Rethinking evidence

Sample

M.H. Hoeflich

Seeking to fill a gap in our knowledge of the legal history of the nineteenth century, this volume studies the influence of Roman and civil law upon the development of common law jurisdictions in the United States and in Great Britain. Hoeflich examines the writings of a variety of prominent Anglo-American legal theorists to show how Roman and civil law helped common law thinkers develop their own theories. Intellectual leaders in law in the United States and Great Britain used Roman and civil law in different ways at different times. The views of these lawyers were greatly respected even by non-lawyers, and most of them wrote to influence a wider public. By filling in the gaps in the history of jurisprudence, this volume also provides greater understanding of the development of Anglo-American culture and society.

Sample

Vivien Hart

"What difference does a written constitution make to public policy? How have women workers fared in a nation bound by constitutional principles, compared with those not covered by formal, written guarantees of fair procedure or equitable outcome? To investigate these questions, Vivien Hart traces the evolution of minimum wage policies in the United States and Britain from their common origins in women's politics around 1900 to their divergent outcomes in our day. She argues, contrary to common wisdom, that the advantage has been with the American constitutional system rather than the British." "Basing her analysis on primary research, Hart reconstructs legal strategies and policy decisions that revolved around the recognition of women as workers and the public definition of gender roles. Contrasting seismic shifts and expansion in American minimum wage policy with indifference and eventual abolition in Britain, she challenges pre-conceptions about the constraints of American constitutionalism versus British flexibility. Though constitutional requirements did block and frustrate women's attempts to gain fair wages, they also, as Hart demonstrates, created a terrain in the United States for principled debate about women, work, and the state - and a momentum for public policy - unparalleled in Britain. Hart's book should be of interest to policy, labor, women's, and legal historians, to political scientists, and to students of gender issues, law, and social policy."--BOOK JACKET.

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Cornelia Hughes Dayton

Women before the Bar is the first study to investigate changing patterns of women's participation in early American courts across a broad range of legal actions - including proceedings related to debt, divorce, illicit sex, rape, and slander. Weaving the stories of individual women together with systematic analysis of gendered litigation patterns, Cornelia Dayton argues that women's relation to the courtroom scene in early New England shifted from one of integration in the mid-seventeenth century to one of marginality by the eve of the Revolution.

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Maureen Hill and James Alexander

"From September 1940 until March 1945 German aircraft dropped thousands of bombs on cities throughout the British Isles. The Blitz, as it has become known, was the most devastating aerial bombardment the world had ever seen. These momentous events are recounted here through the archives of the Daily Mail, London Evening Standard, and London Evening News in a detailed visual history."--Jacket.