BOOK REVIEW: Lyndsay CAMPBELL on English law, the legal profession, and colonialism: histories, parallels, and influences edited by Cerian Griffiths and Łukasz Jan Korporowicz (Comparative Legal History, XIII (2025), nr. 1, June, pp. 150-153)

(Image source: Taylor&Francis)

Originating in and building on a 2021 conference, this collection contributes to the growing literature on the histories of empire, focusing on the movement of English law and the history of the legal profession in the colonial context. It features chapters from scholars around the world at a whole range of career stages. The conclusion, by Cerian Griffiths and Łukasz Jan Korporowicz, indicates that the project is an attempt to tug British Empire history into the theoretical orbit of European-style Global Legal History, to shed light on a field that ‘has traditionally been the poor relation to its civil law cousin’ (258) and to present research on the ‘early modern and modern eras which often receive less interest than medieval historical studies’ (259). I had to chew on these statements for a bit, and also the omission, in the same paragraph, of the forty-six-year-old Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History from the editors’ list of academic associations that have contributed to the development of the history of the common law world over the past 40 years (Canada is mostly absent from the book, which perhaps explains this omission). In any case, although at least in theory Global Legal History seems to purport to do everything, a single collection cannot. More importantly, I take it that the editors’ point is to underline the focus on the mobility of law and people, to look beyond the nation and the local in our questions and approaches.

English Law, the Legal Profession, and Colonialism opens with a helpful introduction by Michael Lobban, who describes the book's major thematic preoccupations, including how legal ideas travelled within the British Empire (between the ‘centre’ and the ‘periphery’ and also among colonies), the tension between authoritarianism and liberalism, and how that tension wove through conceptions of the nature and purpose of the rule of law, given that the law and legal principles that travelled around the empire landed in places that were unlike England, to varying degrees and in various ways. The chapters that follow, although somewhat uneven in readability, direct our attention not only to public law and notable juridical personalities but also to the network of personal and commercial relationships – structured through legal rights and principles – that were so crucial to the decisions individual people made in shaping legality in the British Empire.

To read the full review, please click here. Online access is free for members of the European Society for Comparative Legal History. For further information about the volume on our blog, please visit here

DOI: 10.1080/2049677X.2025.2500210

BOOK: "Legal Practice in Eighteenth-Century Scotland", by John Finlay (September 2015)

John Finlay, Legal Practice in Eighteenth-Century Scotland
all information here

This book is the first monograph to analyse the workings of Scotland’s legal profession in its early modern European context. It is a comprehensive survey of lawyers working in the local and central courts; investigating how they interacted with their clients and with each other, the legal principles governing ethical practice, and how they fulfilled a social role through providing free services to the poor and also services to town councils and other corporations. Based heavily on a wide range of archival sources, and reflecting the contemporary importance of local societies of lawyers, John Finlay offers a groundbreaking yet accessible study of the eighteenth-century legal profession which adds a new dimension to our knowledge of Enlightenment Scotland

John Finlay, Ph.D. (1998), is Professor of Scots Law at the University of Glasgow. He has published monographs and many articles on the history of Scotland’s legal profession, including The Community of the College of Justice (Edinburgh University Press, 2012)

Table of contents

JOURNAL: "American Journal of Legal History" (Issue 54:4, October 2014)

American Journal of Legal History Issue 54:4, October 2014

Contents

Alison W. Conner, “The Lawyer Who Haunts Us: Yin Zhaoshi and the Bright Day”

Charles J. Sheehan, “Solicitor General Charles Fahy and Honorable Defense of the Japanese-American Exclusion Cases”

BOOK: "Paths to the Bench: The Judicial Appointment Process in Manitoba, 1870-1950", by Dale Brawn (2014)

Dale Brawn,  Laurentian University, Paths to the Bench: The Judicial Appointment Process in Manitoba, 1870-1950, Law and Society Series, University of British Columbia Press, 2014

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A lawyer wanting to become a judge in early 20th-century Manitoba could attract the attention of his peers through his work -- but it was a friendship with a powerful mentor that got him to the bench. 

In Paths to the Bench, Dale Brawn looks at the appointments and careers of early judges who were charged with laying the legal foundations of a province. With much at stake, judicial appointments were as much about personal ties and politics as they were about ability. Beliefs were scrutinized to ensure that they would not impede the province’s, and the nation’s, growth, while ongoing mentorships ensured that these beliefs were cultivated through shared kinship groups. 

By looking at both official records and correspondence from this era, Brawn uncovers the highly political nature of the judicial appointment process and the intricate bonds that ensured that judges acquired the values not of their society, but of their fellowship groups. His in-depth analysis also examines the distinct career trajectories of less competent and more competent lawyers and considers why many of the best and brightest members of the bar did not go to the bench.