T homas J. M c S weeney . Priests of the Law

With this carefully researched and well-written book, Priests of the Law: Roman Law and the Making of the Common Law’s First Professionals, Thomas McSweeney brings new ideas to a classic battlefield in the history of medieval English law. Stubbs and Maitland famously debated the extent to which the common law system created in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was dependent on Roman and canon law for its content. That debate has reached a standstill with the recognition that it is difficult to identify concrete examples where English law simply took over ideas, but that early expressions of that law are couched in language unmistakably reminiscent of European law. McSweeney invigorates the debate by posing new questions, not about legal content but about what early practitioners of English common law thought about the relationship between European and English law. The book focuses on the large treatise known as...

Ancient history · Battlefield · Common law · Political science · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies