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Legal History (Tripos)
The Legal History paper provides a general survey of changes in English legal institutions, principles and ideas from 1066. The law is rooted in historical sources, such as decided cases and statutes, and it has never stood still; therefore all lawyers, whether they know it or not, are constantly confronted by legal history.
- Institutions of the law; the types and sources of English law
The sources and literature of English law: mechanisms of law making; record, formularies, reports, treatises; precedent; legal education.
The leading institutional and procedural developments in the common law: the rise of the common law; the courts of common law, their origin, personnel and jurisdiction; writs and the forms of action; modes of proof; pleading; motions in banc; the review of decisions.
The conciliar courts, Chancery and Star Chamber; the growth of equity and its relation to the common law.
The ecclesiastical courts. - Obligations
Forms of action: praecipe writs; trespass vi et armis; trespass on the case.
Tort: customs of the realm; negligence, including an outline of developments to 1932.
Contract: covenant and debt; assumpsit for misfeasance, non-feasance, and debt; consideration; privity; the emergence of contractual ideas in the nineteenth century. - Criminal law
The history of criminal liability: criminal procedure; punishment; development of substantive criminal law; homicide. - Property
The history of the law of real property: tenure and ‘feudalism’; services and incidents of tenure; inheritance; estates; the real actions; terms of years; copyhold; ejectment; settlements.
The history of trusts: medieval uses; the Statute of Uses 1536; un-executed uses after the Statute.
The following topics will be considered in outline only: detinue, trover and conversion; account; quasi-contract; defamation; nuisance; executory interests and perpetuities; the equity of redemption.
No detailed knowledge will be required of the period before 1066.