Foreword

Preprint of the Foreword in W. Wesley Pue, Lawyers' Empire. Legal Professions and Cultural Authority, 1780-1950. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016) by David Sugarman, F.R.Hist.S. (Professor Emeritus of Law, Lancaster University Law School, UK and Senior Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies). David Sugarman describes the honour and pleasure in being invited to contribute a foreword to a notable collection of essays demonstrating the outstanding scholarship of W. Wesley Pue, highlighting his considerable stature as an academic lawyer and his substantial and enduring contributions to the study and development of law-and-society style legal history

Becoming Peter Fitzpatrick (1941-2020)

Peter Fitzpatrick (1941-2020) was a much-loved and inspirational scholar, friend and mentor. He contributed significantly to the intellectual, organisational, and cultural life of postcolonial legal studies, critical legal studies and law and the humanities – fields he helped to consolidate. This paper examines the reciprocal interplay between Peter’s life and work, between significant people, events, ideas and values, and the ways he made and re-made himself. It assesses and clarifies his key ideas and their intersection with his ethics and lived experiences. It illuminates his struggle, especially from the 1990’s onwards, to place ethics centre-stage in both life and law. Drawing on archival and secondary research, including interviews with his family, former colleagues and students, this contribution to legal life writing adds to what we already knew about his personal and professional biography. It is hoped that the paper will encourage those who are less familiar with Peter’s work, or who find his writing daunting, to tackle it anew and appreciate its significance

Contribution to Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies:Ask the Author

In this Contribution to Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies blog, Ask the Author, Professor Linda Mulcahy interviews Lancaster University’s David Sugarman re.: • What does Socio-Legal Studies (SLS) do well and what more could it do? • What are the best Socio-Legal publications you have read recently and why? • What research are you doing or planning? • Advice for aspiring Socio-Legal scholars See, further: https://frontiers.csls.ox.ac.uk/ask-the-author-6/ Published by the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford

William Twining:The Man Who Radicalized the Middle Ground

A critical assessment of William Twining's memoir, Jurist in Context (2019) and the "Law in Context" movement

Law, Law-Consciousness and Lawyers as Constitutive of Early Modern England:Christopher W. Brooks’s Singular Journey

During the last half-century, Christopher W. Brooks (1948–2014) established himself as the foremost historian of law in early modern English society. Through his scholarship, his teaching, and the generations of students he advised and supervised, and as a friend and colleague, Brooks exercised, from the early 1990s onwards, an increasingly significant influence on writing about early modern English history. He was the leading exponent of a history of earlymodern England that transcended the boundaries of social, political and legal history, and which placed law and lawyers centre stage. In doing so, he challenged major premises of the dominant vision of law-in-history in writing about English history. This chapter brings a critical, if friendly, eye to Brooks’s work, focusing on how Brooks beat his own path through the methodological thickets to create a distinctive vision of law in history, and on the strengths and weaknesses of that vision

Promoting Dialogue Between History and Socio-legal Studies:The Contribution of Christopher W. Brooks and the ‘Legal Turn’ in Early Modern English History

Although history, legal history, and socio-legal studies significantly overlap in concerns, methods, values and history, and a common tradition, these commonalities are frequently overlooked. In seeking to promote greater dialogue between these disciplines, this article examines their complex interaction, arguing that the work of socio-legal scholars, historians, and legal historians would benefit from greater cross-fertilization. It focuses on the ‘legal turn’ in recent history writing on early modern England, particularly Christopher W. Brooks’s ground-breaking analysis of the nature and extent of legal consciousness throughout society, and the central role of law and legal institutions in the constitution of society. It then outlines some areas of common interest and, having highlighted the increasing convergence between history, legal history, and socio-legal studies, concludes that greater dialogue would enhance our understanding of the role of law in society, and of society, and would be of more than mere historical interest

Robert W. Gordon in conversation with David Sugarman

The discussion that follows arises out of more than six hours of recorded conversations in which Bob Gordon talks about his life and work. It delineates the importance of Bob’s family background and early life; the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and the 1960’s; his undergraduate studies at Harvard; his experience of learning law at Harvard Law School; the teachers that most inspired him; his early years as a law professor at Buffalo and Wisconsin; his multifarious research and writing projects, many unfinished or unpublished; and some of the key ideas, ideals, individuals and movements that shaped his thinking, writing and professional development including Barrington Moore Jr., Stanley Hoffmann, Mark de Wolfe Howe, John P. Dawson, Stewart Macaulay, Willard Hurst, E.P. Thompson and the Warwick School of Social History, Morton J. Horwitz, Duncan Kennedy, Lawrence M. Friedman, F.W. Maitland, American Legal Realism and Critical Legal Studies. It also illuminates a range of topics including how he came to write his most cited publication, “Critical Legal Histories”, and its intended goals; his response to its success and to subsequent criticisms, including the efficacy or otherwise of his influential notion of “law as constitutive of consciuousness”; how his vocal and highly visible support for Critical Legal Studies affected him; his copious writings on the legal profession, and their place within the literature on lawyers and society; the presentist dimensions in his work and his response to the issue of presentism; the use of history for either conservative or progressive causes; his preference for essay writing; and his writing style and polemical goals. His reflections on teaching and writing brings the conversation to a close

“Robert W. Gordon in Conversation with David Sugarman”

The discussion that follows arises out of more than six hours of recorded conversations in which Bob Gordon talks about his life and work. It delineates the importance of Bob’s family background and early life; the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and the 1960’s; his undergraduate studies at Harvard; his experience of learning law at Harvard Law School; the teachers that most inspired him; his early years as a law professor at Buffalo and Wisconsin; his multifarious research and writing projects, many unfinished or unpublished; and some of the key ideas, ideals, individuals and movements that shaped his thinking, writing and professional development including Barrington Moore Jr., Stanley Hoffmann, Mark de Wolfe Howe, John P. Dawson, Stewart Macaulay, Willard Hurst, E.P. Thompson and the Warwick School of Social History, Morton J. Horwitz, Duncan Kennedy, Lawrence M. Friedman, F.W. Maitland, American Legal Realism and Critical Legal Studies. It also illuminates a range of topics including how he came to write his most cited publication, “Critical Legal Histories”, and its intended goals; his response to its success and to subsequent criticisms, including the efficacy or otherwise of his influential notion of “law as constitutive of consciuousness”; how his vocal and highly visible support for Critical Legal Studies affected him; his copious writings on the legal profession, and their place within the literature on lawyers and society; the presentist dimensions in his work and his response to the issue of presentism; the use of history for either conservative or progressive causes; his preference for essay writing; and his writing style and polemical goals. His reflections on teaching and writing brings the conversation to a close. By uniquely illuminating the ideas and biography of one of the most influential and much--loved legal historians of the last fifty years, it provides food for legal scholars wishing to think about the relevance of their role, whilst for historians (legal or otherwise) it offers a window into the theory and method of legal history and the ways in which intellectual currents in legal history were navigated over the second half of the twentieth and early twenty--first centuries

Jurist in Context:William Twining in Conversation with David Sugarman

This discussion derives from extended conversations between William Twining and David Sugarman in which William talks about his latest book, Jurist in Context: A Memoir (JIC). JIC recounts the development of William's thoughts and writings, addressing topics central to his life and research. The dialogue conveys and extends the arguments on a selection of the topics addressed in the book, engaging with issues of particular interest to readers of this journal. Here, William adds a more personal commentary to his formal publications. The conversation facilitates reflection on issues such as law teaching and legal scholarship; the meaning, use, and limitations of ‘law in context’; and the role and character of jurisprudence. It also offers a fascinating window on the development of, and the struggles surrounding, legal education and academic legal thought over the second half of the twentieth century and the early part of the twenty‐first