An Introduction to English Legal History

by John Hamilton Baker

This book traces, in outline, the development of the principal features of English legal institutions and doctrines from Anglo-Saxon times to the present. The Introduction has become a standard work on the subject. It has now been updated and improved in consequence of the rapid pace of
research in legal history over recent years, which has made this new edition a necessity.

Genres: History, Law, British Literature, Nonfiction

656 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1990

About the author

Sir John Hamilton Baker is a Professor on the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. He has also been a Barrister (Inner Temple and Gray's Inn) and an Honorary Bencher (Inner Temple).

He writes on English legal history, especially in the early-modern period: history of the legal profession and the inns of court and manuscript law reports and readings.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is going to appeal to a narrow audience. Really narrow. Lawyer nerds. Not just any lawyer, even though all lawyers are nerds, but only the nerdiest of that lot. Which I’m a part of… so I really liked it. If you are fascinated on how contractual consideration became so important, the advent of legal reporting or the source of fee simple ownership rights, this is your book.

I was a little disappointed by the short shrift Baker gives criminal law. But he has an interesting explanation:

The criminal law is not the most satisfying subject for historical study. In operation it has fluctuated from almost ineffectual leniency to brutal severity. Too many cases are recorded where men lost their lives merely because they could not read a piece of scripture or where guilty felons escaped their deserts because of faulty grammar in their indictments or because they happened to possess, or to have bought special privileges. The barbarities of pressing and burning to death , and of the punishment meted out to traitors, do not make pleasant reading. In the substantive law of crimes the jurist will find little to parallel the reasoning processes which shaped the private law… Reason and jurisprudence, if any there were, remained irretrievably obscured behind the inscrutable verdicts of juries. Pg. 273.

Taking criminal law aside, that’s what Baker excels at in this book: showing reasoning. By revealing the history of legal principles, what now seems silly and outdated regains a certain elegance. And for those of us in common-law countries, we forget sometimes the importance of history in our practice. Though the tides are shifting to increase codification and deference to legislative enactment, the history of English law is one of thoughtful evolution and flexibility. It is easy to forget that reason, as messy and inequitable it can sometimes be, and not simply rules, is the heart of our legal history.

[Anna Pervukhin Sammons · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this book before, but I did not retain nearly as much as I'd hoped.

[A.A. Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Accessible and relatively succint, Professor Baker touched all the important points without making the book too wieldy