, identifying a “common prostitute” and defining “annoyance” was left to the discretion of the individual police officer. Although specific squads were deployed to target streetwalkers in West End police divisions, where the presence of prostitutes was more likely to cause public offense, a “blind eye” was often turned to women soliciting in the less salubrious streets of the metropolis. Local knowledge gained on the beat and the informal advice of colleagues shaped an unofficial police policy of containment and toleration.4

Although constitutional originalism has attracted a remarkable degree of public and professional attention over the past several decades, little research has been conducted on the intellectual roots of modern originalism. This Article finds that American law schools housed few originalist theorists through much of the 1970s and early 1980s. However, after Edwin Meese III became U.S. Attorney General in 1985, the Department of Justice constructed a vibrant academy in exile, with government lawyers leading the way in the early development, theorization, and exercise of originalism. In addition to becoming the official mode of constitutional interpretation for Meese and the DOJ, originalism started to gain followers on the federal bench and within conservative social movements during the second half of the 1980s. As constitutional originalism grew in influence and professional use, academic interlocutors began engaging with and reimagining originalism more intently.

During the first decade of his tenure as dean of Harvard Law School (HLS) from 1870 to 1895, Christopher C. Langdell (1826–1906) produced closely related works on contracts and sales that exercised great influence pedagogically and jurisprudentially. Pedagogically, the casebooks on contracts and sales introduced case method teaching into American legal education. In jurisprudential terms, these works placed Langdell with Frederick Pollock and William R. Anson in England and Oliver W. Holmes, Jr., in the United States, as the leading theorists of contract during its “golden age” of “overwhelming predominance” in Anglo-American law.

One sunny summer Sunday, on August 17, 1873, an Irish-born day laborer named Fitzsimmons, “of very limited circumstances,” living in a shack in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, sent his twelve-year-old son, Jerry, to fetch the family's cow. The animal had been left on an “open common” grazing area near the local sheds and yards of the Kansas Central Railroad. Fitzsimmons had warned his son to stay away from the railroad company's trains, but he had never mentioned, and may never have known of, a curious device that stood near the commons. For the past three years, a large iron turntable had served to reverse the direction of the company's locomotives (see figure 1). The Fitzsimmons family cow had wandered to a spot close to this turntable, and Jerry Fitzsimmons climbed onto this device as two or three other, older children began to turn it around. The Fitzsimmons boy sat on the end of the table with his legs hanging over its rails. Before he realized what was happening, the rails of the turntable came into alignment with those of the adjacent track, and his left leg was caught between the two rails and badly mangled, requiring its amputation. His father sued the company for negligence, and a jury awarded him three thousand dollars and court costs; the company appealed the decision, and the Kansas Supreme Court ordered a new trial, but in 1879 it upheld that second jury's award and finding of the company's liability. The high court cited decisions of the United States Supreme Court and of the Minnesota Supreme Court in its opinion.

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.

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.

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 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.

Sixteen-year-old Acre resident Mustafa Naif, suspected of having sex with another man, stated before the police investigator on June 30, 1943, “I know Mustafa Zaharan and is my friend and mate, I used to love him and he used to love me, and that this man had a sexual intercourse with me twice with my consent and free will, because he loves me and I love him.”1 By the time of his trial, approximately a month later, Mustafa Naif must have realized this was the “wrong” story to tell. He recanted his statement and denied knowing Mustafa Zaharan or having anything to do with him. His denial might have been another manifestation of love, as an admission of guilt would have led to his friend's conviction on a sex offense. For his lover's sake, then, Mustafa Naif might have renounced his original romantic version. Indeed, his friend was acquitted as a result of the contradictory statements; however, Mustafa Naif was charged with perjury and was convicted after pleading guilty.

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.