Books in the Oxford Studies in Modern Legal History series

This book looks at the martial law suppression of the Jamaica uprising of 1865, and the subsequent debate and litigation. It addresses questions of legality, and the integrity of political ideals arising from the most important conflict over martial law and the rule of law in the history of England in the nineteenth century.

The lawyer-dominated adversary system of criminal trial, which now typifies practice in Anglo-American legal systems, developed in England in the eighteenth century. Using hitherto unexplored sources from London's Old Bailey Court, Professor Langbein shows how and why lawyers were able to capture the trial, and he supplies a path-breaking account of the formation of the law of criminal evidence.

Describes how the courts created rights for land owners and users competing to appropriate water for factories, town supply, drainage, and transport. This book covers the period from early times to the late 19th century, illustrating the changing common law of property and tort, and throwing light on the growth of the economy.

The case of The Mayor, Alderman and Burgesses of the Borough of Bradford v Pickles established that it is not unlawful for a property owner to exercise his or her property rights maliciously and to the detriment of others, or the public interest. This book explores why the common law, in contrast to civil law systems, developed this way.

This book analyzes the British Government's radical change in policy during the late 1950s on the use of bills of rights in colonial territories nearing independence. It explores the political dimensions of securing the protection of human rights at the point of gaining independence, and the peaceful transfer of power through constitutional means.

This book explores ideals of femininity during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by charting responses to broken engagements. Interweaving a history of the legal remedies available for a broken promise of marriage with literary accounts from Dickens to Wodehouse, the book offers a major insight into modern attitudes to female identity.

This book is concerned with the evolution of the modern criminal trial. It discusses the dynamics of the transformation that occurred during the first half of the nineteenth century and, in particular, the role of the Prisoners' Counsel Act 1836. This is the first scholarly work to analyse the practice of advocacy.

Provides a historical account of one of England's jurists, drawing upon several sources, and examines Pollock's career, jurisprudence, philosophy of the common law, treatise writing, and editorial initiatives. This book shows that Pollock's contribution to the development of English law and juristic inquiry is both complex and crucial.

Through focusing on the political history of New Zealand during its imperial settlement, this book offers a fresh assessment of the history of indigenous property rights. It shows how native title became a constitutional frame within which political authority was formed and contested at the heart of Empire and the colonial peripheries.