Category Archives: Legal History
Sagi Peari, ‘Academics and Legal Change: Birks, Savigny and the Law of Unjust Enrichment’
ABSTRACT This chapter focuses on the legal academics who evidently played a decisive role in the creation of the two formulas: Professors Friedrich Carl von Savigny in Germany and Peter Birks in the UK. It places the contribution of these academics in the broader context of the role of legal academics in society and their […]
Zahn and Kullmann, ‘Discovering the Contributions of Academic Wives to the Development of Labour Law: Liesel Kahn-Freund’
ABSTRACT This article’s starting point is a strand of historical and sociological studies literature on ‘academic wives’ which reveals the social and, above all, unpaid labour that facilitated an academic career up until the mid-twentieth century. The article then draws on primary and secondary sources in order to trace the life of Otto Kahn-Freund’s wife, […]
De ruysscher, Dave, Grotius and Limited Liability
ABSTRACT Grotius’s ideas on proportionate and limited liability, as mentioned in the Inleidinge and De iure belli ac pacis, were novel in comparison to the civilian doctrine of his time. Grotius drew from sources of local law and statutes regarding maritime law but was nonetheless original in his interpretations. Grotius proposed to consider the liability […]
Schleicher and Hills, ‘How the Gentry Won: Property Law’s Embrace of Stasis’
ABSTRACT Until the 1970s, American property law differed sharply from its English antecedents. English law was dominated by a land-owning gentry class who favored stability of ownership and dynastic control of landed estates using perpetuities and trusts, generous compensation for condemnees, and irregular lot lines based on local custom that impeded land’s alienability. After World […]
Lupoi and Graziadei, ‘The Historical Context of Saunders v Vautier’
ABSTRACT Anyone approaching the study of the English law of trusts comes across ‘the rule in Saunders v Vautier’, named after the 1841 decision of the Court of Chancery in which it is currently assumed that it was laid down. In its narrowest form, the rule provides that the beneficiary of a trust of shares […]
Call for Papers: ‘Celebrating 100 Years of the 1925 Property Legislation’ (Selwyn College Cambridge, 8-9 September 2025)
In the period 1922 to 1925, a series of groundbreaking legislative enactments reframed English property law in terms favourable to alienation and a market in land, providing the basis on which much of the relevant modern law rests. The Law of Property Act, Trustee Act, Settled Land Act, Administration of Estates Act, Land Registration Act, […]
Duncan Wallace, ‘The Reality of Shareholder Ownership: For-profit Corporations as Slaves’
ABSTRACT What is the relationship between shareholders and the corporation? The present scholarly consensus is that, whatever the relationship is, it is not one of owner and owned. This article contests that consensus. It argues that corporations are owned by their shareholders and, further, that corporations so-owned are slaves. In support of this contention, the […]
Chris Bevan, ‘100 years of actual occupation as an overriding interest in English and Welsh land law: challenging the rationale and making the radical case for abolition’
ABSTRACT It is 100 years since the rights of those in ‘actual occupation’ joined the statute book as interests capable of binding transferees of land despite not appearing on the register. This paper seizes the opportunity to investigate and excavate the overlooked and under-examined historical origins of the actual occupation concept and to revisit the […]
Daniel Newman, ‘Access to justice policy: legal aid in post-war UK general election manifestos’
ABSTRACT This paper explores access to justice policy in England and Wales. This is achieved through a legal history approach analysing the treatment of, an important element of such policy, legal aid in UK general election manifestos. The paper covers the period from 1945, with the creation of the welfare state and the introduction of […]
Blake Watson, ‘Presidents and Property Law’
ABSTRACT This article matches five presidents with five topics of property law: (1) Thomas Jefferson and the fee tail, (2) James Polk and the rule against perpetuities, (3) Abraham Lincoln and deed covenants, (4) Benjamin Harrison and the Takings Clause, and (5) Donald Trump and liquidated damages. In each instance, these presidents – as legislator, […]