Law Liberty & Constitution Brief History Common

Throughout English history the rule of law and the preservation of liberty have been inseparable, and both are intrinsic to Englands constitution. This accessible and entertaining history traces the growth of the law from its beginnings in AngloSaxon times to the present day. It shows how the law evolved from a means of ensuring order and limiting feuds to become a supremely sophisticated dispenser of justice and the primary guardian of civil liberties. This development owed much to the English kings and their judiciary, who, in the twelfth century, forged a unified system of law predating that of any other European country from almost wholly AngloSaxon elements. Yet by the seventeenth century this royal offspring Oedipus Lex it could be called was capable of regicide. Since then the law has had a somewhat fractious relationship with that institution upon which the regal mantle of supreme power descended, Parliament. This book tells the story of the common law not merely by describing major developments but by concentrating on prominent personalities and decisive cases relating to the constitution, criminal jurisprudence, and civil liberties. It investigates the great constitutional conflicts, the rise of advocacy, and curious and important cases relating to slavery, insanity, obscenity, cannibalism, the death penalty, and miscarriages of justice. The book concludes by examining the extension of the law into the prosecution of war criminals and protection of universal... | Harry Potter Law, Liberty & the Constitution: A Brief History of the Common