English Legal History

Fights over history are at the heart of most important constitutional disputes in America. The Supreme Court's current embrace of originalism is only the most recent example of how lawyers and judges try to use history to establish authority for their positions. Jack M. Balkin argues that fights over constitutional interpretation are often fights over collective memory. Balkin shows how lawyers and judges channel history through standard forms of legal argument that shape how they use history and even what they see in history.

Nothing had prepared her for the hostility of a city gripped by prejudice . . . With her first trial a dramatic success, Kit Shannon steps out from the protective and guiding hand of her mentor and begins her own law practice. When she is drawn to the defense of a man accused of a crime that crosses racial lines, Kit is unprepared for the prejudice and hatred that is hurled in her direction. A loyal supporter of the law, Kit struggles with the secret role of the very officers who claim to represent justice. When a new suitor enters her life, Kit finds her heart longing to embrace the love ...

Law has played a central role in American history. From colonial times to the present, law has not just reflected the changing society in which legal decisions have been made - it has played a powerful role in shaping that society, though not always in positive ways. Eminent legal scholar G. Edward White offers a compact overview that sheds light on the impact of law on a number of key social issues.

For many years, Britain tried to impose its own laws on the peoples it conquered, and English common law usually followed the Union Jack. But the common law became less common after Britain emerged from the Seven Years' War as the world's most powerful empire. At that point, imperial policymakers adopted a strategy of legal pluralism: some colonies remained under English law, while others retained much of their previous legal regimes.

What do the thoughts of a ravenous tiger have to do with the evolution of America's legal system? How do the works of Jane Austen and Ludwig van Beethoven relate to corporal punishment? In The Law of the Land, Charles Rembar examines these and many other topics, illustrating the surprisingly entertaining history of US law.

New Orleans - 1855 New Orleans beckoned to her, a place that held no memories, but yet it had a siren's call. She'd been taken far away, to Oregon, as a infant. Here she was, after a life of poverty, cruelty and hardship, back to where she'd been born, hoping that her kin would take her in. The grand house stood before her, in stark contrast to everything she'd ever experienced. Her past made her run away, from the tragic memories left on that lonely mountain. Why had her mother never told her about her opulent childhood? Her mother's few letters had led her to this place. Could she trust ...

"Hamilton's novel centers on a fascinating, little-known figure from history - Elisabeth Samson emerges as intriguing and distinctive. An intriguing fictionalization of circumstances with an ample romantic angle. Hamilton's prose style is warm, even, and voice-driven." - The BookLife Prize In the 18th century Dutch plantation colony of Suriname, where wealth is measured by the number of slaves one owns, the educated Free Negress Elisabeth Samson, owner of several flourishing coffee plantations, desires the one thing her wealth cannot buy: a legal marriage with her consort, a White colonial ...

This is the first volume of distinguished historian Dumas Malone's Pulitzer Prize-winning six-volume work on the life and times of Thomas Jefferson. Based on a myriad of sources, it covers Jefferson's ancestry, youth, education, and legal career; his marriage and the building of Monticello; the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the Notes on Virginia; his rich, fruitful legislative career; his highly controversial governorship; and his early services to the development of the West.

Even though he escaped the gas chambers, he was never truly free. In occupied Poland, there are whispers of a terrifying darkness in the northern forests. When a young Lodzi Ashstein learns the horrifying truth about the Treblinka extermination camp, he is kidnapped and tormented by a senior SS officer, Janich Heiss. After a prisoner uprising, Heiss disappears into the woods and Lodzi is left with nothing but his nightmares and the eternal scars of a survivor. More than 70 years later, Heiss has been mysteriously murdered, and Lodzi is accused of a crime of revenge. When attorney Thaddeus ...

Grim, intelligent, and quietly explosive. "Set against the political tensions of 1960s Washington, Charns’s latest novel traces the cost of truth in a system engineered to suppress it. 1966, Washington. When George Smith, a jailed Black teenager, claims he holds a secret capable of destroying a Supreme Court justice, his court-appointed lawyer, Mitch Pilsudski, is drawn into a case that exposes the limits of the law itself. As Mitch searches for the truth, he discovers that justice is designed less to protect the vulnerable than to contain risk. With the FBI quietly tightening its grip on...

A Barnes & Noble Best History Book of 2025 Four men in a lifeboat. Two weeks without food. One impossible choice that would reshape the boundaries between survival and murder. “A perfect enunciation of the classic philosophical conundrum: can you sacrifice one innocent life to save many?"...

BRITISH LEGAL HISTORY - The Fielding Brothers & Bow Street Runners - the early days and beginnings of policing in England with the infamous Fielding Brothers, the early Bow Street Runners, Robert Peel, Jerome Caminada, and other brutal crime fighters, covering highway robberies, gruesome murders, street crime and a host of dangerous attacks on society. A fascinating slice of legal history and nostalgia, featuring Victorian & Edwardian Manchester crime.

Will abortion be legal? Should people of the same sex be allowed to marry? May colleges prefer black applicants over white ones? These are among the most bitterly contested issues in the United States today. We answer these questions, and many more, by presenting them to nine lawyers—the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. No other nation commits so many important questions to its highest court. Stuart Banner’s The Most Powerful Court in the World is an authoritative history of the United States Supreme Court from the Founding era to the present.

Ruby’s Prosecutor thrusts you inside the courtroom no camera ever captured—and into the conscience of the man who tried the most infamous killer on live television. Dallas, March 1964. Assistant District Attorney Jim Bowie stands a heartbeat from the nation’s rawest wound, determined to prove that nightclub owner Jack Ruby murdered Lee Harvey Oswald with cold intent. Every fact you remember from the headlines is here—captured shells, time-stamped Western Union slip, KRLD film flashing its muzzle-bloom frame by frame. So are the moments the public never saw: late-night strategy ...

Natural Law and Human Order: Exploring the Enduring Philosophy of Justice, Morality, and Society takes readers on a journey through one of the most influential ideas in human history. From the ancient Greeks and Romans to Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, and modern legal theorists, natural law has shaped how we think about justice, morality, rights, and the role of government. This book unpacks the evolution of natural law across centuries, showing how it informed revolutions, legal systems, and human rights frameworks that continue to guide our world today. Accessible yet deeply researched, ...

“The Bible and the Constitution: Exploring the Judeo-Christian Roots of American Law.” Discover the Deep Connection Between Faith and Law in the Birth of the United States! Product Description In a divisive world where faith and politics often clash, understanding the interwoven relationship between Christianity and American law can help bridge the gap. “The Bible and the Constitution” is a comprehensive 9,000-word guide that meticulously explores the Judeo-Christian influences that have shaped American legal and political systems. What This eBook Offers: Chapter 1: Understanding ...

This is the first book to trace the fascinating parallel history of law and science from antiquity to modern times, showing how the two disciplines have always influenced each other - until recently. In the past few years, the scientific paradigm has shifted dramatically, from seeing the natural world as a kind of cosmic machine to understanding it as a network of fluidly interacting communities. But law is stuck in a mechanistic, 17th-century view that the world is made up of discrete individual parts.

He was written off. Impeached twice. Indicted multiple times. Defeated in 2020. Yet, on November 5, 2024, Donald J. Trump achieved the unthinkable – a political comeback of historic proportions, reclaiming the White House against staggering odds. Donald Trump the comeback of the 47th President is the definitive account of one of the most extraordinary journeys in American political history. Following his tumultuous exit from office and facing an unprecedented barrage of legal challenges and establishment opposition, Trump refused to fade away. This book chronicles the meticulous, often ...

Shortlisted for Columbia Journalism School’s J. Anthony Lukas Award A Publishers Lunch NonFiction Buzz Book| Named Most Anticipated by Los Angeles Times A leading authority on sheriffs investigates the impunity with which they police their communities, alongside the troubling role they play in...

This "crucial" (The Advocate) and "compelling" (BuzzFeed) history of a prison, and the queer women and trans people held there, is a window into the policing of queerness and radical politics in the twentieth century. The Women’s House of Detention, a landmark that ushered in the modern era of...