Laws, Lawyers and Texts: Studies in Medieval Legal History in Honour of Paul Brand by Susanne Jenks, Jonathon Rose, and Christopher Whittick (review)

This volume is both a worthy tribute to the person it honours, Professor Paul Brand, formerly of All Souls, Oxford, and recently visiting Professor in the University of Michigan Law School, and a significant contribution in its own right to the areas of research made possible by Brand's scholarship. As the Encomium by Barbara Harvey indicates, Brand's area of interest was the 'long' thirteenth century from the limit of legal memory in 1189 to the death of Edward I in 1307. In particular, Brand is perhaps best known for his 'authoritative account of the development of the legal profession' (p. xii) in England and the origins of the common law in the era of Henry II. His scholarship is characterised by its use of unpublished and manuscript material, evidenced in his role as editor of four volumes of the Law Reports for the Selden Society.

A series of chapters add nuance and complexity to Brand's account of the early legal profession. Sandra Raban's study reveals more information about the individuals and institutions that retained lawyers during the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), shifting the traditional focus (adopted by Brand) away 'from the vantage point of the lawyers themselves' (p. 201). Charles Donahue, Jr applies Brand's definition of what constitutes a 'profession' to the fourteenth century and concludes that the plural term 'professions' is more apposite to describe each of the variegated groups that constituted the common lawyers and canon lawyers who plied their business in that time. David Crook's chapter focuses on a senior justice of the bench from the mid-thirteenth-century, Robert of Lexington: his lack of legal training and longevity at the bench suggest a counterpoint to Brand's depiction of a professionally trained profession.

Several papers add detail to the 'Angevin legal revolution' that gave rise to the common law in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (p. 51), a phenomenon for which Brand has proffered compelling evidence starting with his 1990 article 'Multis Vigiliis Excogitatem et Inventam' in the Haskins Society Journal. John Hudson's study suggests that the infamous clause 3 of the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), dealing with criminous clerks, not only formed a platform for dispute between the King and his famous archbishop, Thomas Becket, but was also a central part of Henry II's legal reforms that sought to channel legal business into the King's court, via the chief justiciar. This subtlety is missing from Brand's account. In a different vein, Sarah Tullis takes the Glanvill treatise, 'the first detailed exposition of the English common law' (p. 327), and traces its afterlife in early modern England and colonial America as a vehicle for political polemics. In typically iconoclastic yet rigorous manner, Paul Hyams tackles the reasons for the 'technical discourse' (p. 21) that characterised the common law in its origins (and remains today), tracing linguistic depictions of land tenure (the 'fief ') from its origins in 1066 as personal bonds to 1230 when it came to represent what we now understand as 'ownership'.

Running through several chapters in this collection is a theme that the 'learned law' (Roman and canon law) played a part in the development of the early common law - a contribution hinted at in Brand's work. Bruce O'Brien points to the continuing use of 'conquest-era' legal texts in the second half of the twelfth century and beyond, as exemplified in the Holkham lawbook, a legal encyclopaedia containing material from both Roman law and Saxon codes. David Ibbetson and Richard Helmholz also emphasise the possible influence of Roman and canon law on particular English common law writs, in their studies of the historical development of annuities and rights of re-entry...