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9781316637579


Parution : 06/2018
Editeur : Cambridge University Press
ISBN : 978-1-3166-3757-9
Site de l'éditeur

The Reinvention of Magna Carta 1216–1616

John Baker

Présentation de l'éditeur

This new account of the influence of Magna Carta on the development of English public law is based largely on unpublished manuscripts. The story was discontinuous. Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries the charter was practically a spent force. Late-medieval law lectures gave no hint of its later importance, and even in the 1550s a commentary on Magna Carta by William Fleetwood was still cast in the late-medieval mould. Constitutional issues rarely surfaced in the courts. But a new impetus was given to chapter 29 in 1581 by the 'Puritan' barrister Robert Snagge, and by the speeches and tracts of his colleagues, and by 1587 it was being exploited by lawyers in a variety of contexts. Edward Coke seized on the new learning at once. He made extensive claims for chapter 29 while at the bar, linking it with habeas corpus, and then as a judge (1606–16) he deployed it with effect in challenging encroachments on the common law. The book ends in 1616 with the lectures of Francis Ashley, summarising the new learning, and (a few weeks later) Coke's dismissal for defending too vigorously the liberty of the subject under the common law.

  • Provides a new history of early modern constitutional law, concentrating on the protection of personal liberties through recourse to Magna Carta

  • Shows how constitutional developments occurred in practice, looking at real cases and highlighting the importance of unpublished legal texts

  • Includes new biographical and bibliographical material, which will be of interest to historians both of historical thought and of legal literature

Cambridge Studies in English Legal History , 620 pages.  £ 32.99