Common Law, Civil Law, and Colonial Law builds upon the legal historian F.W. Maitland's famous observation that history involves comparison, and that those who ignore every system but their own 'hardly came in sight of the idea of legal history'. The extensive introduction addresses the intellectual challenges posed by comparative approaches to legal history. This is followed by twelve essays derived from papers delivered at the 24th British Legal History Conference. These essays explore patterns in legal norms, processes, and practice across an exceptionally broad chronological and geographical range. Carefully selected to provide a network of inter-connections, they contribute to our better understanding of legal history by combining depth of analysis with historical contextualization. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

‘This fine and diverse collection of essays in comparative legal history successfully coheres around a project of illuminating the causes and nature of legal change. It includes essays which investigate different kinds of legal transplants (texts, ideas, people) and their complexities; break down assumptions about uniformity among and sometimes differences between different legal systems; and explore the work of earlier legal comparativists. The variety of comparative methods and range of subject matter (from mid-thirteenth century France to twentieth century Australia) stimulates, provokes and refines our understanding of what it is to study legal history.’

Janet McLean - Professor of Law, The University of Auckland, New Zealand