Crime in the Year Books
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
1995
Editor(s)
Chantal Stebbings
ISBN
9781441155429
Publisher
Hambledon Press
Language
en-US
Abstract
'The miserable history of crime in England can be shortly told. Nothing worth-while was created. There is no achievement to trace.' With those words, Professor Milsom opened his chapter on 'Crime' in the first edition of his Historical Foundations of the Common Law. In thirteen preceding chapters, Professor Milsom explained the intricate development of substantive doctrines of property, contract and tort. In the last chapter, he said that he found nothing to explain, because nothing was developed. The reason was simple. Criminal proceedings did not permit the elaborate give-and-take of tentative special pleading between Serjeants and justices, the driving force of doctrinal development in other branches of law. In the final words of the chapter and of the book: 'Crime has never been the business of lawyers.'
Recommended Citation
David J. Seipp,
Crime in the Year Books
,
in
Law Reporting in England: Proceedings of the Eleventh British Legal History Conference
15
(Chantal Stebbings ed.,
1995).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/1837
