Category Archives: Legal History
‘The Real Housewife of William Blackstone’
Julia Rudolph, ‘William Blackstone, Family Man: New Contexts in Gender, Jurisprudence, and Jamaica’, Law & History Review 1 (2026). William Blackstone is, of course, an omnipresent name for law students and law professors alike. At least once a week during the semester, I teach a Supreme Court opinion that cites the eighteenth-century English jurist’s writings […]
Ian Williams, ‘Precedent in Early-Modern Equity: The View from the Star Chamber’
ABSTRACT Precedent played an important role in theoretically one-off equitable interventions becoming regular, and equity becoming more law-like. However, the available sources limit our ability to understand the role of precedent in the Chancery in the key formative decades around 1600. This article uses the court of Star Chamber as a proxy for the other […]
Jake Stattel, ‘Love or Law: Viking Foundations of Medieval English Dispute Settlement’
ABSTRACT In prominent legal historical works, Michael Clanchy and Stephen D White constructed an important paradigm for medieval dispute settlement by adapting the phrase ‘law and love’ from the Anglo-Norman Leges Henrici Primi. Yet, rarely has this aphorism’s background been explored. This article argues that ‘love or law’ has roots in Viking-Age Scandinavia, where this […]
Jeffrey Mann, ‘The Leasehold World’
ABSTRACT The ideal of American fee simple property rests on a popular misconception. Many Americans often think of fee simple property in terms of absolute ownership. In reality, however, fee simple title has many similar features of a ‘public’ leasehold in practice, which has significant implications for understanding the relationship of private property ‘owners’ to […]
‘Chitty on Contracts: A Family Affair’
Many of us owe a lot to our dads, and Joseph Chitty Jr was no exception. This year, Chitty’s most famous work, now known as Chitty on Contracts, celebrated its 200th anniversary. But without Chitty’s father, Joseph Chitty Sr, this venerable contract law treatise might never have come into existence. Born in 1775, Chitty Sr […]
‘Without Regard to Principles of Conflict of Laws’
“The phrase ‘without regard to principles of conflict of laws” appears at the end of many choice-of-law clauses: ‘This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the United Kingdom without regard to its principles of conflict of law’ …” (more) [John Coyle, Transnational Litigation Blog, 22 September 2026]
Maggie Gardner, ‘The Common Roots but Exceptional Development of Forum Non Conveniens’
ABSTRACT This draft chapter for an edited volume on American exceptionalism attempts to demythologize the doctrine of forum non conveniens while also explaining its exceptional trajectory in the United States. First, the chapter clarifies that the doctrine only dates back to the mid-1800s – not the 1600s, as is often asserted. It shows how Scottish […]
‘Debunking the Seventeenth-Century “Roots” of Forum Non Conveniens’
Courts and commentators will sometimes assert that forum non conveniens is an ‘ancient common law doctrine’ that has ‘deep roots’ tracing back to the 1600s. As I recount in a forthcoming book chapter, those assertions all appear to trace back to a 1947 law review article and the three Scottish cases on which the author […]
Caitlin Burke, ‘From Publishing to Products: A History of Social Media Design and the Limits of Section 230’
ABSTRACT Waves of products liability litigation against Meta, TikTok, Snap, and YouTube are forcing courts to decide whether designed features are protected ‘publishing’ functions under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act or product-design choices subject to tort law. In the 2026 case of KGM v Meta Platforms, Inc, for example, a California jury found […]
‘Distinguishing the Historical Roots of Goodwill From Trademark Law’s Origins’
Barbara Lauriat, ‘Borrowing Goodwill’, 67 Boston College Law Review 1127 (2026). Trademark law in the United States requires use of a mark in commerce as the basis for both acquisition and infringement of exclusive rights. This requirement is justified, in part, as a way of focusing trademark on its core purpose – protecting the mark […]