How does law come to be stated as substantive rules and then how does itchange? In this collection of discussions from the James S. Carpentier Lecturesin legal ... » 

How does law come to be stated as substantive rules and then how does itchange? In this collection of discussions from the James S. Carpentier Lecturesin legal history and criticism one of Britains most acclaimed legalhistorians S. F. C. Milsom focuses on the development of English common law the intellectually coherent system of substantive rules that courts bring tobear on the particular facts of individual cases from which American law wasto grow. Milsom discusses the differences between the development of land lawand that of other kinds of law and in the latter case how procedural changesallowed substantive rules first to be stated and then to be circumvented. Heexamines the invisibility of early legal change and how adjustment toconditions was hidden behind such things as the changing meaning of words.Milsom points out that legal history may be more prone than other kinds ofhistory to serious anachronism. Nobody ever states his assumptions and a legalwriter addressing his contemporaries never provided a glossary to warn futurehistorians against attributing their own meanings to his words and thereforetheir own assumptions to his world. Formal continuity has enabled nineteenthcentury assumptions to be carried back in some respects as far back as thetwelfth century. This book brings together Milsoms efforts to understand theuncomfortable changes that lie beneath that comforting formal surface. Thosechanges were too large to have been intended by anyone at the time and too slowto be perceived by historians working within the short periods now imposed byhistorical convention. The law was made not by great men making great decisionsbut by mansized men unconcerned with the future and thinking only about theirown immediate everyday difficulties. King Henry II for example did not intendthe changes attributed to him in either land law or criminal law the draftsmanof De Donis did not mean to create the entail nobody ever dreamed up a fictionwith intent to change the law. «