Insiders and Outsiders in the History of Law
Joanna McCunn (Editor), Gwen Seabourne (Editor)
Series: Reimagining Law and Justice
Published in association with: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
Open Access publication funded by Jisc Open Access Community Framework
Writing the history of law involves choices: whose stories are to be told, and how? Traditionally, legal history has focused on influential ‘insiders’ like judges, lawyers and legislators, and on studying the records they produced. Today, increasing attention is being paid to the lives of ‘outsiders’, drawing on new sources and methods to understand their experiences of the law.
This book brings together new research that examines dividing lines drawn in the history of law and the experiences of those who have fallen inside and outside them. From prominent judges and law reformers to women, colonial subjects and gender nonconforming people, and from medieval Crusader states to twentieth-century England, this book examines the legal encounters of a wide range of individuals and communities. The authors explore how people became legal insiders or outsiders, how the law treated them, and how they sought to wield legal processes to their advantage. They demonstrate the malleability and contingency of any insider/outsider binary. From the Tudor queens of England to mixed-race people in colonial Jamaica, legal actors have transcended boundaries and interacted with law in potent and unexpected ways.
At this pivotal moment for legal history, this book prompts conversation between those engaged in legal and historical studies and legal practice, and demonstrates the potential for a reinvigorated and representative legal history to improve our understandings of law’s past.
This wonderful collection’s diverse chapters are united both by the theme of insiders and outsiders – interpreted with nuance and creativity – and by their quality and interest. They showcase varied sources and approaches to legal history and biography, across several jurisdictions and almost nine centuries. This book therefore offers cutting-edge scholarship and rich inspiration for historians of law.
—Caroline Derry, Professor of Feminism, Law and History, The Open University, UK.
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Introduction
Joanna McCunn and Gwen Seabourne -
1 “All those men who are not of the law of Rome”: participation and exclusion of non-Latin plaintiffs, defendants, witnesses and clerks in the courts of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
Jennifer Pearce -
2 Sir John Vavasour (d. 1506) and the Palatine of Lancaster: lawyer, judge, Northerner
A J Hannay -
3 Inside and outside the palace: Henry VIII’s queens at law
Anthony Musson and Kirsty Wright -
4 Racial Passing and Miscegenation in Colonial Jamaica
Justine Collins -
5 ‘Being interpreted and translated into the English language’: the Chevalier d’Éon, the French outsider, in the English Law Courts, 1764-1776
Daniel F. Gosling -
6 ‘A Scottish Judge’: Law Reform in the Age of Henry Brougham – An Outsider’s Influence
Patricia McMahon -
7 Judicial insiders: the Coleridge dynasty
Philip Handler -
10 Jurors and Jury Service in Interwar Bristol
Kay Crosby -
11 Closing reflections: beyond insiders and outsiders
Joanna McCunn and Gwen Seabourne
PDF: 9781911507857
Hardback: 9781911507833 / 216 pages / 240mm x 160mm
Paperback: 9781911507840 / 216 pages / 234mm x 156mm
Joanna McCunn (Editor) 
Joanna McCunn is Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol, where she teaches Legal History and Contract Law. After studying at the University of Oxford and working at the Law Commission for England and Wales, Joanna embarked on her doctoral research at the University of Cambridge, earning her PhD in 2019. Her research focuses on the historical development of English private law, and she has published a number of articles and book chapters in this area. She is a member of the editorial committee of the Journal of Legal History.
Gwen Seabourne (Editor)
Gwen Seabourne is Professor of Legal History in the University of Bristol Law School, where she teaches Legal History and Property Law. Her main research interest is Legal History, particularly pre-1500 English and Welsh Legal History, and she has written on subjects from bread price regulation to suicide. Recent work has focused on gender in the medieval world, and she has published widely, including three sole-authored monographs and many articles. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a member of the councils of the Selden Society and Cymdeithas Hanes Cyfraith Cymru/Welsh Legal History Society.
This wonderful collection’s diverse chapters are united both by the theme of insiders and outsiders – interpreted with nuance and creativity – and by their quality and interest. They showcase varied sources and approaches to legal history and biography, across several jurisdictions and almost nine centuries. This book therefore offers cutting-edge scholarship and rich inspiration for historians of law.
—Caroline Derry, Professor of Feminism, Law and History, The Open University, UK.
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