Full Description
This book offers a collection of essays by arguably the most popular legal historian writing today. Most of the essays have not been previously published, and those which have appeared previously have been re-written to make the collection read more coherently. The collection is centred upon the theme of the leading case - a case where the judgment has established a long-lasting or far reaching precedent in common law, and the author has selected a number of these cases in order to illustrate how the precedents established by the cases have little or nothing to do with the trials themselves.
Contents
Introduction ; The Study of Cases ; Politics and Law in Elizabethan England: Shelley's Case ; The Timeless Principles of Common Law: Keeble V. Hickeringill (1707) ; Legal Science and Legal Absurdity: Jee v. Audley ; The Beauty of Obscurity Raffles v. Wickelhaus and Busch ; Victorian Judges and the Problems of Social Cost: Tipping v. St Helen's Smelting Company (1865) ; Bursting Reservoirs and Victorian Tort Law: Rylands and Horrocks v. Fletcher (1868) ; The Ideal of the Rule of Law: Regina v. Keyn (1876) ; Quackery and Contract Law: Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Company (1893)
