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By presenting original research into British legal history, this volume emphasises the historical shaping of the law by ideas of authority. The essays offer perspectives upon the way that ideas of authority underpinned the conceptualisation and interpretation of legal sources over time and became embedded in legal institutions. The contributors explore the basis of the authority of particular sources of law, such as legislation or court judgments, and highlight how this was affected by shifting ideas relating to concepts of sovereignty, religion, political legitimacy, the nature of law, equity and judicial interpretation. The analysis also encompasses ideas of authority which influenced the development of courts, remedies and jurisdictions, international aspects of legal authority when questions of foreign law or jurisdiction arose in British courts, the wider authority of systems of legal ideas such as natural law, the authority of legal treatises, and the relationship between history, law and legal thought.

Considers legal history in a British context, enabling comparisons between key developments in England and Scotland which influenced the history of the English Common Law and of Scots law
Highlights the importance of legal thought in guiding change by placing legal developments in a broader intellectual context
Considers how sources of law are recognised as authoritative, and prompts debate about the extent to which the applicability of law is affected by prevailing ideas of legal authority



Table of Contents

1. The judicial interpretation of legislation in later thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century England Paul Brand
2. The authority of Parliament and the scope of the Statute of Uses 1536 N. G. Jones
3. Developing a prerogative theory for the authority of the Chancery: the French connection Ian Williams
4. Authority and precedent David Ibbetson
5. Legislation and authority in early modern Scotland Andrew Simpson
6. The sources of early Scots consistorial law: reflections on law, authority and jurisdiction during the Scottish Reformation Thomas Green
7. Conciliar authority and equitable jurisdiction in early modern Scotland J. D. Ford
8. Legal authorities as instruments of conflict management: the long endgame of Anglo-Hanseatic relations (1474-1603) Alain Wijffels
9. History and the justification of governmental authority and individual rights in the age of John Locke and Samuel Pufendorf Andreas Thier
10. The commissioners for claims on France and the case of the Baron de Bode, 1815-61 Michael Lobban
11. The authority of law in a bureaucratic framework: the nineteenth-century medicine stamp duty Chantal Stebbings
12. The authority of treatises in English law, 1800-1936 Stephen Waddams
13. Maitland and Austin: legal history and legal thought in the late nineteenth century John Hudson.