Intellection and Indiscipline

A discipline will usually become the object of study and its relationship to other disciplines a moment of concern when its borders are precarious and its definition in dispute. Law, ‘the oldest social science’, is arguably both prior to discipline — it emerges initially and most forcefully as a practice — and without discipline, its object being potentially all human behaviour. If law is necessarily between and among disciplines, both prone to moonlighting and everywhere homeless, it will also always be in some mode of scholarly crisis. Certain conclusions follow. Law is paradoxically dependent upon other disciplines for its access to the domains that it regulates. The greater its epistemic dependency, however, the slighter its political acknowledgment of that subordination. Which allows a positive thesis: the epistemic drift of law can carry the discipline to a frank acknowledgment of the value of indiscipline both to novelty and intellection

A medieval book and early-modern law: Bracton's authority and application in the common law c. 1550–1640

This article considers the place of the thirteenth-century book known as Bracton in the early-modern common law. The article examines both the uses made of Bracton and the evidence to be found in the surviving copies of the first printed edition. It addresses the impediments to the use of Bracton, the printing of the first edition, the text's readership and place in the early-modern common-law canon and material in Bracton which seems to have been of particular interest. Bracton was a recognised source for criminal law and there is some evidence of impact on the law of evidence, servitudes and a little for contract law. An examination of the law of treason shows that Bracton had an important role in changing the concept of treason from a crime against the monarch to something like the classical crimen laesae maiestatis - closer to a crime against the State

Legal knowledge engineering: Computing, logic and law

The general problem approached in this thesis is that of building computer based legal advisory programs (otherwise known as expert systems or Intelligent Knowledge Based Systems). Such computer systems should be able to provide an individual with advice about either the general legal area being investigated, or advice about how the individual should proceed in a given case. In part the thesis describes a program (the ELl program) which attempts to confront some of the problems inherent in the building of these systems. The ELl system is seen as an experimental program (currently handling welfare rights legislation) and development vehicle. It is not presented as a final commercially implementable program. We present a detailed criticism of the type of legal knowledge contained within the system. The second, though in part intertwined, major subject of the thesis describes the jurisprudential aspects of the attempt to model the law by logic, a conjunction which is seen to be at the heart of the computer/law problem. We suggest that the conjunction offers very little to those who are interested in the real application of the real law, and that this is most forcefully seen when a working computer system models that conjunction. Our conclusion is that neither logic nor rule-based methods are sufficient for handling legal knowledge. The novelty and import of this thesis is not simply that it presents a negative conclusion; rather that it offers a sound theoretical and pragmatic framework for understanding why these methods are insufficient - the limits to the field are, in fact, defined

The massacre of St. Bartholomew’s (24-27 August 1572) and the sack of Antwerp (4-7 November 1576): print and political responses in Elizabethan England

The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572) and the Sack of Antwerp (1576), two of the most notorious massacres of the 1570s, were of international consequence in a confessionally-divided Europe. This thesis offers a comparative analysis of the Elizabethan political and print responses to both atrocities, evaluating to what extent and in what ways each shaped the increasingly Protestant political character of the period. It compares strands of argument aired by Elizabethan councillors, courtiers, military commanders and clerics, in contrast with the content of contemporary news pamphlets, to establish whether there was any overlap between the parameters of political debate and topical print. It investigates whether, and on what occasions, statesmen or figures associated with the court may have sought to confessionalise public opinion via the production of printed news. Analysing often overlooked printed sources, the thesis focuses on aspects of content and contexts of production. It considers the kinds of comment expressed on the massacres per se and in relation to: the nature of the wars in France and the Low Countries; Elizabeth’s foreign and domestic agendas; the compound significance of her gender, the unresolved succession and her realm's vulnerability to foreign invasion; and providential discourses concerning God’s favour and protection. These lines of enquiry throw up some insights into changing English attitudes towards the Catholic crowns of France and Spain and key figures abroad. Finally, the thesis reaches some broader conclusions regarding the development of an increasingly militant Anglo-Protestant nationalism in the mid-Elizabethan period

Equity as a question of decorum and manners: conscience as vision

This paper argues for a re-evaluation of the manner in which conscience is used by equity lawyers. Debates by early modern humanists sought an alignment between conscience and public office. Indeed, conscience had very little to do with the private morals or private compunction of the Chancellor. Rather, conscience was implicated at the level of duty, honestas and dignity. It required stricter attention to the metaphysics of public official conduct. In these terms, conscience was a humanist re-evaluation of a classical idea that gave heavier emphasis to the poesis of vision

Logic and the Common Law Trial

In this article, the author explores some of the inconsistencies between logic and the practice of law. The article draws together numerous anecdotes and examples of situations in which common sense was rejected or ignored in the name of legal procedure. The article focuses on various argument styles employed by lawyers