History of the Common Law - 9780735562905

This is a textbook intended for use in an introductory course in Anglo-American legal history. Authors Langbein (law and legal history, Yale Law School), Lerner (law, George Washington U. Law School), and Smith (co-director, Illinois Legal History Program, U. of Illinois College of Law) explore the origins and development of the main legal institutions of Anglo-American law and discuss their distinctions from the European legal systems. The two major themes are the emergence and incessant transformation of the jury system, including judge/jury relations, across eight centuries of civil and criminal justice and the law-equity division from the emergence of the Court of Chancery in the 14th century down through the Judicature Acts of the 1870s and equity's "conquest" of common law in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure of 1938. Other major themes include the development of the legal profession, the literature of the law, and legal education. Also discussed are the history of pretrial investigation, policing, trial, sanctions, and sentencing; the movement toward nonjury and nontrial resolution of cases in criminal and civil procedure; and such distinctly American developments as the elective bench, the student-edited law review, and the pervasive influence of race relations on the law of criminal procedure. Alongside the textual narrative, the authors also include historical documents and extracts from the historical literature in order to provide students with a look at some of the foundational documents of Anglo-American law and examples of the sorts of sources from which legal historians work. Some 200 images illustrate the work. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)