The Heritage of English Common Law with Dr. Ian Williams

PJ and Dr. Ian Williams discuss the impact that English common law has had across the globe. Dr. Williams shares several fascinating examples from legal history, including the case of a ship crew dining on a cabin boy.

Show Notes

In this episode of the Chasing Leviathan podcast, PJ and Dr. Ian Williams discuss the complicated history and impact of the English common law tradition. Throughout the discussion, Dr. Williams points out the "wacky and weird" side of common law, from cannibalism to blasphemy. 

For a deep dive into Dr. Ian Williams' work, check out his book: Networks and Connections in Legal History 👉 https://amzn.to/37seGEQ 

 Check out our blog on www.candidgoatproductions.com 

Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. When it rises up, the mighty are terrified. Nothing on earth is its equal. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud.

 These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. 

Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.

What is Chasing Leviathan?

Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.

[Unknown7]: yeah yeah for sure um so kind of you know as we kind of get started here you know

[Unknown7]: just talking about what is what is english common law and what is its impact

[Unknown7]: tell us a little bit about how

[Unknown7]: you got interested in this topic how did dr ian williams you know tell us a little

[Unknown7]: about doctor ian williams

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: you are so

[Unknown8]: so the uk's a

[Unknown8]: be different to the us and that you can do a law degree as an undergrad because uk

[Unknown7]: you take it to us

[Unknown8]: undergrad education is way more

[Unknown8]: specialized than the us ones you don't typically have majors in mind you just do

[Unknown7]: way to specified in the less don't

[Unknown8]: one subject and

[Unknown7]: got it

[Unknown8]: that that's your subject all the way through and you can do a

[Unknown7]: can do

[Unknown8]: law degree as your undergraduate

[Unknown7]: graduates

[Unknown8]: subject and then you kind of do professional training if you want to

[Unknown7]: to

[Unknown8]: after that to practice so you know you can

[Unknown7]: zero

[Unknown8]: have an attorney in the uk who's practicing at twenty two when they're kind

[Unknown7]: okay

[Unknown8]: of kicking off law school in the u s

[Unknown7]: yeah yeah yeah

[Unknown8]: um can be slightly odd because your life experience

[Unknown8]: is pretty limited and then you're reading these things about you know homicide

[Unknown8]: is pretty limited and then you're reading these things about you know homicide

[Unknown7]: experience is pretty limited to that you reading about the

[Unknown8]: cases or something

[Unknown8]: cases or something

[Unknown8]: but yeah you

[Unknown7]: yeah you kick off

[Unknown8]: kick off and you're doing that you think that sounds like a good good degree

[Unknown8]: choice right it's the classic your middle class parents are going to love this

[Unknown7]: love this

[Unknown8]: it's a nice reliable career then then you go into academia

[Unknown8]: but

[Unknown8]: you pick your low degree and then

[Unknown7]: okay i

[Unknown8]: where

[Unknown8]: i was there were plenty of options to be doing in the historical side of it which

[Unknown7]: where alls that were plenty of options

[Unknown8]: is something i'd always be interested in various ways and say i'll do those

[Unknown8]: options they're really fun

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: in pain we know so little so you

[Unknown7]: i say

[Unknown8]: may will ask me questions and i'm like go we don't know that we kind of have this

[Unknown8]: flip side of there aren't that many people who work on the historical side

[Unknown7]: mm

[Unknown8]: versus

[Unknown8]: we have

[Unknown7]: we we re so we have this problem and probably go

[Unknown8]: incredibly good records so we have the english court record central court records

[Unknown8]: go back to the twelfth century

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: and you can still go and view them in london but you can go

[Unknown8]: and view them anybody who wants to search for the anglo american legal tradition

[Unknown7]: they can go anybody who wants to serve the anglo american le tradition project go

[Unknown8]: project and you can go and look at medieval and early modern central

[Unknown7]: sex

[Unknown8]: court records online bob

[Unknown7]: wow

[Unknown8]: palmer university of houston has done a brilliant job with his

[Unknown7]: t

[Unknown8]: team of just getting nice

[Unknown7]: nice

[Unknown8]: quality digital images i mean you've got to be able to read weird handwriting

[Unknown7]: a

[Unknown8]: and it's in heavily abbreviated latins so it's probably not great for most of you

[Unknown7]: yeah yeah

[Unknown8]: but it's there

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: it's great for us i mean the ask so if you go back to the sixteenth century stuff

[Unknown8]: which where i work and you look at the

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: court of chancery which i'm sure we'll probably come back to

[Unknown7]: sure

[Unknown8]: their records are in english

[Unknown8]: their records are in english

[Unknown7]: okay

[Unknown8]: so the handwriting's different but the words and the spelling's awful but the

[Unknown8]: words are ones that you would recognizing oh yeah you can read this and you can

[Unknown8]: work with it

[Unknown8]: but there's just so much stuff there

[Unknown7]: but there's just so much stuck man

[Unknown8]: that you can think about and you know different people do different things and

[Unknown8]: that you can think about and you know different people do different things and

[Unknown7]: um that you can think about it and get different people do different things

[Unknown8]: it's

[Unknown8]: it's

[Unknown8]: it's

[Unknown7]: it's

[Unknown8]: sort of a great unknown for history which we're building up on but also it's so

[Unknown8]: important for history you know kind of constitutional history

[Unknown8]: history of society no how are you for example regulating what women can do what

[Unknown8]: children

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: can do

[Unknown8]: what kind of relationships can people have

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: history of commerce how do you make your

[Unknown8]: contracts who can make contracts who has the property what do you do

[Unknown7]: comps

[Unknown8]: if the property is not held in the way you want it to be held so this is a big one

[Unknown7]: what do you do that is your healthy way to about it the t watch english who

[Unknown8]: in english legal history is property transmission it's the kind of downton abbey

[Unknown7]: history is not

[Unknown8]: type stuff

[Unknown8]: where you

[Unknown7]: right have your wealth right when she does is

[Unknown8]: have your wealthy landowner who actually when he dies his daughters aren't gonna

[Unknown8]: get the property it's down to an abbey it's pride and prejudice that's

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: legal history that's

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: all law that sets up your plot points it's not

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: the plot point really you know the plot develops from there but you can't have the

[Unknown8]: plott without the law

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: or you get you know your high treason cases where someone gets their head chopped

[Unknown8]: off or whatever it might be so there's all that kind of stuff

[Unknown7]: very cinematic yeah

[Unknown8]: you know it is and yeah you know you think of things like you know to kill a

[Unknown8]: mocking bird few good men the court scenes that's all

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: coming from the history

[Unknown8]: or you might have a

[Unknown8]: thing that i often look at is sort of ideas in history so i look at

[Unknown7]: might have have any sort of ideas why

[Unknown8]: where a lawyers getting their ideas from about things you know where

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: do they decide so one thing i'm looking at the moment why do certain things get

[Unknown8]: punished under criminal law

[Unknown7]: h

[Unknown8]: um why is this criminal or not

[Unknown7]: not

[Unknown8]: and that

[Unknown7]: civil yeah suit yeah yeah

[Unknown7]: that's a yeah i i mean full disclosure i looked at ninety five dollars and i i

[Unknown7]: couldn't justify buying it to my wife but the networks and connections and legal

[Unknown7]: history like you

[Unknown8]: wow

[Unknown7]: edited that volume this is what we're talking about right

[Unknown8]: yeah and that's that's part of it

[Unknown7]: yeah yeah

[Unknown8]: so i mean that was a conference we did twenty seventeen and then you work out some

[Unknown7]: had so

[Unknown8]: of the paper so that was in

[Unknown8]: britain we have one big conference for legal history every two years

[Unknown7]: see have

[Unknown7]: two years

[Unknown8]: we've had a three year gap this time thanks to covid

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: totally messed up up

[Unknown7]: what a surprise yeah

[Unknown8]: and that was was trying to become a very broad theme of people and we went with

[Unknown7]: like we were mes because it's a good way to get to

[Unknown8]: networks and connections because it's a good way of getting people to

[Unknown8]: think about things

[Unknown7]: e for easter and my

[Unknown8]: you get kind of british empire thing that you were talking about pj but you've

[Unknown8]: also got a chapter in there which is about kind of

[Unknown8]: the connections between scholars developing a legal idea

[Unknown7]: about the connect

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: connections between business and lawyers and

[Unknown7]: ws

[Unknown8]: how people need capital how do the lawyers facilitate that which then

[Unknown7]: i can told always facilitate that say

[Unknown8]: can facilitate

[Unknown8]: the industrial revolution in particular case of the chapter in

[Unknown7]: the c of the revolution

[Unknown7]: the present

[Unknown8]: that volume it was also facilitating slaveholding

[Unknown7]: was ex inli but

[Unknown8]: plantations in america so less good

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: but all of that is it from one perspective it comes to law

[Unknown8]: from another perspective law is kind of the handmade of other things and you need

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: it but you could say you can treat it instrumental you might find

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: you'd have an economist for them laws instrumental

[Unknown7]: mhm

[Unknown8]: for some historians laws instrumental for other historians law isn't instrumental

[Unknown8]: to some economists that

[Unknown7]: po is actually over all shapes

[Unknown8]: actually know the law shapes the way the economy works so we need to understand it

[Unknown8]: so you can have

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: different perspectives on it i'm very internal because i'm in a law school so i'm

[Unknown8]: gonna be thinking in that way

[Unknown7]: right right um so uh talk a little bit about how you know you got interested

[Unknown7]: what what is english common law do you mind giving us like

[Unknown8]: yeah so

[Unknown7]: that wikipedia definition but better

[Unknown8]: yeah so yeah i did actually look at wikipedia want to see what i thought about it

[Unknown8]: it's it could be worse

[Unknown8]: so i mean common law just generally i mean not just english

[Unknown7]: yeah hm

[Unknown8]: because actually the english com has quite departed in many

[Unknown8]: ways from the kind of historical construct because of legislation

[Unknown7]: you many ways so

[Unknown7]: legislation

[Unknown8]: and kind of regulatory state and things in many important ways but common law

[Unknown8]: traditionally mostly is defined negatively in

[Unknown7]: h

[Unknown8]: that it's a legal system which isn't based on

[Unknown7]: like on a s

[Unknown8]: a single or small number of kind of authoritative texts

[Unknown8]: so if

[Unknown7]: select

[Unknown8]: you're looking more at the usual counterpart as a civilian system that be

[Unknown7]: use them like the civilian systems like like france and germany

[Unknown8]: somewhere like france or germany

[Unknown8]: most of continental europe most of latin america

[Unknown7]: most of the europe but america

[Unknown8]: they have a code or a few code you might have one for kind of private

[Unknown7]: so

[Unknown8]: law things like contracts

[Unknown7]: was like

[Unknown8]: torts property you might have another one for criminal law

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: when a judge is deciding a case they look at that text

[Unknown8]: in theory that's all they meant to do to then work out what the law

[Unknown7]: out

[Unknown8]: is and then apply it to the facts and we don't have those in common law traditions

[Unknown8]: usually

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: so instead the law is somewhere else

[Unknown7]: else

[Unknown8]: one of the big questions is actually where is it

[Unknown7]: um

[Unknown8]: and the modern view on that is that in a sense it's made by judges and then to

[Unknown8]: find

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: out what the law is you have to go and look at what judges

[Unknown7]: ch

[Unknown8]: have

[Unknown8]: said and also done

[Unknown7]: any time you said don

[Unknown8]: in the

[Unknown7]: in the hosed in bigg faces if to say are some relevant to con

[Unknown8]: past in previous cases that you can say are somehow relevant to the one in front

[Unknown8]: of you

[Unknown8]: and sometimes

[Unknown7]: and some story that

[Unknown8]: that's sta sort of you just do a kind of factual

[Unknown8]: analogy so you tell whether the facts are similar therefore

[Unknown7]: f ally

[Unknown7]: similar than

[Unknown8]: that's no

[Unknown7]: di

[Unknown8]: use though when you get a case which doesn't seem to have an obvious factual

[Unknown8]: analogy

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: which you do people are spectacularly good at producing weird and wacky scenarios

[Unknown8]: that you're not used to dealing with

[Unknown8]: and there

[Unknown7]: so yeah

[Unknown8]: was a lovely example preparing for yeah sorry

[Unknown7]: you know i was just gonna say so you're often you the argument you're making isn't

[Unknown7]: even about

[Unknown7]: the case it's about connecting it to a case you're saying no this is the case that

[Unknown7]: applies not this one right

[Unknown8]: yeah exactly and sometimes it's like

[Unknown7]: because it is weird and wacky but you were about to give an example yeah sorry go

[Unknown8]: yeah so it about the weird and wack so i was doing

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: a seminar with from my master students this year about

[Unknown7]: year about

[Unknown8]: arguments but

[Unknown7]: not

[Unknown8]: whether you should have codified the criminal law in england in the nineteenth

[Unknown8]: century and one

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: of the people who wanted to codify said well there are some issues we could

[Unknown8]: talk about but they're more for kind of moral theorists to think about because

[Unknown7]: we could talk about but that good i mean one of the dearest

[Unknown8]: they're very unlikely to come up and one of them is what's called this defensive

[Unknown7]: that's a necessity

[Unknown8]: necessity that if you act because it's absolutely

[Unknown7]: absolutely necessary by business

[Unknown8]: necessary to act in this way you shouldn't be criminalized for it so this was

[Unknown8]: about one

[Unknown7]: about

[Unknown8]: thousand eight hundred seventy seconds eighteen

[Unknown8]: eighty there's this really famous case in the

[Unknown7]: eighty eighty eight

[Unknown7]: places

[Unknown8]: english criminal law tradition where

[Unknown7]: w

[Unknown8]: some

[Unknown8]: sailors are shipwrecked and the only way

[Unknown7]: some say it was a ship w

[Unknown7]: only survive he by

[Unknown8]: they survive is by killing the cabin boy as the

[Unknown7]: have

[Unknown8]: weakest member of the crew and eating him

[Unknown8]: and this kind of resort to

[Unknown7]: ne

[Unknown8]: necessity to shipwreck was exactly

[Unknown7]: exactly what

[Unknown8]: one of the things he said you don't need to talk about because it's so

[Unknown7]: so

[Unknown8]: unlikely you just leave it to the people talking about the mole of questions and

[Unknown8]: then ten years later i had look what we've got happening infront of a trial judge

[Unknown8]: who's going what do we do about this

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: but but then that case that one about can you eat the cabin

[Unknown7]: i would be pretty

[Unknown8]: can you kill the cabin boy to eat him that's the important part of the killing

[Unknown8]: part came up then over a

[Unknown8]: century later in england and wales where they had a really horrible case of two

[Unknown7]: over a century later in the world where it had a really wonderful place um

[Unknown8]: conjoined twins

[Unknown7]: h

[Unknown8]: who

[Unknown8]: were not going

[Unknown7]: north

[Unknown8]: to survive if they remain

[Unknown7]: they were

[Unknown8]: conjoined and it was

[Unknown8]: possible

[Unknown8]: the doctors thought to separate the twins one of them would die

[Unknown7]: possible the doctors want to separate with

[Unknown7]: dark produce your

[Unknown8]: as a result of that procedure but the other one would survive

[Unknown8]: and this

[Unknown7]: but this is about two

[Unknown8]: case about killing for cannibalism is then seen as

[Unknown7]: see i was

[Unknown8]: relevant but you can say well the

[Unknown8]: principle behind the case is similar factually it's completely different

[Unknown7]: when for six

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: the principle about there is can you do things that

[Unknown8]: will cause harm to one person

[Unknown7]: things that pop

[Unknown8]: to keep

[Unknown7]: to keep us school

[Unknown8]: another person alive and if you pull out that kind of more generalized principle

[Unknown8]: that

[Unknown7]: thanks

[Unknown8]: is a way of

[Unknown7]: the way the for not s

[Unknown8]: moving from what you've already got decided to something

[Unknown7]: just something

[Unknown8]: very different actually in terms of the facts on the ground

[Unknown8]: now

[Unknown7]: i

[Unknown8]: that's unusual there are so few of those

[Unknown7]: shoes

[Unknown8]: cases you can grow draw very clear links from kind of ka to case b

[Unknown7]: yes yeah yeah yeah

[Unknown8]: case q probably because they don't match but in a lot of cases it's much more

[Unknown8]: there are a lot of cases and it's picking out what you think is most relevant or

[Unknown8]: trying to get them to fit together

[Unknown7]: together so

[Unknown8]: so that everything looks coherent so

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: what you don't particular one in legal systems you don't want lee

[Unknown8]: we said we've got a case here in the case there and they all kind of work

[Unknown7]: reason about testing and they work individually

[Unknown8]: individually but they don't t come together and there's no kind of clear rule

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: so what a lot of lawyers judges

[Unknown8]: academics are doing he's trying to say well if we look at it all together we can

[Unknown7]: use academics to do it he said do you

[Unknown8]: say this is the principle then we know a principle which we can then apply in

[Unknown8]: other cases

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: and that's very much the modern way of thinking about it

[Unknown7]: yeah is that um and forgive me i'm gonna is it stri decease

[Unknown8]: start start decis this is the way we talk about it now yeah

[Unknown7]: decisis yes yes the idea of precedent

[Unknown8]: lawyers latin is terrible so never assume the pronunciation is wrong

[Unknown7]: okay

[Unknown8]: just just go with it

[Unknown7]: got it

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: yeah it's so funny that the and one of the things i love in philosophy you know

[Unknown7]: people will often say well i mean these are all theoretical cases will never

[Unknown7]: happen and i was just a month ago i was talking to uh doctor francis beckwith

[Unknown7]: about

[Unknown7]: religion and the public square but he's talking about um how intuition plays an

[Unknown7]: important part

[Unknown7]: even if you can't argue from the principles in the legal tradition and the example

[Unknown7]: used was in germany a guy put out an advertisement um

[Unknown8]: oh yeah

[Unknown7]: oh yeah do you know like

[Unknown8]: we're got to talk about the we'll go back to the

[Unknown7]: hey i want to cannibalize yeah i i know it's like i want i want to cannibalize

[Unknown7]: someone and someone responded and said

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: cannibalize me and it all for some reason it could slide into the cracks of the

[Unknown7]: law and everyone's like okay something's wrong here like we have to figure out a

[Unknown7]: way to like this is

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: this is problematic so yeah

[Unknown8]: yeah and they get programmatic mother perspective because you can you go okay

[Unknown8]: we've got the principle we want to find a way of criminalizing that but then you

[Unknown8]: may also have sayen there's a competing principle in

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: the system of not retrospectively criminalizing you

[Unknown7]: right right

[Unknown8]: know particularly for criminal law you don't

[Unknown8]: want the state to be able to punish people something that they just kind of made

[Unknown7]: mm hm oh yeah

[Unknown8]: up

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: and and that's where you get attention in legal development you go well we might

[Unknown8]: be able to do

[Unknown7]: be able to do this but there may be another process

[Unknown8]: this but there may be another part of the system that pulls in a different

[Unknown8]: direction

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: and that's where you're trying to really get things to come together or weigh

[Unknown8]: up the balances or in the case of cannibalism go if your intuitive judgment is

[Unknown7]: play i so

[Unknown8]: this and we don't think the system is at all legitimate if we let people kill and

[Unknown8]: eat other people um

[Unknown7]: you think so yeah

[Unknown8]: you'd you'd really things

[Unknown7]: even if even with their permission yeah uh so and you've kind of touched on it

[Unknown7]: here but

[Unknown7]: it's kind of where you ended earlier

[Unknown7]: that how has uh

[Unknown7]: legal thought developed over time

[Unknown7]: and what would have been kind of maybe those decisive points or is that the wrong

[Unknown7]: way to think about it

[Unknown8]: it's certainly the wrong way to think about it further back because although we've

[Unknown8]: got

[Unknown7]: for

[Unknown8]: loads of sources telling

[Unknown7]: hello

[Unknown8]: what people were thinking

[Unknown8]: is much more difficult we've got a whole lot of decisions of cases

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: and for england we have so if you go back from the late thirteenth century onwards

[Unknown7]: house about la th century open week

[Unknown8]: we have

[Unknown8]: texts

[Unknown7]: ts which cool on second

[Unknown8]: which purport to record what was said in court by judges

[Unknown7]: you just

[Unknown8]: and lawyers usually

[Unknown7]: you

[Unknown8]: about property issues

[Unknown7]: six

[Unknown8]: but we can never be entirely sure quite how accurate those

[Unknown7]: quite my life too

[Unknown8]: are and they're

[Unknown7]: i assume

[Unknown8]: certainly not comprehensive what we don't have

[Unknown7]: we don't happen to be doing something like book that on

[Unknown8]: are the people doing the kind of thing i've just been talking about of trying to

[Unknown8]: say here's a general principle we've extracted from everything

[Unknown8]: that only really starts

[Unknown7]: i with sauce

[Unknown8]: to some

[Unknown7]: to so the early sixteenth centur seventeen for

[Unknown8]: extent in the la sixteenth century seventeenth century more in the eighteenth

[Unknown8]: century and then it's a very big thing in england

[Unknown7]: would

[Unknown8]: and in the u s

[Unknown7]: yes if the noise

[Unknown8]: in the nineteenth century where people are really trying

[Unknown8]: to do this modeling themselves actually on continental europe to

[Unknown7]: we what

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: some extent well they say that law is

[Unknown7]: the boy

[Unknown8]: rules surely we should be able to understand laura's rules as well and

[Unknown7]: well

[Unknown8]: that is partly a philosophical

[Unknown7]: something

[Unknown8]: shift there's this idea that law is a set of rules coming from

[Unknown7]: com for

[Unknown8]: someone

[Unknown8]: who's authorized to create them

[Unknown7]: so what is right

[Unknown8]: and so we should be able to identify what the rules are

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: whereas if you go back much earlier there's much more the idea

[Unknown7]: you

[Unknown8]: law is and you probably

[Unknown7]: focus

[Unknown8]: stop after the ease

[Unknown7]: needs and he definitely faces and watching great way

[Unknown8]: and it definitely exists and the question is how do you identify it not who makes

[Unknown8]: it it's a big kind of

[Unknown7]: ah interesting

[Unknown8]: that kind of shift in philosophy thomas hobbes is

[Unknown8]: you see this is kind of the really strong departure point in the mid seventeenth

[Unknown7]: sp you could see for the

[Unknown8]: century for the english speaking tradition

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: you've just got to have one person in charge or one body or something

[Unknown7]: something

[Unknown8]: in charge that determines all the rules

[Unknown7]: yep

[Unknown8]: and he's not a particularly big fan of the common law tradition because it doesn't

[Unknown8]: work like that

[Unknown7]: no of course not yeah

[Unknown8]: it really doesn't and it definitely didn't work like that early i mean we look at

[Unknown8]: we're

[Unknown7]: we were pretty confident now

[Unknown8]: pretty confident now that we think that in the particularly the

[Unknown8]: fourteenth and then the fifteenth century a lot of

[Unknown7]: how about you

[Unknown7]: i love

[Unknown8]: what's thought of as common law is because all the lawyers know that's what the

[Unknown8]: law is

[Unknown8]: and they seem to have learned it by going

[Unknown7]: five thousand

[Unknown8]: and watching cases in court

[Unknown8]: by

[Unknown7]: five would you like to see given the worst

[Unknown8]: having lectures being given in the law schools which are all in london

[Unknown7]: i just

[Unknown8]: just after dinner

[Unknown8]: where they get to ask questions and then they

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: also kind of chat to the judges and it's a really small community you know you've

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: got in england for the common law tradition in the central the king's

[Unknown7]: king school

[Unknown8]: courts in london there's about

[Unknown7]: the by the f

[Unknown8]: a dozen judges

[Unknown7]: wow

[Unknown8]: in total and the two main courts the king's be comp are in

[Unknown7]: i say

[Unknown8]: the same physical room they're both in

[Unknown7]: they want

[Unknown8]: westminster hall which is still standing just

[Unknown7]: something just that's like

[Unknown8]: outside the houses of parliament there are opposite ends so if they

[Unknown8]: have a question they can literally sort of literally get down

[Unknown7]: so if they have a question they

[Unknown7]: get

[Unknown8]: wander off down the corridor have a chat wander back

[Unknown8]: we know that sometimes they have

[Unknown7]: they come

[Unknown8]: conversations over dinner where they're

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: working on what they should do and in the eighteenth century that's really

[Unknown8]: significant for criminal law actually so criminal law the

[Unknown8]: judges get sent around the country to try the cases twice a year and if they find

[Unknown7]: the churches get sent out the country to try haste per if they like st and come

[Unknown8]: a case they're stuck with they come back to london and they chat about it with the

[Unknown7]: back to us i've been check by see when

[Unknown8]: other judges over dinner

[Unknown8]: it's very much the law is what the judges think it is based around a kind of

[Unknown7]: get this very rule is

[Unknown8]: internal conversation it's not really

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: legislation and for that

[Unknown8]: there's not really kind of decided cases either way you can draw clear principles

[Unknown7]: wow nobody so cases off to play ball

[Unknown8]: it's a more kind of shared understanding idea

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: of the norms

[Unknown8]: of the norms

[Unknown8]: which a lot of communities have when if you talk to an

[Unknown7]: talking about

[Unknown8]: anthropologist about this i'm sure you'd see that the same they say you know you

[Unknown8]: can go to a group

[Unknown7]: i

[Unknown8]: anywhere and they have group norms which they all understand

[Unknown8]: the difference

[Unknown7]: the differences

[Unknown8]: is when the judges and lawyers have group knows that they understand they can then

[Unknown8]: get state backing to enforce them against everybody else

[Unknown7]: yes yeah

[Unknown8]: may not know what they are or understand them

[Unknown7]: hm so and that's part of

[Unknown7]: i saw i think it's an article you wrote about how the printing press changed a lot

[Unknown7]: of this right

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: and the application of the printing press what was that process like and how did

[Unknown7]: that change like this balance of power was this

[Unknown8]: well

[Unknown7]: part of that thomas hobbs move

[Unknown8]: yeah well it might be i mean certainly it is for

[Unknown8]: legislation because you do get a big shift that when

[Unknown7]: legislation

[Unknown8]: parliament legislate you get an official

[Unknown7]: with all the legislate ended

[Unknown8]: legislated text produced

[Unknown7]: legislative back

[Unknown8]: by a

[Unknown8]: printer who is given a monopoly by the government to print statutes and no one

[Unknown7]: by a printer who needs even

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: else can do it and that is at least in part a quality control measure to make sure

[Unknown8]: there is

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: a single text we have spoken

[Unknown8]: i mean english sta actually

[Unknown7]: i

[Unknown8]: end with the king wills the king wills this this is the

[Unknown7]: this

[Unknown8]: legislation it's the law

[Unknown8]: so in that sense yes de definitely the print press shift it for legislation for

[Unknown7]: so not necessarily she said the legislation it's small

[Unknown8]: case law

[Unknown8]: it has

[Unknown7]: yeah has

[Unknown8]: the quite important

[Unknown7]: quite important even that everybody

[Unknown8]: effect that everybody can use the same text to argue

[Unknown7]: the same smoke

[Unknown8]: so

[Unknown7]: so

[Unknown8]: as soon as they start getting

[Unknown7]: stuff

[Unknown8]: produced as printed text people can go well

[Unknown8]: look what was said here although they never actually

[Unknown7]: well six

[Unknown7]: they

[Unknown8]: say look because that would require carrying the books into court and they're

[Unknown8]: quite big and they're quite heavy so no one

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: actually does what they have to do is they make their own notebooks based on the

[Unknown8]: printed text and those are a lot smaller and

[Unknown7]: school

[Unknown8]: they're probably carrying those with them but they've got

[Unknown7]: they

[Unknown8]: standard references which they can check

[Unknown7]: cha

[Unknown8]: and weirdly

[Unknown7]: we english

[Unknown8]: english common law printing is very good

[Unknown8]: at keeping the same pagination between additions which is not common in early

[Unknown7]: very same activ

[Unknown8]: printing actually but in england they do

[Unknown7]: no i

[Unknown8]: and it's it's great and they made this one big change in the five ninety seconds

[Unknown8]: where

[Unknown7]: is where first one to bring more books numbers but space up of business and dies i

[Unknown8]: the first woman to print law books her husband she takes over her husband's

[Unknown8]: business when he dies um makes the books twice as tall but she puts little ab

[Unknown7]: make it twice a which puts them in av show you like previously the page getting so

[Unknown8]: indicators in into to show you where previously the page ended so you still get

[Unknown7]: you still get the same at but

[Unknown8]: the same pagination even though the page the numbers have changed like this

[Unknown7]: it's it's clear

[Unknown8]: it's clear they think that this being able to

[Unknown7]: have to

[Unknown8]: refer across editions is important

[Unknown7]: interesting

[Unknown8]: so there's that ability to kind of cross refer but it also leads to people

[Unknown7]: six

[Unknown8]: producing reference works where you might

[Unknown7]: what you want be able to explore

[Unknown8]: be able to kind of draw out more of

[Unknown7]: school

[Unknown8]: a principle

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: because you've got this common stock you can all refer to you and i say well i'm

[Unknown8]: going

[Unknown7]: why

[Unknown8]: to write a book which has got a not booked t play

[Unknown8]: section which is got maybe a heading and in that heading i'm going to put all the

[Unknown7]: the section was hey

[Unknown8]: material i think is relevant to that

[Unknown7]: you like relevant st

[Unknown8]: topic

[Unknown7]: i p maybe and then

[Unknown8]: or that heading and then maybe i'll try and draw out

[Unknown7]: two

[Unknown8]: an idea from that which i can then expound more broadly

[Unknown7]: i would like to explain you too

[Unknown8]: there's one

[Unknown8]: english lawyer who goes on to be a judge who actually he does that but at the top

[Unknown7]: there one to be a church right he does not

[Unknown8]: of his personal reference book based on all

[Unknown7]: basically

[Unknown8]: these printed stuff he actually

[Unknown7]: he yes we could sp to white and sentences

[Unknown8]: puts little latin sentences about what he thinks the kind of core idea is and

[Unknown8]: those

[Unknown7]: h

[Unknown8]: latin ss are actually coming from roman law books so he thinks they're they're

[Unknown8]: kind of comparable

[Unknown7]: i would

[Unknown8]: and then you

[Unknown7]: i did yeah

[Unknown8]: get people who produce horrible

[Unknown8]: undigested gigantic texts which are just awful to read i then edward cook who's

[Unknown7]: digestive dance

[Unknown8]: like titanic for reputation as this amazing judge his books are horrible to read

[Unknown8]: you get to late eighteenth century english lawyers american lawyers nineteenth

[Unknown8]: century english american los who were told you are meant to read this

[Unknown7]: in the seventeenth century book story stops and things

[Unknown8]: seventeenth century book as your starting point to law and they

[Unknown7]: i

[Unknown8]: all say this is horrible i want something else to read and then people saying it's

[Unknown8]: embarrassing that we're using this we want them to more accessible but yet that

[Unknown8]: technological shift it just it gives you

[Unknown7]: give

[Unknown8]: text but the text is still not official

[Unknown8]: and it's still

[Unknown7]: still

[Unknown8]: not legislation

[Unknown7]: spices

[Unknown8]: in the same way you know

[Unknown8]: the material

[Unknown7]: the

[Unknown8]: that's printed is produced by

[Unknown7]: the of

[Unknown8]: a lawyer who's made his own notes

[Unknown8]: quite

[Unknown8]: often they're posthumous publications so there were some reports printed

[Unknown7]: quite often

[Unknown7]: okay

[Unknown8]: in fifteen eighty five which are the case notes of a chief

[Unknown7]: the key justice that my

[Unknown8]: justice do that's going to be really important um

[Unknown7]: um

[Unknown8]: and they were

[Unknown7]: i think would

[Unknown8]: considered really important but

[Unknown7]: but he

[Unknown8]: he didn't publish them while he's alive he's he's

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: been dead for a few years' is his heir who says well i've been asked by other

[Unknown7]: he said i've been asked why published

[Unknown8]: people to publish these

[Unknown8]: so i will

[Unknown7]: so he would he would be

[Unknown8]: and even when he did it they very carefully edited out a significant proportion of

[Unknown8]: the book that they thought was controversial mostly about things to do with kind

[Unknown8]: of either governmental matters or personal scandal

[Unknown8]: in some way and those only got edited and published in the nineteen

[Unknown7]: oh okay gotcha

[Unknown7]: one thousand nine hundred ninety seconds

[Unknown8]: ninety seconds they only got

[Unknown8]: rediscovered in the one thousand nine hundred ninety seconds as well

[Unknown7]: what we discovered it

[Unknown7]: um so it is

[Unknown8]: so it was a kind of cut down and truncated version

[Unknown7]: eight years

[Unknown8]: and there was

[Unknown7]: and

[Unknown8]: that kind of even people who published while they were

[Unknown8]: alive there was kind of self censorship there very often on things to do with with

[Unknown7]: well they relied self s

[Unknown8]: the king typically in the king's powers

[Unknown8]: sir edward cook is a

[Unknown8]: spectacular self publicist and very happy to

[Unknown7]: i spell

[Unknown8]: publish lots of stuff he publishes eleven volumes of law reports during his life

[Unknown7]: you pul lots of stuff he put his

[Unknown8]: two

[Unknown7]: two

[Unknown8]: volumes are published posthumously from his notebooks those two have got a lot of

[Unknown8]: the cases that modern

[Unknown7]: re

[Unknown8]: people are interested in kind of constitutional history want to look at but he

[Unknown8]: didn't want to put them into the public sphere while he was alive so that the kind

[Unknown8]: of the constitutional type law ideas we still being kept very much internal

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: they're much happier publishing stuff about who owns what how you transfer bs

[Unknown7]: once

[Unknown8]: how you

[Unknown7]: have you played

[Unknown8]: claim property

[Unknown8]: um with exceptions you

[Unknown7]: south

[Unknown8]: know one of edward cook's reports is actually

[Unknown8]: what was described to

[Unknown7]: just like

[Unknown8]: time as the most important case ever

[Unknown8]: again possibly self publicis but not entirely um but it's a really big case

[Unknown8]: because you've had after elizabeth the first dies

[Unknown7]: i

[Unknown8]: the king of scotland becomes the king of england

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: and he wants to have a

[Unknown7]: out

[Unknown8]: single country he wants to actually have great

[Unknown8]: britain as a country rather than england and scotland as two separate countries

[Unknown7]: great pr it because back with that st

[Unknown8]: and he

[Unknown7]: uh twenty oh

[Unknown8]: tries to do this through parliament and parliament doesn't let him

[Unknown8]: so

[Unknown7]: so

[Unknown8]: instead they can drive a test

[Unknown7]: fantastic

[Unknown8]: case it's an interesting thing in itself that

[Unknown7]: itself

[Unknown8]: they're creating test cases

[Unknown8]: about whether

[Unknown7]: about weather support

[Unknown8]: someone who's scottish can inherit land in england

[Unknown7]: be

[Unknown8]: which would mean that he had some

[Unknown7]: have some

[Unknown8]: kind of legal status in england as well as in scotland which he wins on

[Unknown7]: you

[Unknown8]: surprisingly it's a test cases arranged by the governments you'd probably expect

[Unknown8]: that at the time

[Unknown8]: but the king apparently orders that a report of that case is printed and

[Unknown8]: disseminated so that people know that what he's trying to do is not something

[Unknown7]: in the seance so people know what you going to do is some terrible

[Unknown8]: terrible and unlawful he he was trying to achieve

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: what the law already actually was thank you very much and all you ignorant mp's

[Unknown8]: got it completely wrong

[Unknown8]: next time you'll listen to me

[Unknown7]: why the

[Unknown7]: um

[Unknown8]: and yeah you get this kind of tool

[Unknown7]: two

[Unknown8]: to force of legal argument with reference to

[Unknown8]: classical literature bible

[Unknown7]: i see

[Unknown7]: school i like to ski

[Unknown8]: theology english legal sources about white

[Unknown7]: white

[Unknown8]: definitely okay that a scotsman can inherit land in england um and it's huge but

[Unknown8]: it's a test case

[Unknown7]: best something about

[Unknown8]: so something about cases is important by that point

[Unknown8]: but also disseminating that case to tell everybody this has

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: been decided is

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: important

[Unknown8]: and that that's a big thing for the printing press because before that

[Unknown8]: the

[Unknown8]: cases you find it's variable you don't know what you're going to get

[Unknown7]: the taste is fun it's better than the little

[Unknown8]: so we have i show

[Unknown7]: how much you have

[Unknown8]: my students this we have a copy and uc of some

[Unknown7]: so

[Unknown8]: printing preser or handwritten law reports because people are still making their

[Unknown8]: own handwritten reports in this period as well

[Unknown7]: as well um but some of my my way get employed

[Unknown8]: and some someone writes down when he acquired them and so these are reports from

[Unknown8]: about fifteen

[Unknown7]: by

[Unknown8]: eighty five to fifteen ninety from reign of elizabeth first he says

[Unknown7]: this is five five

[Unknown8]: i acquired this from my cousin in

[Unknown8]: sixteen twenty six so thirty years

[Unknown7]: the c six

[Unknown8]: later it's taken him to receive these but

[Unknown7]: to be like picture

[Unknown7]: right right

[Unknown8]: he thinks they're really important because he goes to and he annotate them

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: so he knows this is important stuff for him to know even though

[Unknown8]: it was

[Unknown7]: he

[Unknown8]: from thirty years ago

[Unknown8]: so there's

[Unknown7]: the

[Unknown8]: that wanting to get the latest material but you can't always get it in print still

[Unknown8]: until

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: really the eighteenth century it takes

[Unknown7]: that's

[Unknown8]: a very long time for to get

[Unknown7]: it's very

[Unknown8]: fairly current legal printing and

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: dissemination of sources

[Unknown8]: moving through england i mean england is a small

[Unknown7]: smoke

[Unknown8]: country it's not that difficult to disseminate things if you

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: really want to downside is it's a small country with a small

[Unknown7]: the of the voice

[Unknown8]: number of lawyers so there's not that big a market for any new books

[Unknown7]: so yeah rules of the market yes

[Unknown8]: yeah just to me that's got to be there as well yeah

[Unknown7]: yeah interesting so um

[Unknown7]: do you see any uh collars or do you think there are going to be any similar

[Unknown7]: anything we can learn is lessons from how the printing press affected things and

[Unknown7]: do you think the internet will have anything similar

[Unknown8]: possibly i suspect not england actually

[Unknown7]: the was

[Unknown8]: there's a really nice story from europe where people start

[Unknown7]: i read

[Unknown8]: complaining that they've got too much to know and they just can't keep up and that

[Unknown8]: complaining that they've got too much to know and they just can't keep up and that

[Unknown7]: it's not like that they

[Unknown8]: what strikes me as the much more likely because

[Unknown8]: what strikes me as the much more likely because

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: now you do get a lot of stuff

[Unknown7]: bo

[Unknown8]: coming out you know the time it

[Unknown8]: takes you to purely selfishly with a degree of self indulgence the time it takes

[Unknown7]: time to take you to

[Unknown8]: me to check all the latest cases to prepare for teaching in a new term

[Unknown7]: each other be able to

[Unknown8]: is more than it was for people twenty thirty years ago because now

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: almost every

[Unknown8]: decision from the high court upwards is available electronically

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: which is a lot more to cover

[Unknown8]: how far

[Unknown7]: for that

[Unknown8]: that affects or how far you can parallel that to the printing press in england

[Unknown7]: h

[Unknown8]: we still have well now we've got more

[Unknown7]: time but now we come

[Unknown8]: official

[Unknown7]: so

[Unknown8]: is publication of cases than we used to have

[Unknown8]: um because

[Unknown7]: it has church

[Unknown8]: judges now supply the text of their

[Unknown8]: judgment which is then usually but not always made available online so you can

[Unknown7]: that was

[Unknown8]: access

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: it directly so now particular say the

[Unknown8]: uk supreme court for example now publishes its own judgments on its own website

[Unknown7]: it said she basically worked on it is a different

[Unknown8]: with a presh

[Unknown8]: summary about why this is important for non

[Unknown7]: summary about why this is

[Unknown7]: don't

[Unknown8]: lawyers to understand as well

[Unknown7]: as well

[Unknown8]: i always worry that that's what the

[Unknown7]: down the street

[Unknown8]: students going to read but it's um

[Unknown8]: that's really different

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: that idea that the the the court itself is

[Unknown7]: cell

[Unknown8]: determining

[Unknown8]: who's reading or

[Unknown7]: speaking

[Unknown8]: want how you should read it but also determine the text that gets put out

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: is very new and it is more like than a kind of an official state text

[Unknown8]: still not

[Unknown7]: school

[Unknown8]: legislation in the same way

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: but it is day text you definitely do have a shift on that it's there's

[Unknown7]: that's more accessibility

[Unknown8]: even more accessibility to the text

[Unknown8]: in the you know when you

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: printed something okay yeah you printed it and you could read it but

[Unknown7]: read

[Unknown8]: it was still in a book that was separate to whatever you were doing

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: if i'm doing something online

[Unknown8]: i'm looking at an online text and i'm writing something and you know whatever my

[Unknown7]: online that no

[Unknown8]: web processing

[Unknown8]: software is control c control via now i'm literally i can just use the judge's

[Unknown7]: like some told he told me

[Unknown8]: words

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: and they're the words that the judge officially wrote

[Unknown7]: right d

[Unknown8]: dave to be put on the website which i can now use so that's going

[Unknown7]: that me

[Unknown8]: to be in one it's similar you've got a more textual approach to the sources in one

[Unknown7]: you want

[Unknown8]: sense it's different because now i know that i'm not saying what the person

[Unknown8]: sitting in court thought the judge said

[Unknown8]: i'm now repeating exactly what the judge

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: wanted to say

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: which may give it more authority

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: in a sense because if we're thinking about the judge as the person

[Unknown8]: who is

[Unknown7]: is ba

[Unknown8]: making or establishing the law being able to use their precise words

[Unknown8]: might be more

[Unknown7]: what books

[Unknown8]: important than it was three hundred four hundred years ago because you couldn't do

[Unknown8]: that then partly

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: because the printing press the prin pre word also because we reported stuff in

[Unknown8]: french and then everyone's actually speaking in english that's

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: just a weird historical artifact of lawyers

[Unknown7]: well and then you're getting things thirty years ago or thirty

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: years later and who knows what changes in that time right

[Unknown8]: what exactly why you'd hurt the lawyer

[Unknown7]: like you can't you can't go back and ask right like

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: at that point someone's probably passed away the person who said it

[Unknown8]: yeah yeah i mean the non lawyers really struggle they they're not going to know

[Unknown8]: what's going on the lawyers probably can because they'll of course have access to

[Unknown8]: kind of networks of people to talk to they'll find out what's happening but a non

[Unknown7]: and

[Unknown8]: lawyer purchasing a law book is probably not going to

[Unknown7]: are we looking

[Unknown8]: fully understand it or be aware of where it fits with everything

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: i still think a non lawyer purchasing a law book isn't going to understand things

[Unknown8]: but

[Unknown7]: you're right

[Unknown8]: they'll be up to date in misunderstanding rather than just behind the times and

[Unknown8]: also misunderstanding because the legal text is not like most other texts in terms

[Unknown8]: of the way you read it i think

[Unknown8]: it's it it's

[Unknown7]: can you elaborate on that yeah

[Unknown8]: yeah so legal texts they're

[Unknown7]: text book

[Unknown8]: mostly written to justify what's happening

[Unknown8]: to other lawyers particularly at the appellate level because

[Unknown8]: they're the people who are going to have to read this and use it later

[Unknown7]: is there people do

[Unknown8]: there i mean there's a countervailing movement in cases involving families where

[Unknown8]: the judge also wants to speak to the litigants to explain this is

[Unknown7]: this is one

[Unknown8]: why i have done this

[Unknown8]: but particularly when you're trying to extract

[Unknown8]: the legal principle that's often very technical it'll be about well here's what i

[Unknown7]: we put good school something that technical in human world what they say i can see

[Unknown8]: think about case a and case c and y there in fact case b is stronger and i should

[Unknown7]: why they fun being stronger than them

[Unknown8]: look at that and i don't think a non lawyer cares about that

[Unknown8]: but you develop an understanding of this is how you read this kind of thing and

[Unknown7]: but

[Unknown8]: use it and explain

[Unknown7]: and explained what skills develop

[Unknown8]: it is one of the skills that you develop in your law degree

[Unknown8]: whether that's your

[Unknown8]: first degree or whether that's law school um that you spend your

[Unknown7]: thats your recipe with about

[Unknown7]: spend your money you

[Unknown8]: time reading those texts and trying to understand okay so

[Unknown7]: i said this is why

[Unknown8]: this is if i read this case this is what i understood now i comm

[Unknown7]: now it

[Unknown8]: a case where a judge then

[Unknown8]: referred to that case how did he talk about it or she talk about that case and

[Unknown7]: the person

[Unknown8]: then i'll

[Unknown7]: there was

[Unknown8]: start to understand how i should have understood that case and certainly the first

[Unknown8]: time ever i read a case i got it completely wrong didn't understand at all what i

[Unknown8]: was doing i got sent some prereading already i thought i thought i understood this

[Unknown8]: no no utterly ignorant

[Unknown8]: and i think that's fine realizing your ignorance before you start is probably a

[Unknown8]: good thing

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: but they worry about this with the printing press they worry

[Unknown7]: w

[Unknown8]: that people who aren't

[Unknown7]: one way

[Unknown8]: lawyers will get hold of law books and make bad arguments or

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: start thinking they're legally entitled to things that they are not

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: and you still get i mean

[Unknown7]: oh this will hold up in court yes

[Unknown8]: yeah exactly and so they think they can litigate and they think they can argue for

[Unknown8]: themselves

[Unknown7]: so

[Unknown8]: or they think they can do

[Unknown8]: something and then if the other person challenges it they'll lose you know the

[Unknown7]: give something but then

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: the person who challenged it will lose that actually they probably won't they

[Unknown8]: probably knew what they were doing

[Unknown8]: and you see you still see that you get the you kind of get the

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: active misinformation being circulated on the internet about this kind of thing

[Unknown8]: and you

[Unknown7]: have you

[Unknown8]: to some extent you see that as well so he says something

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: like you see see here like the free men of of the realm or whatever it is that

[Unknown8]: people talk about so doesn't the its like absolutely legal gibberish

[Unknown7]: i was just about to ask about in in america they call themselves sovereign

[Unknown7]: citizens right

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: and that yes

[Unknown7]: and they go in

[Unknown8]: absolutely gibberish

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown7]: yeah absolutely yeah i was like i'm like ah this sounds familiar um yeah

[Unknown8]: yes and that

[Unknown7]: yeah it doesn't like i'm like sitting there and i'm like i don't know ex like

[Unknown7]: obviously they're quoting more laws than i know but i'm like that that can't be

[Unknown7]: right you know

[Unknown8]: it really

[Unknown8]: at one point they went back to magna carter there's all the legal historians look

[Unknown8]: i go it really doesn't say that it really really doesn't um oh we had one in the

[Unknown8]: uk i think it was in the news where someone tried to say that

[Unknown7]: say plus they were they

[Unknown8]: because they were they come to like free man of the of the realm or something

[Unknown7]: something they would wanted to believe is

[Unknown8]: they weren't required to close their business during a covid lockdown they're

[Unknown8]: thinking

[Unknown8]: they had this provision of magna kart you

[Unknown7]: the doctor

[Unknown8]: went to luth that it doesn't say anything about this at all i mean just just if

[Unknown8]: you'd actually even non you had read that

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: there are no words in there connected to the thing you are talking about

[Unknown7]: oh man

[Unknown8]: i mean that happens you get that

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: circulation you get it at various times in different ways

[Unknown8]: we get that now and it's so like on the internet you would have seen kind of

[Unknown7]: oh we talk about nine six

[Unknown8]: pamphlet literature

[Unknown7]: the tree

[Unknown8]: in the seventeenth century that may well have done something very similar

[Unknown8]: in the seventeenth century that may well have done something very similar

[Unknown7]: s a lot

[Unknown8]: or and particularly in the seventeenth century they'll try and say well okay you

[Unknown8]: might be able to tell me what the english common

[Unknown8]: law says but there's also the law of god and the law of god is higher

[Unknown7]: probably say bus

[Unknown7]: oh yeah what i do i i have to buy like

[Unknown8]: and what i'm doing is okay under that so you can't tell me off and then you start

[Unknown8]: getting into

[Unknown7]: again

[Unknown8]: these interesting jurisprudential legal theory theological waters about the

[Unknown8]: relationship between secular law and divine law which whenever you have a secular

[Unknown8]: judge adjudicating it you'll be shocked to realize that the secular law is always

[Unknown8]: completely compatible with the divine law and that you can use the secular law to

[Unknown8]: understand what you should be doing and so shove it with all these divine law

[Unknown8]: based arguments because they're just embarrassing thank you

[Unknown8]: which is normal i mean that's what you would expect if you had a non

[Unknown8]: religious judge deciding case

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: where someone's going to bring in a religious argument against secular law

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: unless your secular law somehow recognizes religious

[Unknown7]: reg

[Unknown8]: law which it does in some countries but not in england

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown7]: oh that's uh so and let me uh so i'm just i want to clarify some of the things you

[Unknown7]: said and see make sure i'm tracking when you talk about

[Unknown7]: these notebooks that they're writing down and the they notes that they're taking

[Unknown7]: is that kind of the

[Unknown7]: precursor to like the modern day opinions that are written by judges

[Unknown8]: okay so the most of them we've got

[Unknown8]: are actually written by lawyers who aren't

[Unknown7]: we got back is five

[Unknown7]: four

[Unknown8]: judges so they

[Unknown7]: sunday

[Unknown8]: are more the judges speaking in court

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: and the lawyer will write down some form of version of what they thought the judge

[Unknown8]: was saying now that might be trying

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: to take it for bat him

[Unknown7]: um that

[Unknown8]: that happens more once they've invented shorthand which is

[Unknown7]: which is a

[Unknown8]: kind of just before the middle of the seventeenth century people start using

[Unknown7]: five four

[Unknown8]: shorthanded so you can actually start taking things down more or less for batum

[Unknown8]: otherwise

[Unknown7]: what do you watch

[Unknown8]: it's a summary um this is what i understood he was saying some judges do write

[Unknown8]: down

[Unknown8]: and keep their own notes

[Unknown8]: with

[Unknown7]: with no

[Unknown8]: varying degrees of reliability and thoroughness

[Unknown8]: so some

[Unknown7]: su

[Unknown8]: notebooks are very detailed

[Unknown8]: some are

[Unknown7]: some

[Unknown8]: much less something i was looking at there's a huntington library in california is

[Unknown8]: wonderful for various reasons but one thing

[Unknown8]: they've got is they've got papers of an english family who had a lord chancellor

[Unknown7]: what they pick up

[Unknown8]: one of the highest judges as a member

[Unknown7]: i think some doesn't

[Unknown8]: and then his son doesn't become an official judge but does sit in certain courts

[Unknown8]: on occasion and they in these cases clearly just kind of

[Unknown8]: scribbled some notes on the cause list which is the names of the parties in a very

[Unknown7]: swing some note of

[Unknown8]: brief summary about what the case is about like two to or three words and they're

[Unknown8]: just scribbling some notes on those which are utterly incomprehensible unless you

[Unknown8]: could find something else about the case so those are not the opinions but you do

[Unknown8]: also see sometimes for big cases it's kind of like the high

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: profile ones you might find people actually preparing a full speech we don't have

[Unknown8]: many of those left but we do have some and those are

[Unknown7]: those are very

[Unknown8]: very much a modern judicial opinion or

[Unknown7]: got you

[Unknown8]: indeed council's opinion they they have

[Unknown8]: perfectly the same thing particularly yes state trial type things so

[Unknown7]: hopefully i take

[Unknown7]: like the edmund cook

[Unknown8]: edward cook one's yeah

[Unknown7]: edward cook excuse me

[Unknown8]: yeah yeah that's fine there's a there's a big one in the sixteen

[Unknown7]: sixty th

[Unknown8]: hundred thirty seconds about whether the king can raise

[Unknown7]: great

[Unknown8]: taxes for defense

[Unknown8]: essentially without going through parliament and one

[Unknown7]: essentially

[Unknown7]: i wonder

[Unknown8]: of the judges who says

[Unknown7]: site

[Unknown8]: no so he's

[Unknown8]: dissenting um

[Unknown7]: sent

[Unknown8]: he clearly produces a text

[Unknown7]: text

[Unknown8]: of his own opinion

[Unknown8]: which he

[Unknown7]: what do you think

[Unknown8]: then sends to the king

[Unknown8]: it also

[Unknown7]: sure that went over well

[Unknown8]: yeah it also purely coincidentally circulates quite quickly in manuscript

[Unknown7]: you

[Unknown8]: to other people who are buying copies of it there's loads of copies of it around

[Unknown7]: hmm

[Unknown8]: so it's also pr exercise yeah he clearly wrote down his own speech and there are

[Unknown8]: other

[Unknown7]: public

[Unknown8]: judges in that case who also did that and you can see they're really well

[Unknown8]: researched they're very thorough

[Unknown7]: so bye

[Unknown8]: sometimes

[Unknown7]: some

[Unknown8]: we're not sure is that for

[Unknown7]: is that

[Unknown8]: public dissemination or is that

[Unknown8]: literally just so that they understand what they're going to do and say

[Unknown7]: that literally just so

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: they do decide to write down what they're going to say in advance it's like this

[Unknown8]: very thorough speaking notes

[Unknown8]: is not a bad thing to have access to

[Unknown7]: right in in a high profile case yeah absolutely

[Unknown8]: our profile case we know people were in court for this case there's a paying

[Unknown8]: audience coming into court to watch these cases

[Unknown8]: they don't sort of have to pay but

[Unknown7]: pa

[Unknown8]: people kind of pay to get the best seats and things it's called

[Unknown7]: i did not know that happened okay

[Unknown8]: is entertainment yeah it really did the price of seats early seventeenth century

[Unknown8]: price of

[Unknown8]: seats for interesting high profile public case about the same

[Unknown7]: see were see high first off

[Unknown7]: i

[Unknown8]: as the cost of a ticket to go and see shakespeare in the theater

[Unknown8]: which one is more beneficial for you i leave that up in the air

[Unknown7]: i do yeah right right

[Unknown8]: the judges are public actors and they know they're public actors and i

[Unknown8]: suspect

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: if

[Unknown8]: you'd find your trial judges today i think you probably find kind of preparing in

[Unknown7]: it you explanative to say

[Unknown7]: very

[Unknown8]: a fairly high profile case we're probably preparing what

[Unknown7]: and

[Unknown8]: they were going to say very carefully

[Unknown8]: before

[Unknown7]: four

[Unknown8]: pronouncing i mean in even in the the nineteen fifties we had a judge in england

[Unknown7]: e the nineteens at a church in england who was waiting about the back who would

[Unknown8]: who was complaining about the fact people were making reports of things he said

[Unknown7]: think the f it and says

[Unknown8]: in cases

[Unknown7]: increases where i

[Unknown8]: where he hadn't gone out of court to think about what

[Unknown7]: about

[Unknown8]: he was going to say so lawyers come in they present their arguments and he just

[Unknown8]: gives and off the off the top of his head essentially

[Unknown8]: responds to that and then someone writes it down it gets printed and circulated

[Unknown7]: the its like di get certainly so the people cited back to it

[Unknown8]: and then people site it back to him and he's complaining about this no you

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: can't treat that as a serious exercise of me setting out the law in the same ways

[Unknown8]: when i go away

[Unknown8]: and i spend some time writing it down as a full text which i then read out in

[Unknown7]: ways twenty whites

[Unknown8]: court

[Unknown8]: which is a very different exercise i suspect we don't have in the seventeenth

[Unknown8]: century or sixteenth century even before that

[Unknown7]: before that update some some

[Unknown8]: what we have today which is sometimes in some cases the judges pre circulate their

[Unknown7]: percept like that

[Unknown8]: text

[Unknown7]: text

[Unknown8]: when they

[Unknown8]: made their decision to the lawyers in the case

[Unknown7]: but they made them food

[Unknown7]: i

[Unknown8]: confidentially asking them just to

[Unknown7]: to

[Unknown8]: make sure they haven't said something incorrect or misrepresented what was

[Unknown7]: same

[Unknown8]: said

[Unknown8]: as a qu i sort of a quality control measure

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: which does

[Unknown7]: there's

[Unknown8]: happen also now we know judges talk to each other before they make the decisions

[Unknown8]: as well and circulate amongst themselves

[Unknown7]: over dinner

[Unknown8]: their opinions

[Unknown7]: yeah possibly

[Unknown8]: poss mean we we hear about you know sup court

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: judges who have dinner together

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: we have two supreme courts in the uk who are in fact married to each other so i

[Unknown8]: suspect they do talk about these things overnight i don't know

[Unknown8]: maybe they leave work at work and talk about much

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: more interesting things when they get home

[Unknown7]: oh man

[Unknown8]: but you would have that maybe but also they'd literally do they say well this is

[Unknown8]: what i'm thinking about saying and they'll pass copies to each other

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: and people don't have a choice about whether they want to just say well i

[Unknown7]: so about

[Unknown8]: agree with that or i'm gonna put my own spin on it or something similar

[Unknown7]: uh so i mean you mentioned hobbs and leviathan i'm also interested in the keeps

[Unknown7]: coming up it's not just that it's a community there's this appeal to like this

[Unknown7]: learned and educated community and the importance of reason

[Unknown7]: what are kind of the roots of that what

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: kind of form that community was that out of necessity was there a particular work

[Unknown7]: or or event that kind of said

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: oh we need this

[Unknown8]: well this is a very it's a very

[Unknown7]: suppose

[Unknown8]: european phenomenon it's not an

[Unknown7]: school

[Unknown8]: english peculiar

[Unknown7]: she was

[Unknown8]: phenomenon this idea that you have kind of learned lawyers who are deciding

[Unknown8]: cases

[Unknown7]: it

[Unknown8]: in

[Unknown7]: any

[Unknown8]: england what seems

[Unknown7]: seems to

[Unknown8]: to have happened is that there is an

[Unknown7]: there was an idea about

[Unknown8]: idea that the king must provide justice

[Unknown7]: jesus

[Unknown8]: that that's a

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: job of a king they swear

[Unknown7]: this f

[Unknown8]: to that in the coronation of they still swear

[Unknown7]: still sw

[Unknown8]: to that in the coronation oath in this country

[Unknown7]: i

[Unknown8]: and so

[Unknown7]: i sort

[Unknown8]: in a sense people are going to come to the king with problems and expect a

[Unknown8]: resolution

[Unknown8]: there's

[Unknown7]: there

[Unknown8]: also the position of

[Unknown7]: position of

[Unknown8]: the king kind of within the feudal system of land holding in the medieval period

[Unknown8]: where

[Unknown7]: result

[Unknown8]: ultimately people have got their land from the king or from someone

[Unknown7]: accessible

[Unknown8]: who got it from the king or from someone who's from someone and pro someone

[Unknown7]: that's what you say

[Unknown8]: and tell in these kind of long chains and that means the ultimate decision maker

[Unknown8]: about

[Unknown8]: problems within that structure should be the king

[Unknown7]: for like structure

[Unknown8]: kings of are busy people they have other things they want to be doing with their

[Unknown8]: time so they delegate this kind of stuff a lot of it not

[Unknown7]: no

[Unknown8]: always all of it because it's quite good

[Unknown8]: pr and sometimes they do want to actually do it but

[Unknown7]: like yours

[Unknown7]: but

[Unknown8]: they delegate a lot of it particularly you know revenue type stuff

[Unknown7]: see

[Unknown8]: i

[Unknown7]: um

[Unknown8]: maybe quite a lot of criminal things and so you

[Unknown7]: and so you get one

[Unknown8]: get royal officials making these kind of decisions and it looks to us in

[Unknown7]: a

[Unknown8]: england like these royal

[Unknown7]: oil

[Unknown8]: officials are

[Unknown8]: originally sort of civil servants

[Unknown7]: our originally says

[Unknown8]: who gradually

[Unknown7]: watch

[Unknown8]: become

[Unknown8]: specialized in areas that involve

[Unknown7]: specialize

[Unknown7]: areas of home

[Unknown8]: dispute

[Unknown7]: just res

[Unknown8]: resolution type tasks

[Unknown8]: and emerge

[Unknown7]: good

[Unknown8]: as judges

[Unknown8]: and

[Unknown7]: how you

[Unknown8]: they're not just what we would think

[Unknown7]: we

[Unknown8]: of it just they have a revenue function

[Unknown8]: when they

[Unknown8]: go around the country deciding cases they're also they're representing the king

[Unknown7]: what they fun to decided case that was

[Unknown8]: and all his kind of

[Unknown8]: majesty and power they take over the local government while they're there um but

[Unknown7]: not just i

[Unknown8]: they are

[Unknown7]: but they are specials and have some

[Unknown8]: specialized and have some kind of learning that other people don't have

[Unknown8]: un incontinent eur about that's getting linked increasingly with a revived

[Unknown8]: tradition of studying roman texts on law

[Unknown7]: rob excise

[Unknown8]: and

[Unknown7]: i was

[Unknown8]: then also religious texts on law which

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: had been produced by the catholic church at the same time and there's a lot of

[Unknown8]: overlap in personnel here so some of the early english judges are bishops

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: or clergymen in some way so they may have well they probably do have some access

[Unknown7]: some

[Unknown8]: to this tradition you know the

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: earliest treatise on english law we would probably say which

[Unknown7]: place

[Unknown8]: is called glanville named after the person people sometimes think is the author

[Unknown8]: clearly refers to this roman tradition as well it's got passages in there which

[Unknown8]: are basically lifted from texts coming from

[Unknown7]: school

[Unknown8]: continental europe so this

[Unknown7]: this idea that it

[Unknown8]: idea then of judges and lawyers as this kind of professional

[Unknown7]: special

[Unknown8]: elites learned community who have the expertise

[Unknown7]: seems to

[Unknown8]: to resolve cases and the

[Unknown7]: and the exp

[Unknown8]: expertise to provide justice

[Unknown7]: just

[Unknown8]: um

[Unknown7]: oh

[Unknown8]: is one

[Unknown7]: let's

[Unknown8]: that's trans european and in england yet that mixture the civil

[Unknown7]: seven six five

[Unknown8]: service kind of practice

[Unknown7]: just

[Unknown8]: approach combined with the kind of intellectual

[Unknown7]: to

[Unknown8]: european idea about justice and elite and learned groups coming together

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: and getting this learned profession the

[Unknown8]: peculiarity is the learning becomes uniquely english

[Unknown7]: yeah i was

[Unknown8]: and

[Unknown7]: i isn't

[Unknown8]: isn't so closely tied to continental europe

[Unknown7]: work

[Unknown8]: as you have in italy or france or spain in that sense

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown7]: so and i think that leads so obviously like england of takes sums from continental

[Unknown7]: europe but uh the impact on the world i'm sure you know you have colonization by

[Unknown7]: other european powers but obviously britain was the the dominant imperial power

[Unknown7]: for quite some time what has been that worldwide effect of

[Unknown7]: common law in english common law

[Unknown8]: what's it's huge for countries that were what most countries that were part of the

[Unknown7]: oh

[Unknown8]: former british empire

[Unknown7]: um

[Unknown8]: you think about

[Unknown7]: things like that

[Unknown8]: it and you've got common

[Unknown8]: law systems derived from that english system

[Unknown7]: common assistance to you

[Unknown8]: on every continent that's inhabited and that

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: has man to avoid it but you've got north america with a kind of exception is for

[Unknown8]: louisiana and very clear exception for

[Unknown8]: quebec but the rest of north america definitely common law you've got belies in

[Unknown7]: quebec west america

[Unknown8]: south america

[Unknown7]: like america

[Unknown8]: caribbean countries

[Unknown8]: we could be thinking nigeria for africa quite a few other african countries

[Unknown8]: um

[Unknown8]: israel would be a good example

[Unknown8]: israel would be a good example

[Unknown7]: it's right

[Unknown8]: heading towards the middle

[Unknown7]: least

[Unknown8]: east australasia

[Unknown8]: australia new zealand definitely india so

[Unknown7]: lazy seeing de

[Unknown7]: yes really

[Unknown8]: really really heavily populated country

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: india although downtown like singapore which is

[Unknown7]: she

[Unknown8]: much much smaller but also a common law jurisdiction

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: so there's a lot of the world that is

[Unknown7]: he in that sense o

[Unknown8]: in that sense has it legal system coming from the common law tradition what that

[Unknown8]: does not mean now is that the rules are the same in all these places

[Unknown7]: what i know me

[Unknown7]: right right

[Unknown8]: they have very much not

[Unknown8]: um what you tend to have is

[Unknown8]: often

[Unknown7]: what do you how you opposed to texts what about even inno said yes what school

[Unknown8]: you don't have the authoritative texts although england in the nineteenth century

[Unknown8]: was much more willing to send out a code on an error of law to a colony but not

[Unknown7]: what did you say back but you have color

[Unknown8]: have it in england because we don't need it in england but our river in the

[Unknown8]: colonies yes of course they need those so you

[Unknown7]: right right yes

[Unknown8]: yeah like codified criminal law in quite a lot of the british empire but

[Unknown7]: okay

[Unknown8]: you don't get a codification of criminal law in england

[Unknown7]: um

[Unknown8]: you get codified

[Unknown7]: you got

[Unknown8]: trust law in india we don't have that in england either

[Unknown8]: so you

[Unknown7]: so you have

[Unknown8]: have that um

[Unknown7]: of less you go

[Unknown8]: less legislative law than in certain civilian jurisdictions definitely

[Unknown8]: and usually

[Unknown7]: you choose to respect for colorful

[Unknown8]: a sort of greater respect for and almost powerful judges

[Unknown8]: within the system

[Unknown7]: within the system

[Unknown8]: i mean

[Unknown7]: but bus

[Unknown8]: that's that's really obvious talking to an american obviously can you think of the

[Unknown8]: u supreme courts but you could also think about say the indian supreme court which

[Unknown8]: is a really powerful body

[Unknown7]: i

[Unknown8]: when it wants to be

[Unknown8]: in india in terms of imposing burdens on the government and saying you must do

[Unknown8]: this

[Unknown8]: and

[Unknown7]: uh rate of willingness

[Unknown8]: greater willingness typically to

[Unknown7]: to

[Unknown8]: i was about to

[Unknown7]: what's

[Unknown8]: say defer to the to the judges but that's probably not right

[Unknown8]: it's more leave certain things to judges that

[Unknown7]: one so

[Unknown8]: politicians aren't too bothered about dealing with contracts

[Unknown7]: politicians do lo

[Unknown7]: person

[Unknown8]: injury quite a lot of property laws

[Unknown8]: injury quite a lot of property laws

[Unknown8]: most politicians aren't that bothered about these things most of the time

[Unknown7]: what what's interesting is those things have tremendous

[Unknown7]: impact though on

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: everyday people yeah

[Unknown8]: yeah they do every day um you know you you start your load say right you well you

[Unknown8]: wents shops yesterday that was contract law there's a contract law problem for the

[Unknown8]: year you're definitely living somewhere there's your property law

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: and if you're not living somewhere there's also a property law issue there

[Unknown8]: potentially

[Unknown8]: you're

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: crossing the street the fact someone hasn't hit you is possibly because they don't

[Unknown8]: want to be sued for hitting you with the car or whatever

[Unknown7]: hard

[Unknown8]: it might be so yeah it's it's

[Unknown7]: easy

[Unknown8]: incredibly important

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: doesn't get the same kind of headlines most of the time though

[Unknown8]: you do

[Unknown7]: what do you

[Unknown8]: get legislation on it but less

[Unknown8]: and so in those in the common law

[Unknown7]: people learn

[Unknown8]: countries around the world very often if you're trying to

[Unknown8]: work out what the law is of india or singapore

[Unknown7]: what was gonna do

[Unknown7]: see

[Unknown8]: or whatever it

[Unknown7]: that

[Unknown8]: might be you would be looking

[Unknown7]: would be

[Unknown8]: at what the judges have said in that jurisdiction

[Unknown7]: seven six

[Unknown8]: about what they think the law

[Unknown7]: eight

[Unknown8]: is sometimes

[Unknown7]: one

[Unknown8]: also

[Unknown7]: that

[Unknown8]: looking at other common

[Unknown8]: law jurisdictions so it's not that they're totally

[Unknown7]: a couple jurisdiction

[Unknown7]: person six

[Unknown8]: sealed off from one another you know you can look now

[Unknown7]: so

[Unknown8]: in english judges

[Unknown7]: just

[Unknown8]: particularly at this kind of supreme court level

[Unknown7]: that

[Unknown8]: do sometimes in

[Unknown7]: some type of cases

[Unknown8]: certain types of cases look at australian or new zealand case law or

[Unknown7]: school

[Unknown8]: canadian case law

[Unknown7]: school

[Unknown8]: american less so i'm afraid because america's have

[Unknown7]: now that

[Unknown8]: departed a bit more recently yeah

[Unknown8]: and yeah we had so is it the last ever

[Unknown7]: the lalas can be constitution

[Unknown8]: blasphemy prosecution in england which is in the late nineteen seventies

[Unknown8]: one of the

[Unknown8]: judges in the house of laws which was the time the highest court as says i wish we

[Unknown7]: let me school

[Unknown8]: had the law like it was in india so he

[Unknown7]: six

[Unknown8]: actually looks across through the practice in india that's much less common

[Unknown8]: i have quite a lot

[Unknown7]: fun of c

[Unknown8]: of singaporean students and

[Unknown7]: i

[Unknown8]: there's an

[Unknown8]: era of law that's been developing in england and singapore has very clear said we

[Unknown7]: that's i su in england s are thirty percent we are not up to

[Unknown8]: are not going to do what england has done in this regard we're

[Unknown7]: w

[Unknown8]: sticking with the older tradition which we think is appropriate for us

[Unknown7]: h

[Unknown8]: but they're looking and they're saying well maybe we could

[Unknown8]: just like

[Unknown7]: just like

[Unknown8]: we're aware of what was happening in singapore so there's that that ability to

[Unknown8]: talk across

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: what you'd

[Unknown8]: think of was kind of legal boundaries say well yes

[Unknown7]: what do you think of is my

[Unknown8]: they're boundaries but they're decidedly permeable

[Unknown7]: yes that i

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: there's that possibility of talking to each other

[Unknown7]: the and do

[Unknown7]: do the english principles and precedents from earlier before the jurisdictions

[Unknown7]: were set up those traveled and

[Unknown8]: those traveled yet

[Unknown7]: those kind of form the foundation

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: do they do they look at

[Unknown7]: earlier english law in their jurisdictions

[Unknown8]: to my knowledge the response that is probably the same as in england which is if

[Unknown8]: they really have to

[Unknown7]: gotcha

[Unknown8]: you often don't want to be looking back at the older ones because

[Unknown8]: they're harder to understand because the system was different so actually

[Unknown7]: because they're harder to

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: interpreting them correctly is difficult

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: and legal stories like me occasionally have a bit

[Unknown7]: available

[Unknown8]: of upset about this when you see someone trying to use an old case and just

[Unknown8]: clearly not understanding it

[Unknown8]: but they are more difficult to use whereas it's often easier to use a more recent

[Unknown8]: decision

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: and of course if you're dealing to change social circumstances or something you

[Unknown8]: probably don't want to go get her

[Unknown7]: how

[Unknown8]: we have a seventeenth century case yes

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: that's lovely but that was in a context where this is really not what we think is

[Unknown8]: acceptable anymore so let's move on and look at something that's a bit more modern

[Unknown8]: but in theory yes i

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: mean there has been an area of

[Unknown8]: private law called either unjust enrichment or

[Unknown8]: restitution which has really grown up from the second half of the twentieth

[Unknown7]: constitution to really

[Unknown8]: century onwards and the foundational case for that which does get referred to

[Unknown8]: quite frequently in judgments across the common world is from the one thousand

[Unknown8]: nine hundred sixty seconds

[Unknown7]: wow

[Unknown8]: so that one does does still get mentioned quite often

[Unknown8]: but if we were

[Unknown7]: it would

[Unknown8]: dealing with something typically like real property law it's very unusual to be

[Unknown8]: looking that far back

[Unknown7]: rights

[Unknown8]: and contract law changed a lot in in the eight nineteenth century so you don't

[Unknown8]: typically look at much before the nineteenth century but for place in the british

[Unknown8]: empire

[Unknown7]: there they should probably

[Unknown8]: they were still part of the british empire in the nineteenth century so they they

[Unknown8]: in that sense it's common stock from the nineteenth century

[Unknown8]: before the country separated

[Unknown7]: right i mean as a great example is what you said earlier right you don't want to

[Unknown7]: look too far back because then you end up having a blasphemy case in one thousand

[Unknown7]: nine hundred seventy seconds which is

[Unknown7]: especially like if you could imagine someone bring a blasphemy case now it'd be

[Unknown7]: very it'd be very odd right

[Unknown8]: yeah yeah

[Unknown7]: in our society

[Unknown8]: happily it's abolished in the uk so you can't bring vast

[Unknown8]: be prosecution in the uk but you can in some parts of the common law world

[Unknown7]: okay anybody marni

[Unknown7]: really

[Unknown8]: i mean it's a running issue in pakistan which has a sort of hybrid common law

[Unknown8]: islamic law jurisdiction

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: and some other places as well but if you've got a very strong religious tradition

[Unknown8]: it becomes less odd in those

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: contexts but if you're dealing with the sort of the global

[Unknown7]: the global

[Unknown8]: north type

[Unknown8]: jurisdictions and are common los we'd find that very odd because

[Unknown7]: ju

[Unknown7]: use i

[Unknown8]: whatever your place on the political spectrum you would find

[Unknown7]: you find that

[Unknown8]: that kind of infringement of speech rights to be an unusual thing to do

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown7]: yeah that makes sense the uh so i want to be

[Unknown7]: respectful of your time and you know kind as we wrap up here what would you leave

[Unknown8]: two seven

[Unknown7]: for our audiences kind of the big takeaway that they need to understand about

[Unknown7]: english common law

[Unknown8]: oh that's really tricky i'm tempted to say the devil is in the details oh to cop

[Unknown8]: out

[Unknown8]: it's really

[Unknown8]: interesting

[Unknown7]: interesting

[Unknown8]: and important

[Unknown7]: come in fields

[Unknown8]: but

[Unknown7]: bos circle

[Unknown8]: it's also complex and it's a complex it's a tradition more than in some senses is

[Unknown8]: more than a law

[Unknown7]: more

[Unknown8]: it's a

[Unknown8]: way of doing things and and practices which which generates law but it's

[Unknown7]: it's a way things

[Unknown8]: we think of law in that hobbesian way

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: and that may well not be the right way to think about common law that we should

[Unknown8]: think about law itself as

[Unknown7]: so

[Unknown8]: a different kind of thing

[Unknown8]: than what we stereotypically think of as legislation

[Unknown7]: yeah it's so it's interesting you say that because you've talked a couple times

[Unknown7]: about how they pull out principles right

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: but when you talk about it being more how we do things and that changes over time

[Unknown7]: could you even call those principles maybe customs are there like there's a manner

[Unknown7]: of doing things and this is how we do things

[Unknown8]: yeah you can call them customs i have to be cautious about that because there are

[Unknown8]: technical rules about customs and they

[Unknown7]: get

[Unknown8]: are in english law they were like can you show that this was done in eleven eighty

[Unknown8]: nine

[Unknown8]: and it's not that of course

[Unknown7]: right right right right

[Unknown8]: it's more more the anthropologist sense of a custom

[Unknown7]: yes that's what i meant yeah

[Unknown8]: of a practice yeah and if you think of it like that yeah yes absolutely and some

[Unknown8]: of it clearly is that you think about you know you learn

[Unknown7]: love

[Unknown8]: the way to speak in

[Unknown8]: front of judges you learn the way to read your texts you

[Unknown7]: he points that would be

[Unknown7]: you were

[Unknown8]: we still have a kind of apprenticeship almost training

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: tradition for the legal profession that you become a trainee of a more senior

[Unknown7]: see

[Unknown8]: practitioner you learn from them by watching them do

[Unknown8]: you can't learn it just from books you you can be a kardashian going to law school

[Unknown8]: and reading all the text but you in england you can't practice until you've got

[Unknown8]: some kind of literally work experience it's that experience

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: that makes you the lawyer as much as the the reading

[Unknown7]: be

[Unknown8]: and the understanding from the textual

[Unknown7]: type business

[Unknown8]: tradition

[Unknown7]: i

[Unknown7]: i think that's a great summary of this entire thing and just understanding how

[Unknown7]: much work goes into it understanding the value of what

[Unknown7]: you bring to the table as a legal historian and it just makes so much sense that

[Unknown7]: you like uh

[Unknown7]: because it's so complex because it's all about the details you need to go back in

[Unknown7]: and dig around and you can find resources for the future right

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: or being like let's clarify what was actually happening here and is this really

[Unknown7]: what we want now which is also an important

[Unknown8]: yeah yeah indeed deaf definitely um

[Unknown8]: absolutely i'm much more in the closing off i think for quite a lot

[Unknown7]: yeah yes

[Unknown8]: of things other people might differ on that one

[Unknown7]: yeah that that all makes sense uh doctor uh ian williams thank you so much

[Unknown8]: where can he be dr

[Unknown7]: you know we'll put some links to some of your work but uh this has been tremendous

[Unknown7]: uh just i i've learned a lot uh not i mean one because you're a good teacher and

[Unknown7]: too because i didn't know anything about it so this has been really eye opening

[Unknown7]: for me so thank you so much for coming on

[Unknown8]: good oh well thank you thank you all very much