A Sourcebook of English Law

Out of Print

The present book is designed to supply a case book for the student of legal history, in the form of a collection of authentic materials covering all the principal fields of law.

This book indicates the source of ideas and doctrines and shows how they were forged in the fire of legal argument. The reader will be gratified to find that his own doubts and difficulties were no strangers to the court whose task it was to find solutions to difficult problems, and he may the better appreciate and remember those solutions and the good reasons which commended them.

The original records and the professional reports of each case have been provided because, as has been so often recognised, each has much to give the other.

In assembling the materials the author has been guided by three principles:-

• (1) He has used materials which illustrate substantive and adjective law at the same time, which at once clarify some fundamental and often contro¬versial historical development while showing how the machinery of justice operated.
• (2) He has taken into account the existence of other collections of specialised sources.
• (3) He has generally followed the order and subject-matter of Potter's Historical Introduction. to English Law to which this book may be regarded as a companion volume.