David Ibbetson

Law and Custom: Insurance in Sixteenth-Century England

A law of marine insurance began to emerge in England in the second half of the sixteenth century. A struggle between merchants and lawyers for jurisdiction over insurance disputes led first to the creation of a merchants’ court in London, and in 1601 of a hybrid court consisting of lawyers – both common and civil – and merchants. In the late 1570s, under pressure from the privy council, a substantial code of insurance was drawn up by London merchants, but it was never formally adopted. Within twenty years custom and practice had moved away from the letter of the rules which had been written down, and the opportunity to create a developed law of insurance was lost.

Words and Deeds: The Action of Covenant in the Reign of Edward I

The action of covenant before the reign of Edward III is a subject of considerable mystery. By the time that the Year Books come to the fore in the last decade of the thirteenth century, it has become a relatively scarce form of action in the royal courts, and consequently our sources of information are fairly scanty; in addition, by this time, the restrictions which limited the potential of covenant as a general contractual remedy are already firmly in evidence, with the result that the development of these restrictions is not easily visible. There is, though, a considerable amount of additional material in the rolls of the Justices in Eyre in the reign of Edward I, and in some of the multifarious tracts on pleading which proliferated in the later years of the thirteenth century and which have remained for the most part in manuscripts which have not been systematically examined by legal historians.

The Challenges of Comparative Legal History

Abstract The emerging discipline of Comparative Legal History poses many problems for researchers. Primary texts which need to be accessed are not always easily available outside the place where they were produced, and even modern literature can be hard to access. Linguistic nuances have to be grasped, and legal materials have to be interpreted within their own institutional frameworks. The problems are such that the only sensible way forward is collaborative work involving specialists familiar with different legal systems. The present paper explores these challenges and draws some lessons from the project on the comparative history of fault liability in Europe co-directed by the author.

Milsom's Legal History

He did not publish prolifically, though everything he did publish deserves to be read and reread and reread again. At least two major pieces of work remain in typescript. His first substantial work, his fellowship dissertation at Trinity College, was on the history of administrative law. It was awarded the Yorke Prize, though the Faculty Board withheld half of the award until such time as it was prepared for publication. We are still waiting. Some forty years later there were his Ford Lectures in Oxford, which I was privileged to hear as a young academic. A follow-on from his work on the land law of the twelfth century, we are still waiting for their publication too. Their author was without

Fault and absolute liability in pre‐modern contract law

(1997). Fault and absolute liability in pre‐modern contract law. The Journal of Legal History: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 1-31.

Athletics in Ancient Law

In this article David Ibbetson takes a perspective from the ancient world. A number of texts of Roman law are concerned with injuries arising in the course of athletics. They are particularly concerned with blameworthy killings, and constitute some of the most fundamental texts at the historical base of modern negligence liability. Behind them there may lie questions discussed by Greek orators, where they were fitted into a rather different framework from that of the Romans.

English Law and the European Ius Commune 1450–1650

Sometime around the year 1469, Giovanni Andrea, the Papal Librarian at the Vatican, noted that the Middle Ages were at an end and the modern world had just begun. From his standpoint at the intellectual centre of Christendom, a major transition was occurring. All across Europe, Law, too, was in a state of transition at this time. We may take as our starting point an early piece of evidence of these changes which comes from the Southern Netherlands. It comes from the small village of St Peters, a village in which legal disputes were decided by local alderman, men who had had no formal legal training but who were very experienced in applying the customary law of the area. An issue had arisen whether a legal right of way had been gained by long use.

Wrongs and responsibility in Pre-Roman law

The Ancient World knew two different approaches to legal responsibility, one dependent on the extent to which the actor was acting voluntarily, and the other dependent on comparing the actors conduct with some external standard. This duality is found in the legal systems of the Ancient Near East (Sumeria, Babylon, and the Hittite Empire), in Greek law, and in Roman law, where it crystallised approximately into a contrast between criminal law (voluntariness) and civil law (external standard). The legal development of these distinct sets of idea provides the background against which Aristotles analysis of voluntariness can be understood.

A Historical Introduction to the Law of Obligations

1 PROLOGUE: THE PREHISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LAW OF OBLIGATIONS 2 STRUCTURAL FOUNDATIONS 3 UNITY AND FRAGMENTATION OF THE MEDIAEVAL LAW OF CONTRACT 4 TRESPASS, TRESPASS ON THE CASE, AND THE MEDIAEVAL LAW OF TORT 5 THE SUBSTANTIVE LAW OF TORTS 6 THE SUBSTANTIVE LAW OF CONTRACT PART 2 THE TRIUMPH OF TRESPASS ON THE CASE 7 TORT, PROPERTY, AND REPUTATION: THE EXPANSION OF THE ACTION ON THE CASE 8 THE RISE OF THE ACTION OF ASSUMPSIT PART 3 THE MODERN LAW OF TORT AND CONTRACT 9 TRESPASS, CASE, AND THE MORAL BASIS OF LIABILITY 10 THE LAW OF TORTS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE RISE OF THE TORT OF NEGLIGENCE 11 THE LAW OF TORTS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: EXPANSION AND COLLAPSE OF THE TORT OF NEGLIGENCE 12 FOUNDATIONS OF THE MODERN LAW OF CONTRACT 13 THE RISE OF THE WILL THEORY THE WILL THEORY AND THE CLASSICAL MODEL OF CONTRACT 14 THE DECLINE OF THE WILL THEORY: LEGAL REGULATION AND CONTRACTUAL FAIRNESS PART 4 UNJUST ENRICHMENT 15 UNJUST ENRICHMENT 16 LEGAL CHANGE AND LEGAL CONTINUITY

The Common Lawyers of Pre-Reformation England

On Monday, 16 November, 1495, Henry VII, accompanied by his queen and court, attended a banquet at Ely Place to mark the promotion of nine barristers to the rank and dignity of serjeant-at-law. A glittering occasion, the feast was carefully noted by the chroniclers as the social event of the year. But to Francis Bacon, writing over a century later, Henry VTTs presence at Ely Place was more than an event in the court calendar, it was symbolic. Henry VII, he wrote: to honour the feast was present with his Queen at the dinner; being a Prince that was ever ready to grace and countenance the professors of the law; having a little of that, that, as he governed his subjects by his laws, so he governed his laws by his lawyers.