Regulation, Liberty and the Structure: A Transient Historical past of the Widespread Regulation

All through English historical past the rule of legislation and the preservation of liberty have been inseparable, and each are intrinsic to England’s structure. This accessible and entertaining historical past traces the expansion of the legislation from its beginnings in Anglo-Saxon instances to the current day. It reveals how the legislation developed from a method of guaranteeing order and limiting feuds to turn out to be a supremely refined dispenser of justice and the first guardian of civil liberties.This improvement owed a lot to the English kings and their judiciary, who, within the twelfth century, solid a unified system of legislation – predating that of every other European nation – from nearly wholly Anglo-Saxon components. But by theseventeenth century this royal offspring – Oedipus Lex it could possibly be known as – was able to regicide. Since then the legislation has had a considerably fractious relationship with that establishment upon which the regal mantle of supreme energy descended, Parliament.

This ebook tells the story of the frequent legislation not merely by describing main developments however by concentrating on distinguished personalities and decisive circumstances referring to the structure, felony jurisprudence, and civil liberties. It investigates the good constitutional conflicts, the rise of advocacy, and curious and essential circumstances referring to slavery, madness, obscenity, cannibalism, the dying penalty, and miscarriages of justice. The ebook concludes by inspecting the extension of the legislation into the prosecution of struggle criminals and safety of common human rights and the threats posed by over-reaction to nationwide emergencies and terrorism. Devoid ofjargon and replete with good tales,
Regulation, Liberty and the Structure represents a brand new method to the telling of authorized historical past and will probably be of curiosity to anybody wishing to know extra in regards to the frequent legislation – the spinal cordof the English physique politic.

Harry Potter is a former fellow of Selwyn Faculty, Cambridge and a practising barrister specialising in felony defence. He has authored books on the dying penalty and Scottish historical past andwrote and offered an award-winning collection on the historical past of the frequent legislation for the BBC.