The Dearest Birth Right of the People of England: The Jury in the History of the Common Law

While much fundamental research in the recent past has been devoted to the criminal jury in England to 1800,there has been little work on the nineteenth century, and on the civil jury . This important study fills these obvious gaps in the literature. It also provides a re-assessment of standard issues such as jury lenity or equity, while raising questions about orthodoxies concerning the relationship of the jury to the development of laws of evidence. Moreover, re-assessment of the jury in nineteenth-century England rejects the thesis that juries were squeezed out by judges in favour of market principles. The book contributes a rounded picture of the jury as an institution, considering it in comparison to other modes of fact-finding, its development in both civil and criminal cases, and the significance, both practical and ideological, of its transplantation to North America and Scotland, while opening up new areas of investigation and research. Contributors: John W Cairns Richard D Friedman Joshua Getzler Roger D Groot Philip Handler Daffydd Jenkins Michael Lobban Grant McLeod Maureen Mulholland James C Oldham J R Pole David J Seipp

Table of Contents:
1. “The Dearest Birth Right of the People of England”: The Civil Jury in Modern Scottish Legal History JOHN W CAIRNS (Edinburgh) 2. Towards the Jury in Medieval Wales DAFYDD JENKINS (Aberystwyth) 3. Petit Larceny, Jury Lenity and Parliament ROGER D GROOT (Lexington) 4. The Jury in English Manorial Courts. MAUREEN MULHOLLAND (Manchester) 5. Jurors, Evidences and the Tempest of 1499 DAVID J SEIPP (Boston) 6. No Link: The Jury and the Origins of the Confrontation Right and the Hearsay Rule RICHARD D FRIEDMAN (Ann Arbor) 7. “A Quest of Thoughts”: Representation and Moral Agency in the Early Anglo-American Jury J R POLE (Oxford) 8. Jury Research in the English Reports in CD-ROM JAMES OLDHAM (Georgetown) 9. The Limits of Discretion: Forgery and the Jury at the Old Bailey, 1818–21 PHILIP HANDLER (Leicester) 10. The Strange Life of the English Civil Jury, 1837-1914 MICHAEL LOBBAN (London) 11. The Fate of the Civil Jury in Late Victorian England: Malicious Prosecution as a Test Case JOSHUA GETZLER (Oxford)

About the Author :
John W. Cairns is Professor of Legal History at the University of Edinburgh. Grant McLeod is a former Lecturer in Law at the University of Edinburgh.

Review :
This volume of eleven essays is an indispensable addition to the growing collection of work on the history of the jury. Spanning a thousand years of jury development, the book's chapters offer an array of new insights and discoveries by leading scholars of jury history.